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NEWS: Ninja Slayer Sci-Fi Novels by U.S. Writers Get Anime

The American creators, "Bradley Bond and Philip Ninj@ Morzez," gave permission to a team to translate and post the story piecemeal on Twitter. After the story grew in popularity, Enterbrain published the first Japanese-translated volume in print, Ninja Slayer: Neo Saitama in Flames, in September 2012. The story then inspired three comic adaptations from Enterbrain and Kodansha, as well as a audio drama with Toshiyuki Morikawa as the title character.

Just FYI, this is not actually by US authors.

That's a fake backstory by the publisher, it's all supposed to be a tongue in cheek send-up.

Quote:

The American creators, "Bradley Bond and Philip Ninj@ Morzez," gave permission to a team to translate and post the story piecemeal on Twitter. After the story grew in popularity, Enterbrain published the first Japanese-translated volume in print, Ninja Slayer: Neo Saitama in Flames, in September 2012. The story then inspired three comic adaptations from Enterbrain and Kodansha, as well as a audio drama with Toshiyuki Morikawa as the title character.

There is no actual original english work (just try and find it!) and those original author's official bios are all fake.

samuelp wrote:

Just FYI, this is not actually by US authors. That's a fake backstory by the publisher, it's all supposed to be a tongue in cheek send-up. Quote: The American creators, "Bradley Bond and Philip Ninj@ Morzez," gave permission to a team to translate and post the story piecemeal on Twitter. After the story grew in popularity, Enterbrain published the first Japanese-translated volume in print, Ninja Slayer: Neo Saitama in Flames, in September 2012. The story then inspired three comic adaptations from Enterbrain and Kodansha, as well as a audio drama with Toshiyuki Morikawa as the title character. There is no actual original english work (just try and find it!) and those original author's official bios are all fake.

They release in Japan. They could be from US. Just like No Game No Life, it was written by a Brazilian.

Okay, if this backstory thing is true, I was fooled but good.

From what I've seen of it, I'd describe "Ninja Slayer" as sort of a novel version of realultimatepower.com, in that:

RealUltimatePower is written by someone who purports to be a hyperactive eleven year old who's going to tell you all about ninjas, even though everything he knows about them he either made up himself or got from watching bad American-made ninja movies.

In a similar way, "Ninja Slayer" on the surface looks like the work of a couple of morons who think they know something about Japan, but are in fact merely busting out every stereotype and cliche that Americans have about Japan and cranking them up to 11, all filtered through a thick haze of American comics.

However, there is a high level of specificity to its katakana-and-exclamation-point-overloaded lunacy that does make one suspect the authors are in fact very knowledgeable about Japan, and actually making fun of ninja/yakuza/samurai cliches and American-style takes on them.

If they do turn out to be Japanese authors, I guess they were knowledgeable after all, though not quite for the reasons I thought.

I personally find it somewhat racist... Well, not racist exactly, but making fun of american ignorance and racism about Japan... all the while posing as being ACTUALLY written by americans. and I'm not sure how many of the fans of the series are in on the joke...

It's pretty apt satire considering Hollywood is still putting out things like 47 Ronin.

So with the whole fake background stuff, can we say the whole animation thing is also false?

Update: Sam Pinansky reports that the "American creators Bradley Bond and Philip Ninj@ Morzez" is a fake backstory by the publisher.

Quote:

Update: Sam Pinansky reports that the "American creators Bradley Bond and Philip Ninj@ Morzez" is a fake backstory by the publisher.

A million dreams were just crushed.