News
Montreal's Fantasia to Show Takashi Miike's Ninja Kids
posted on by Andrew Osmond
Ninja Kids!!!, a live-action film adaptation of the long-running children's anime and manga Nintama Rantaro by prolific director Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer, 13 Assasins), will be screened at the 15th Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal. The festival runs from July 14 to August 7.
In the Ninja Kids!!! film, Rantaro (8 year-old actor Seishirō Katō) and his fellow ninja apprentices train at an elite ninja academy and face various challenges and eccentric characters. The story is set in Japan during the tumultuous Sengoku Jidai (Era of the Warring States). As first-graders, Rantarō and his friends are called "Nintama" — a contraction of the words "ninja" and "tamago" ("egg").
The anime began in 1993 and ran for 19 seasons and about 1,500 episodes on NHK. There was also an anime film in 1996 and a new anime film this year. The anime itself is based on the manga Rakudai Ninja Rantarō by Soubee Amako.
Miike's film was among Fantasia's "first wave" of announced titles, which also includes Yūdai Yamaguchi's Deadball and Shinji Imaoka's Underwater Love. A full list of the 130 films at the festival will be announced on Thursday.
