The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Under Ninja

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A high school loner is given the part-time job of a lifetime as a modern-day ninja tasked to perform international assassinations. After World War II, Allied Command in Japan developed a new agency to help manage terrorism and violence within the Pacific region. The agency was staffed with ninja and was initially tasked to handle domestic affairs. Eventually, that program grew to its current form, managing 20,000 ninja across a range of domestic and international affairs. One of those ninja happens to be Kurō. The seventeen-year-old high school loser is now poised to be the next line of defense against a potential surge in foreign assassins invading Tokyo.

Under Ninja is based on a manga of the same name by Kengo Hanazawa. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

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James Beckett
Rating:

I spent a good portion of Under Ninja wondering just what in the hell the show was going for. Not because anything especially bizarre or incomprehensible had happened, mind you; it's just that the premiere is comprised of all of these disparate and fragmented scenes that, on the surface, don't really add up to a coherent story. At least, not yet. After the opening sequence with the band of soldiers with surprisingly-almost-good English dialogue, we cut to a rooftop in Japan where a bunch of weird Japanese teenagers are discussing Shonen Jump flexes and doing battle with a gang of ganguro girls who are posted up on a different roof. Then, we spend the majority of the episode with a flashback that shows our main character, Kuro, who is a ninja of some kind, as he kills time in his barren apartment while he figures out how to get started on his latest assignment (which will presumably lead to the rooftop showdown, though don't ask me what that eventual battle has to do with anything else).

For awhile, I didn't know what to make of this thing, and I was ready to write it off as an odd little failed experiment, but suddenly, I found myself appreciating the weird, willfully stupid vibes that Under Ninja soaks us in for the whole of its premiere. I think it hit me when I realized that we really were going introduce Kuro's super-special ninja skills by having him spider-crawl his way over a peeing woman to fetch her a roll of TP—before he shows off his blow-dart skills by farting toothpicks through a straw to hit a beer can. It's the fact that the show presents all of this absurdity with such droll, stone-faced matter- of-factness that makes it work. It's hot as hell outside, Japan is just chock-full of secret ninjas, and our main character is a fart-bending dweeb who is going to get involved in all manner of bullshit.

That's just the way it is in Under Ninja, and I have developed a weird kind of respect for the show's peculiar tone and presentational priorities. I have no clue if the story is going to hold up in the long term, but I'm at least invested enough to stick with this series for now.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

Man, I have seen some anime start off badly but the cold opening for Under Ninja gives new meaning to the idea of “putting your worst foot forward.” The CG is simply atrocious. We get super low budget animation where the movements are unnaturally jerky. Moreover, the faces are indistinct and the mouths covered so they don't have to actually move—and if they do, they only open or close with no noticeable lip movements. Honestly, I was ready to write off the whole show just a minute in. However, shockingly, everything else in the episode is great. The story, the animation, the characters… all of it.

Under Ninja is set in the modern world but the idea is that there are 200,000 ninja currently living in Japan—employed by different factions and fighting each other in the shadows. (This means about 1 out of every 625 people in the country is a ninja.) What's great about this show is that it takes its silly premise and plays it completely straight—which makes it doubly hilarious.

Ninjas are basically normal people doing normal jobs—when they're not killing people or fighting other ninjas anyway. So in this episode, we don't see our hero Kuro fight or kill anybody. Instead, he uses his ninja skills to help a neighbor get the toilet paper in her awkwardly shaped bathroom, hide from another neighbor after steeling his beer, and frame them each as a beer thief/panty thief respectively to make them get mad at each other and not him—while also making sure no one will want to call the cops.

I also love the idea that all the ninja we see are a little bad at being normal. I got a big laugh out of the ganguro high school girls (a fashion that has been out of style for a decade or more now) and their leader who went so far ganguro she ended up at kabuki make-up instead.

So what can I say? I thoroughly enjoyed this first episode—which isn't a surprise considering it's written by Kengo Hanazawa. I loved his zombie survival manga I am a Hero (even if the end was… well, something). The clever writing that constantly clashes absurdity with reality is something I am 100% here for—and will likely continue to be in the weeks to come.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I'm not entirely sure if this is supposed to be a comedy or not. The opening scene, featuring American English-speaking soldiers bursting in to defuse a bomb only to find that the terrorist has had his head sliced off by a ninja, is so over-the-top that it feels like it could be. Other scenes, such as the ninja masquerading as gyaru and Kuro powering his blow dart with his farts, also seem to indicate humor as an intended genre. But why, I have to ask, is it so persistently unfunny?

The answer is almost certainly because humor is the most subjective of all literary styles, but still, these jokes are remarkably lacking in glee. It also doesn't help that the art is very unattractive, with everyone having a soulless look to their faces and the entire thing being colored in shades of mossy, muddy, and bland. Then there's the way that it rolls back and forth through time like my dog in a dead seal on the beach – it seems to think that doing so will make it more appealing and interesting, but the result doesn't quite live up to that ideal. Under Ninja is trying, that's clear, but so far, I do not like what it's come up with.

The plot isn't entirely without promise, though. The idea that ninja have been secretly hanging out in Japan's shadows isn't a new one, and this take on it enjoys playing with that fact. From the foreigner in the end, who comes to Japan specifically looking to meet a ninja, to how they're all hiding in very plain sight as delivery drivers and high school students, this leans hard into the gag that you really can, as the title goes, throw a stone and hit a ninja. The idea has a delightful absurdity, and it might work if the jokes didn't rely on an alcoholic neighbor, fart darts, and other stale staples. It'd be in better shape. And nothing says that it won't get there, although the scene in the preview of Kuro trying on said alcoholic neighbor's underwear isn't giving me much hope. This is a one-and-done for me.

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Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

It's been a while since I've seen a premiere that so thoroughly undercuts its promising premise through structure alone. There is, somewhere in the maze-like construction of this introduction, a pretty neat idea with a unique tone. Yet the story beats it chooses to focus on, and the ones it chooses to abandon until some later episode, make it hard to pin down what we can expect from the show or if it can adequately deliver on its good ideas.

Mostly, I don't get the structure of this episode's script. We start in media res with Kuro and a group of other ninja pretending to be high school students, along with a competing team of ninja disguised as ganguro fashionistas. What dialogue we get makes it obvious what's happening, even if we don't know the particulars. Then, before the fight starts, we flash back to Kuro being assigned this mission and get a lengthy sequence establishing how he mooches off his neighbors using his ninja skills. That's an odd choice since it doesn't tell us much we didn't already know, but it gives us some downtime to learn about our protagonist, so it works. It's only when we return to the present day and immediately flash back to a different incident, only to cut that story off to exposit about the alternative history of clandestine ninja, that it becomes a confused mess. By the time the credits abruptly roll, this premiere feels like a set of dangling plot threads and non-sequiturs, where all you can do is scratch your head and wonder what any of that was about.

It's a shame because there are intriguing moments here, mostly stemming from the deadpan humor it takes towards its premise. Kuro may be part of a John Wick-style underground order of assassins, but he's also a schlubby doofus who will use his special ninja techniques to steal beer and frame his neighbor to avoid the heat. There's a similar offbeat humor to the random villain(?) who walks in with a novelty sword umbrella and demands to speak to The Manager of Ninja as soon as he arrives in Japan. It feels like something you'd see on Adult Swim's late-night block, reveling in a stone-faced absurdity while building towards some serious action. If put together in proper order and given some level of resolution in this first episode, I could see this being a pretty enjoyable watch.

That leaves this premiere in a precarious situation. Its grimy charm intrigues me, but not enough to follow it for that alone. I'm tempted to watch another episode to get a better idea of where it's going – or to see if it can competently animate a fight with this art style – yet that's a major liability in a season so jam-packed with shows that hook you in their first episode.