Shinobi no Ittoki

Episode 8

So earlier on in the season I specifically said that I hoped Shinobi no Ittoki would get away from the school setting and themes. Boy oh boy have we ever done that.

As far as negatives go, the first portions of the episode left me a bit meh, if I'm being honest. The ninja boardroom meetings and ninja security council sessions are still boardroom meetings and security council sessions - no matter how often you use ninja as an adjective. We get a bit of intrigue at the very least with the Koga boss offing one of his lieutenants for not showing enough backbone (though it seems like a bad call on my part since he uh, gave good advice and the boss admits it too?). But these are mostly meetings between characters we still don't know all that well.

I think the show could really benefit from putting more characters we care about into these scenes. Or at least having them address our core cast more directly. As it stands, there just is not enough emotional investment to feel like I'm supposed to care about the minutia of the meetings. Similarly, the revelations of corruption and wrong-doing are… not all that surprising either. Koga is evil, the audience has gotten that message from the beginning, so a lot of this feels superfluous.

Then the back five minutes or so are just explosions. It's certainly the kind of absurd, over the top modern ninja content one would expect. Missile-laden checkpoints, dramatic sacrifices, backflipping robot shinobi - it's all guitar solos from here on out. I sort of wish any of the characters I cared about were present for it. Ittoki is elsewhere, and even though Tokisada and Kousetsu do run off to save his mom their action scene is painfully short and they get immediately captured. Oy. Their disguise sequence was pretty hilarious though, certainly a highlight of the episode, and the animation remains solid throughout. Strange to think that despite all that's happening the show still feels like it's revving up, but we're two thirds of the way through the season…

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

Shinobi no Ittoki is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.