The Thrasher's Word

 

Ninja Resurrection

 

 

Format: OVA (2 episodes of 40 minutes each)
Genre: Historical, Samurai, Horror, Supernatural
Studio: Phoenix
Director: Yasunori Urata

Allow me to apologise in adavance to anyone who happens to read this; this will not be an ordinary review. While most of the time I write with consumer advice (or at least some vague notion of a superficial coating of consumer advice) in mind, this time my priorities are different. I'm writing, first and foremost, for my own catharsis, with any consumer advice which should arise being at most a secondary concern, and most likely inadvertant. The thing is, "Ninja Resurrection" caught me off guard. I found it in the second-hand place where most of my participation in consumerist culture is conducted nowadays, and I bought it largely due to its famed connection to "Ninja Scroll," a vastly superior film which ADV erroneously claimed to be part of the same canon in its marketing campaign. Having just seen "Ninja Scroll" (and loved it), I thought it might be a bit of a laugh to watch a bad show try desperately to follow in the footsteps of that particular classic. The shop wasn't carrying any other anime at the time apart from "Paprika," which I'd already seen, so I figured hey, why not? It's only three quid, it'll be funny, and I'll get a review out of it. Unfortunately, what I got wasn't a bit of a laugh. What I got was the some of the most despicable, reprehensible, puerile dross I've ever had the misfortune of handling, the product of a diseased and nihilistic mind. I knew, as soon as the credits rolled, that I wouldn't be able to attain closure until I had verbally screwed this putrid carcass of a show to the wall. Well, in this scenario, said wall is this column, the mechanism by which I can excise the smear "Ninja Resurrection" has left on my soul. Maybe it's self-indulgent, but this review is for me, and if in the process I can prevent anyone from subjecting themselves to this... thing... then so much the better.

If you need to have a story, "Ninja Resurrection" begrudgingly provides one. It introduces the period of Japanese history during the Tokugawa shogunate when Christianity was being purged from the land, missionaries being exiled, practitioners sentenced to death, all that bad sh*t. In an actually-quite-well-done opening narration over a series of watercolour paintings, it is relayed to us that there is a legend of a prophet who will lead the Christians to safety and prosperity. However, should this prophet die before his time, he will be reborn as "Satan" (read: Antichrist). I suppose it should be taken as a bad sign when the high point of a film's narrative comes in the opening scroll, because it quickly becomes clear that all this fairly interesting religious persecution schtick is being used just to set up a load of gratuitous Christian-versus-Satanic symbolism. We're not two minutes in before we see Shiro Ameratsu (the Christ-figure in question) get saved from a gunshot by a crucifix concealed beneath his robe, before proceeding to actually shine a ray of golden radiance into the sky from the same cross. Subtle much?

Anyway, the level of idiocy proceeds to ramp right up when the Tokugawa launch a siege on the Christian stronghold. Shiro, who has now been built up to represent the absolute apotheosis of all that is good and pure with his unmitigated tolerance and generosity even in the face of extreme oppression (Christ figure, we get it...) is left to fight a losing battle against the assault led by Jubei Yagyu and the team of elite ninjas he leads. How do Jubei and co. get into the fortress? By dropping down from a GIANT FLYING PENTAGRAM in the sky. Giant. Flying. Pentagram. It needs to be seen to be believed. Other such spectacles we're treated to over the course of the siege include one ninja firing a multi-barreled rocket-launcher and another donning a suit of morphing, jet-propelled power-armour. That's right folks! Based on actual Japanese history! We didn't, say, conjure all of this stuff up during a bad trip, no sir!

It doesn't help that the animation during all of this is pathetic. When is an epic siege not an epic siege? When it looks like it was drawn by a team of first-year college students on an art course with a lot of free time on their hands. The only character models which sport any detail are the ones whose mouths seem to be gaping maws occupying about a third of their heads, lined with rows of carnivorous teeth. Their animations fare no better, the ninjas' stiff, wooden motions conveying none of the grace or athleticism we're ostensibly supposed to perceive in them, the action scenes containing so many repeated frames of animation that at times they resemble a .gif file more than anything else. There's only one scene in the whole OVA - a sparring match, no less - which actually achieves any measure of kinetic fluidity, and even then it's only for about ten seconds. Otherwise, "Ninja Resurrection" just succeeds in being ugly and boring where it seeks to be thrilling - except when livened up by GIANT FLYING PENTAGRAMS of course.

So, the action is nonsensical, the animation is crap and the story is practically nonexistant. At this point, you'd be forgiven for making the mistake I made, that it could still be an entertainingly bad bit of trashy kitsch rather than a blemish upon human experience which deserves to be expunged. But that's before you factor in the violence, and this is where the fun stops. Now, don't mistake me. I'm not a prude when it comes to these kinds of things, quite the opposite in fact. I love a bit of extreme violence in action movies, and I've seen my share of brainless, misogynistic, testosterone-oozing bullet-fests. "Ninja Scroll" is a great example of this mentality in anime form: gratuitous as all hell, but incredibly entertaining for it. But when an anime dedicates a six-minute sequence to a nude woman writhing in mid-air as the Antichrist physically claws his way out of her in a flood of red, leaving naught behind but a pile of twisted limbs caked in gore - that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I draw the f***ing line. And while that particular sequence represents the extremity of "Ninja Resurrection's" obscenity, it's by no means the only example. How does seeing a pair of smiling children being decapitated by a priest sound to you? Or a slobbering demon raping a woman so hard that she actually explodes? Or interminable montages of decapitated heads on spikes being pecked at by ravens? When I try to consider the kind of mind that "Ninja Resurrection" is appealing to, much less that of those who created it, it scares me.

I can appreciate that "Resurrection" wanted to take the sexualised violence of "Ninja Scroll" to new extremes, but in doing so, it misconstrues what made that violence work so badly that it actually becomes its antithesis. "Ninja Scroll" was gratuitous, sure, but at least there the violence was supplementing already extremely well animated fight scenes, lending them a greater sense of brutality and intensity. Also, you have to consider the context of the bloodletting within the fiction; sure, it wasn't always justified by any means, but at least the combatants in "Ninja Scroll" acknowledged each other as adversaries and engaged each other willingly. "Resurrection," by contrast, is only too happy to show innocent people being butchered in horrible ways, not for the visceral thrill of an action or horror movie, but simply for its own sake. I can only guess at the carnal appetites "Resurrection" seeks to satisfy with such sequences as crowds being wantonly torn to shreds, but I can affirm that if they exist, then they are the lowest lusts in the human animal that I hope never to encounter. In terms of both aesthetics and morals, "Ninja Scroll" and "Ninja Resurrection" are like night and day.

In the face of such depravity, "Resurrection's" indulgence in the age-old shounen cliches of characterisation seems like a minor complaint to make, but if anything, they seem even more noticeably abrasive than ever given how out of place they seem. Here's the deal; at the start of the OVA's second episode, it decides to let up from the orgiastic disembowelment that came before and the deeply disturbing sexualised scenes to come, and momentarily lets us see Jubei's home. Here we're introduced to a series of stereotypes; the cantankerous old master; the tomboyish young girl, and Jubei himself, who's completely amorphous. He's not even one-dimensional; he has no personality at all, or rather, he switches back and forth between two or three cliches at will (gothy loner and suggestive joker being two such flavours). Seeing these old standbys just makes me wonder whether "Ressurection" actually has a clue as to what target audience it's aiming for or if there's just a very strange niche audience somewhere. I wasn't aware that there was much overlap in fanbases of bright-eyed teen comedy and pornographic splatter, but in any case, seeing the two juxtaposed here just calls attention to "Resurrection's" total inadequacy at anything resembling a narrative. Having highlighted its own tonal inconsistencies and one-note characters, it descends once again into sex and gore, a descent which leaves the audience even more in despair at the proceedings now that we know it has nothing else to offer.

In the face of such horror, I'm left with a genuine critical dilemna: is the fact that "Ninja Resurrection" is unfinished its crowning failure or its sole redeeming feature? So the Antichrist gets resurrected and the apocalypse is nigh. That's actually where it ends, on a complete cliffhanger, an actual "to be continued" sign. It just STOPS. There isn't even an attempt to tie up the loose ends, any kind of "Heroes"-esque last minute cramming of plot points to conclusions, or even any explanation offered on the DVD; it just presents itself as if it were complete. Well, it never was completed and never will be, leaving total vacuums in the wake of what few plot strands and shallow character arcs it actually did proclaim. On the one hand, the abandonment of these strands and arcs leaves them utterly meaningless and without significance in a state of irresolute limbo. On the other hand, should one be grateful that such a feeble story is left unresolved if it spares one another 40 minutes of mortal suffering?

My frank opinion? Yes. Allow me to summarise my feelings for "Ninja Resurrection" with a plea to you, dear readers: if you should come across a copy of this anime, destroy it. Put this sorry, aborted foetus born of a cynical, nihilistic endeavour out of its misery. I realise that with this rant I will have imbued "Ninja Resurrection" with the status of forbidden fruit, that you might want to see it now just to see what could possibly drive me to such rage. Don't. Don't make my mistake. Remember Nietzsche's words: "If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Ladies and gentlemen, "Ninja Resurrection" is the abyss, the nadir: a fruitless, meaningless, purposeless exercise which benefits no-one.
-Thrash Til' Death

LAA Rating: *

Rating System:

* - Horrible
*1/2 – Very Bad
** - Bad
**1/2 – Good
*** - Very Good
***1/2 – Excellent
**** - Masterpiece

If you have any feedback, criticism or questions relating to this review or any other, please e-mail me at The_Thrashers_Word@hotmail.com