Ninja Kamui

"Ninja Kamui" definitely won me over with the trailer a few months ago.

You could already see that the animation and choreography of the fights would be fantastic - I could only guess how much more would come in the course of the anime and was almost certain that this anime would be relatively high up at the top of the animes from 2024.

The anime starts off very promisingly, as promised by the trailer - the fights in the first episodes are choreographed fantastically and are breathtakingly well animated.

The story and the characters are rather simple and not particularly innovative, but that hardly bothered me - as long as the implementation of this simple story maintained this level, I would have been happy.

But unfortunately it didn't...

Before I could admire the dark style and simple character design of the main character, who was initially only wearing a black hoodie, enough, he slips into a bright mecha suit with all sorts of bells and whistles on it. I personally found that a shame because I think the anime would have worked much better if they had stuck to traditional fighting techniques and weapons.

All the sci-fi stuff just takes away all the charm of the previously simple aesthetic...

If they really wanted to include mechas, I would have thought it was a better decision not to give the main character a suit and thus contrast ultra-modern fighting machines with old-fashioned ninja techniques.

It's a shame that they decided to go in this direction...

This had a really strong start but unfortunately it swayed away from what I originally thought this series would be.

When I watched the first 4 or 5 episodes I was super excited thinking that I finally ended up finding a Ninja themed anime series that takes place in a modern time. Unfortunately the series ends up with a big focus on Mecha armor which is used heavily by both antagonists and protagonists. I suppose some folks might not be bothered by this but once the sci-fi armor action began it really started feeling like I was watching action scenes from a completely different series. I personally enjoyed the action a whole lot more when it was folks battling each other without fancy Iron Man-esque suits. I'd also like to mention that these suits are CGI drawn which, in my opinion, doesn't look or move as great as the hand drawn animation in this series.

The only other nitpick that kept coming to my mind is that after the first 2 or 3 episodes we only seem to see the supporting cast speak about what to do next or what they should do against an opponent. They barely gave any attention to the main character when it comes to suggesting a plan or even share his thoughts about the situations. Thankfully we do get to see a lot more from him in the flashbacks we see throughout. Though I will admit a lot of the other characters we see are super charismatic and felt very unique.

While I found the story a bit entertaining I must admit that it wasn't exactly anything out of this world. It starts off as a normal revenge story but unfortunately the longer it went the more it seemed like the creators were trying to cram way too many different concepts into 1 package. I actually found myself enjoying the flashbacks more than what was occurring in the present.

If you wish to see 'turn-off your mind' action I'd say give it a chance, the action in the first half of the series is great in my opinion. If you're expecting regular ninjas without Iron Man suits then you may end up disappointed once the Sci-Fi kicks in. I honestly would've rated this higher if it didn't shift from 'Modern day Ninjas' to 'Mecha-Ninjas'.

I can't stand when anime is rated differently from movie or TV shows, why do basic standards get lowered just because it's anime? I had really high hopes that it would be a really cool show about an assassin, it's visually beautiful, but everything else is such a let down. Here's why:

1. The storyline is so basic and slow. I'm 7 episodes in and nothing has any real purpose. It's just a guy looking for revenge in the most boring way possible, sprinkled in the typical dumb cop that thinks his gun will eventually work against ninjas running at 200mph.

2. The main character is boring. You cant connect with him. There's nothing about him that's interesting, he just wants revenge. He's too much of the teenage silent, but edgy trope.

3. The other characters are just there. They offer nothing of worth to the show. They don't have any personality that makes you route for or against them. Some flashbacks are meant to be sentimental, but, again, there's isn't a character worth putting emotion into.

What made people like John Wick were the fight scenes. There are some cool fight scenes, but more talking about nothing than fighting or interesting background information.

Knowing sunghoo Park is directing Ninja Kamui really made our hopes high, but they did nothing to keep the audience invested totally mid after first two episodes.

Just a John wick anime adaptation at best, now the 2nd season is announced hope they did better than that CGI they used.

But Not gonna lie the first two episodes the hand to hand combat the storyboard the production was very good they were really invested the voice acting from The best Kenjiro Tsuda really do catch my Interest But All we can do is hope what's in store for the future for this anime original fingers crossed.

Overall 7/10 show.

The anime is very promising and it's interesting that HBO is producing it but the story falls very flat and the plot is nothing new: vengeance and lots of action. Basically a John Wick anime ripoff. This is not entirely a bad thing if well executed but so far it does not impress: the animation is top notch but the voice acting is ATROCIOUS. It definitely breaks the immersion. Also, the characters are kinda flat, we are 5-6 episodes in and I simply do not care for any of them, the vendetta motive of the main character is just not enough to make me excited. Hopefully this series will improve with the next episodes.