Ninja Resurrection (Essential Anime Collection)

i guess i didn't expect a ninja scroll sequel, so i wasn't let down by this. its really bad in some respects. its two episodes of an OVA series that never went anywhere really. the music is great, the animation is some of the best i've seen, the actions scenes are stylish. this is jubei YAGYU the historical figure not ninja scroll's jubei kibagami. they develop characters only to have them die off immediately in the most bloody way. i could rag on it all day, but the sound and animation are good enough to warrant a watch. if you're expecting a sequel to ninja scroll you'll be sorely disappointed.

I can honestly say that this is not only one of the worst i've ever seen, but it is also a shocking, tasteless, sickening, utterly worthless and a shameful trash. When i rented this movie at my video store, i felt enormously ripped off, because of the way the word <<Ninja>> is written on the front cover, i was certain that this was a sequel to "Ninja Scroll" which was awesome, but it was not, it was a spiritual sequel. Which means that it doesn't have ANY of the characters from "Ninja Scroll", and it is a complete different story (which is in 2 parts). I was shocked to see how awful this piece of junk was. I can't even remember the story for this movie, all i can remember is that it was incredibly violent, depressing, cruel and there's a head being chopped off every two minutes. I don't have any problem with violence, but this film pushed it WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too far, this is the grand champion of BARELY WATCHABLE films. For exemple, three scenes shocked me the most. The first was an on-screen death of two children getting their head cut-off by a man who travels with them and showing them to the main character for the rest of the episode. The second scene is we see a guy becoming suddenly crazy as all hell, and starting to kill everyone around him, then the main character wound him very badly letting him dying on the floor. Then the antagonist come in with a scarred woman, then he cut one of his own finger, which start to crawl on the floor, enter in the woman vagina, and she become suddenly horny like a horse, and then she begin to make love with a dying man on the floor in a pool of blood. Finally the third scene, is actually the camera showing dead bodys on spikes for a minute. And there's one point in this scene when you actually see the body of a baby with his head cut-off on a spike. When a saw this i was shocked. Plus this movie is one of the few anime who was panned by critics. Don't waste your hard earned money on this trash.

Final verdict: Thumbs way, way,way, way down for Ninja Resurrection

P.S. Watch Ninja Scroll instead !

I remember when this title was first released by ADV. It contained the subtitle, 'The Revenge of Jubei'. ADV essentially hyped this up as a sequal to Ninja Scroll, sending fanboys out in droves to pick this up without noticing that the only thing this has in common with Ninja Scroll is the fact that they both contain a character named Jubei. Ninja Scroll has Jubei Kibagami while Ninja Resurrection has Jubei Yagyu, a literary character used throughout Japanese folklore. If we are to assume everything with the character Jubei Yagyu in it is a continuation of Ninja Scroll, then I guess it safe to assume that even the video game, Onimusha 2 is a sequal to Ninja Scroll (OMG I better run out and get it). It was so irratating listening to fanboys talk trash about this OAV collection when it came out. "This is nowhere near as cool as Ninja Scroll." or, "Ninja Resurrection doesn't faithfully represent the character we saw in Ninja Scroll." Even Anime publications reviewing the film were falling for ADV's ruse by constantly refering to this as a sequal. I don't blame the fans or anyone else other than those responsible. ADV Films. I don't know for sure, but a hunch tells me that the original title of this OAV series isn't even Ninja Resurrection. It sounds way too domestic and it played right into ADV's plan to release this as a continuation to Ninja Scroll.

Looking at the OAVs themselves, it really isn't that bad. Yeah, the story is mostly pretty lame and doesn't really go anywhere, but I have a hard time giving a bad review to an anime that has non-stop ninja destruction. Look at this as sort of a guilty pleasure.

As a interesting historical side note: This battle in this story was based on an actual event in Japan's history. Severly outnumbered and losing soldiers constantly, the Tokugawa Shogunate sent in TEN ninja as a last resort in hopes of aiding the samurai against the Christian rebels (ninja were usually used as a last resort in battle only in the most desparate situations). This team of ten ninja actually flew into the middle of the battle by use of hang gliders. The result was a massacre. Those ten men turned the tide into the Shogunate's favor and essentially won the battle.