So, I suppose I should start by explaining that title. You see, I’m something of an old hat at National Novel Writing Month – a challenge to write 50,000 words (the minimum definition of a novel) in the month of November. In recent years it’s presented more as a vehicle for actual storytellers, but back in the 00’s when I first encountered it, it was a much looser group with a big focus on getting participants to create all those words in such little time, like that was the big challenge.
One piece of advice that was passed around in the day was that, if you ever felt like a scene was stalling, you should just have ninjas attack. No rhyme, no reason, just ninjas, because surely you would get a lot of words down describing the ninja attack and then making sense of why and how ninjas suddenly appeared. By the time you explained your way out of the outburst of nonsense, you’d be many words ahead and ready for the next crazy thing to propel you forward. Bubuki Buranki feels for all the world like it was written by a teenager adhering to that rule with the kind of wild zeal that only youth can provide and then produced and edited by consummate professionals who had to somehow make all the outbursts work without disrespecting the “source material”.
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