Ninjas are cool. School settings are cool. Therefore, school ninjas should be perfectly doable! Sure, Senran Kagura made a poor anime, but the game was fine. Surely this concept can be used elsewhere.
Enter Shinobi no Ittoki, the story of a normal overworked schoolboy who finds out he’s a ninja about as abruptly as Harry Potter learns he’s a wizard. And like Potter, he’s got to go to school to live up to that powerful proclamation.
Our main character is Ittoki Sakuraba. At the outset he is, of course, ignorant of all things ninja, and feels like he’s smothered by his demanding mother and overbearing aloof childhood friend, Kousetsu. He goes to class after class, having basically no time to himself, showing off some impressive parkour moves along the way. However, a love confession from his kouhai causes him to actually find an opportunity to ditch the rails in order to go out with her.
A first date starts moving too fast, but when Ittoki is a little flustered and pushes away the young lady having her way with him in bed, he discovers that there’s a surprise in the room: Ninjas, meaning to kill him! Including his very forward date.
You know what? Savor it. For better or worse the fanservice in this show is lame and far between.
More ninjas – people Ittoki knows this time – bust in to save him, leading to a chase across the city. I don’t know why the enemies waited as long as they did. Maybe they were hoping to reassign his loyalties and murder was plan B, but either way this entire sequence ends up leading to Ittoki being tutorialized on what his family really does for a living.
The long and short of it is that he is the heir to the throne of the Iga ninja clan. Their rivals, the Koga clan, will therefore stop at nothing to rub him out. Thus, Ittoki must now train as a ninja openly, in order to properly live up to his birthright.
Ittoki whines, is guilted into accepting this, and then is scheduled for the exam to transfer into ninja school, whining along the way. The exam is something of a hide and seek game, except the fake girlfriend assassin ends up being the hider to his seeker, and trying to kill him with a bunch of her goons. Ittoki gets the better of them, but exceeds the time limit, and is only passed by the examiner’s whim on hearing his motive for doing things the way he did (setting off a fire alarm to clear out civilians)
Thus, Ittoki goes to ninja school, and Kousetsu with him since she seems to be his shadow bodyguard (she did at least pass the exam). At ninja school he meets the Koga clan bullies, playing House Slytherin in all things. He also has run-ins with cheerful tech-happy ninja girl Ryouko and fashionable friendly ninja girl Kirei.
From here, we follow two lines. On one, Ittoki and his friends do ninja school things and mostly get bullied by the Koga. He even has to deal with an obvious plant in his friend group. On the other, Ittoki’s uncle tries to investigate the Koga, who are doing evil things and plotting to start a ninja war with some crazy ninja tech or other, while he is himself being investigated by the ninja police as the primary suspect in the murder of the former chief of the Koga, who’s said to have been a really good guy unlike the old scumbag currently in charge.
To Ittoki’s credit, he does seem to make something of an impression on the head of the bullies and potential Koga heir, Suzaku. To his non credit, he spends most of his time whining and screaming. The impression also doesn’t last long, sparing him for a day but leaving Suzuaku still wanting to wipe Iga out.
I’m fine with protagonists not being overpowered. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I prefer it. The “unknowing youngster gets a crash course in a new world of wonder and threat” line may be stale, but at least it’s got something of a good core to it. We as the audience need to learn about the weird things in these settings, so it makes sense to have a character who needs to learn so the writers can explain. And it’s nice to have a character start not at the top of everything that’s relevant to them, because then we can see that character learn and grow.
But at the same time, I can say that gung-ho heroes, who get out there and do things and have motivations are generally preferable, and that doesn’t keep Daisuke from killing Revisions by doing that in a really obnoxious way.
And Ittoki is not as bad as Daisuke. Heck, I’d argue he’s not even as bad as Renton starts out. But Daisuke was a show-killer, and Renton probably would have been if he wasn’t placed in such a sprawling epic that needed to take its time with his growth. Ittoki has a good heart, that’s pretty clear, but he’s still hard to watch for a few reasons.
One, he’s not given a whole lot else. I guess all those classes mom put him through didn’t count for much. He doesn’t have to be awesome at ninja skills, but if maybe he had a sharp analytical mind, or some unusual talent he could leverage, or even a quirk or two that helped define him beyond “friend to all living things who screams a lot”.
Two, he’s poorly supported. Kousetsu is set up as his important partner, the only one we can really trust, but her quiet grumpiness really gives him nothing to work off of. Since she’s the most relied upon character, that’s an issue. As for the other characters… I’ll get to them. The best of the lot at actually making scenes work is Ryouko. Honestly, I wish we were following her. She’s a gadgeteer genius from the clan that makes all the secret ninja tech, but her father, the chief (who we meet on the uncle’s route), doesn’t want her to inherit and would instead prefer that she become a normal girl after her time in ninja high school she had to fight tooth and nail to enter. From her perspective, it seems unreasonable like she’s being told to give up on what she loves and that she doesn’t have a choice in the matter, but from his he’s trying to set her free of the nasty business of the ninja world. Sadly, what’s good for a protagonist is only passable for a supporting character, and she’s well and truly pigeonholed as this untrustworthy band’s Hermione.
Third and most critically, the direction has him skew obnoxious. I get that a kid would feel some pretty extreme emotions being put through extreme stuff as happens to Ittoki, but sometimes it’s best to take liberties with those reactions for the sake of the viewers. It’s not like we’re really deeply studying him like Shinji Ikari. At the end of the day, Evangelion had the ambition and vision to really stare into the abyss and face the psychological trauma of its characters. Shinji whined. A lot. And he often gets called out for it both by fans (where he’s often regarded as a pretty bad protagonist) and even somewhat in character. But it’s in service to something. Here? Ittoki just whines because it seems like a “normal” kid would whine, and despite serving an entire semester in Ninja school before the end of the first half of this show, he hasn’t really improved in terms of his propensity to scream and cry about things.
Some of it, like the scene where his uncle offers to help him run away but the fact that his mom signed off on that guilts him into taking the role and he cries about it, are earned. More of the mass isn’t nearly as justified.
By the halfway point, you’ll probably have figured out two things about this show. One is that (with one of the randos guilty to Ittoki’s face, Kirei confirmed guilty to the audience, and Ryouko implied guilty by circumstance) everybody in this show breaks Ninja Rule #3: Do Not Betray at the drop of a hat. The other is that this show is determined to use every stale cliché in the book, because I guess they figure that those tropes were popular at one point so they must be good.
Case in point…
Is it too late to redirect to Blackfox? I could really go for a Blackfox sequel right about now. At least Blackfox largely concerned itself with the cliches that were still a little cool.
No? On with this ninja show, then.
To be fair, the downtime episode here is less swimsuit fanservice and more building up Kirei. Evidently she’s a Fuma village ninja, the secret last of her kind, and had a pretty tortured, deprived life at the hands of her crazy ninja father, told constantly to deceive and betray and treat people as fodder. She’s clearly having some second thoughts about both her way of life and her current role as a double agent against Iga. It’s also used to build up just how important and beloved Ittoki’s mom is.
This leads to the Ninja Police calling a grand council, which sees the Koga chief arrested, but on the “evidence” of one of his stooges, Ittoki’s mom arrested too. The stooge takes out the good honest investigator, and sentences mom to death in an attempt to extort her for the Macguffin of the Secret Iga Ninja Core. Meanwhile, Koga prepares for total war against Iga, with an army of robot ninjas to bolster their ranks. Did nobody teach these guys the law of conservation of ninjitsu? Bully Suzaku takes to the front lines, while his father gets killed for opposing the operation. On the Iga side, Uncle and Kousetsu go to rescue Mom, which would be great if not for the whole spy situation setting them up. Luckily, the good ninja cops are on the case and arrest their crooked Koga stooge compatriot.
During the raid, Kirei has a pang of conscience and pretty much sacrifices herself to help save the day by blowing up the charger for the robo-ninjas. She manages to live, though. Just when it seems like the day is saved, though, Kousetsu gets mind-controlled through a previously not presaged mechanism and, despite her best efforts to make a will save or three, butchers mom. This is done for presumably two reasons: to give Ittoki something else legitimate to cry over because he’d been watchable for the defense of Iga village arc, and to make Kousetsu even less likable than she already was by having her off the only thing in the world she cared about.
Kosetsu.exe has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
To make this feel even more desperate, the opener for the next episode shows that the Koga and their robots, despite being explicitly deployed on Iga and defeated there, made short work of several of the other ninja clans.
Kousetsu is somehow not immediately fed feet-first to rats or something, and Uncle ferrets out that she was mind controlled through a microchip implanted in her brain, the likes of which was used to remote kill the failed assassin girlfriend from the start of the show. This is because she is, evidently, the bastard daughter of the Koga chief, one of many of his children planted in other villages with brain chips to act as unknowing sleeper agents. Ittoki, even though Kousetsu was only ever shown to be someone he regarded as annoying and/or offputting until this point, gives her sweet treatment rather than the death that she and the Iga survivors alike would insist upon.
Since the show is admirably determined to end, we push everyone to endgame states: the Koga chief is ready to take over the world with his robots, Suzaku finds out that he killed the former chief and framed Iga, Kirei’s dad goes out as a class act protecting her when Koga betrays them, Ryouko finds her dad is out an arm and a job, the works. Finally, Ittoki uses a ruse to find the real Iga traitor (aside from all the other traitors) and then takes Uncle and Kousetsu (back in action, no mask) to raid Koga while Koga is raiding Iga like this is an RTS. His goal is to confront the Koga chief and hopefully nonviolently force him to admit his crimes and surrender.
Dude, you’re not Phoenix Wright, you’re a ninja. I get that a big part of his arc has been not wanting to kill or take revenge because that’s pointlessly destructive, but at this stage I think he could hand over any of the hard evidence of Koga’s heinous wrongdoings and at least go in planning to make an arrest. At least he takes that McGuffin to power himself up. And you’ve got to be prepared for trouble…
Naturally, he immediately has to deal with an army of robot ninjas just getting there, and the other two main girls show up to help because why not? Eventually, Ittoki makes it up, and gets a recorded confession from the Koga chief by wearing a wire, more or less. Again, any of the pre-existing evidence like the video of him offing his predecessor, but this gets the show over.
Well, the old guy who was infirm and stated to have no ability to use ninja tech actually has to don his special ninja tech and be a final boss fight, then get a really lame speech when he’s down for the count, but that doesn’t take all that long. Uncle claims a killing blow since nobody knows when to give up, and all’s well that ends well. Years later Iga and Koga are both good, Ryouko’s family is back to work, and Kirei is an actress for reasons of Oshi no Ko, and everybody else is having nice lives all around.
And that was Shinobi no Ittoki. It was… lame.
There’s no one critical, killer fault that destroys Shinobi no Ittoki as a show. When you get down to it, it uses a half-decent skeleton, gives us some okay characters, and has animation and action that is at least trying.
But, on the other hand, it has issues. I mentioned the characters earlier, and while some of them improve, I feel like the improvement for everyone but Kirei is less organic and more schizophrenic. Suzaku stays the bland bully with a grudge for way, way too long given what was established about his beloved mentor, dodging plenty of opportunities to turn good before, rather spontaneously, he finally actually does it. Part of me was kind of hoping he’d stay a baddie to the end, just so he’d be consistent after he takes things like his father’s killing in stride. Kousetsu has the blue screen of death and then just recovers thanks to one little speech from Ittoki. Ryouko never really changes or grows, but she didn’t exactly need to. The Iga villagers get a lot of time, but none of it is really used well. Mom is sainted, then dies. That’s just how it goes. At least Ittoki has fewer screaming scenes in the second half, but in a sense it feels like, while you could ascribe that to stepping into his role as Chief, it’s more that spontaneously going on summer vacation cures him of his whining. Mostly.
In the end, I sort of have two benchmarks to compare Shinobi no Ittoki to. One is Blackfox, and it falls well short. Almost everything this show tried to do, that movie did better. High tech gadgets and ninja action? A compelling villain who repeatedly proves he’s just evil? Friendship across faction lines? Calling the revenge plot into question? It’s there, in a compact and stylish look with fun, watchable characters.
The other is Senran Kagura. I don’t mean the game here. The game would leave Shinobi no Ittoki in its dust with no effort. I mean the anime, which I allowed to scrape by at C- despite hating its guts for watering down the game’s characters and turning its storyline from something interesting and compelling if cheesy into something more standard and not as fun.
Shinobi no Ittoki still loses. If you’re going to sit down and watch an anime about ninjas who go to ninja school and your options are Shinobi no Ittoki or Senran Kagura, neither one is a good option but I think Senran Kagura actually has more to offer.
That means in my mind that Shinobi no Ittoki needs to receive a lower grade. Senran Kagura barely passed. Shinobi no Ittoki barely doesn’t. I will award it D+; it had some watchable characters and some decent art, but it’s not well-written or well-constructed. This one can go ahead and vanish into the shadows.