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The State of the NinjaPop-cultural cliché or poised for a comeback?

By Grady Hendrix
Updated Tuesday, June 26, 2007, at 12:34 PM ET

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The '90s saw a rash of child ninja movies spearheaded by the 3 Ninjas series, which were enormously lucrative on home video. Many of these kid ninja movies—3 Ninjas Knuckle Up (the three ninjas bring justice to Native Americans) and 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (the three ninjas plus Hulk Hogan vs. Loni Anderson)—were produced and directed by Simon Sheen, better known as Shin Sang-Ok, one of Korea's master directors from the '50s who was kidnapped by North Korea and held against his will for eight years before reappearing in Hollywood and going into the child ninja business. Compare any of Shin Sang-Ok's earlier works, like the prostitute drama Flower in Hell, to the Native American dance scene from 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up, and you'll see compelling visual testimony that North Korea can destroy a man's soul.

These days, the Internet has not been respectful to ninjas despite how popular they seem to be online. Most people who say they love ninjas are only pretending to love them—and the more they say they love them, the more they are actually making fun of them. The Web video series, "Ask a Ninja" is the nadir of ninja Internet humor, a brand of comedy designed for people whose daily lives are so vacuous that pop-culture references have become the height of hilarity. Watch the videos on a site like Ninja Spirit, or go to a theme restaurant like Ninja in New York and experience the kind of industrial-strength, soul-killing, reflexively ironic emptiness that may have been used to destroy Shin Sang-Ok's talent. The ninja seems to have fallen into the clutches of the shallow and callow, fit only to be an object of mockery for sad men-children.

But it's the children—happily—who are our future. Now that the ninja death touch has been laid on the Harry Potter franchise, ninjas have craftily engineered his replacement by Naruto a frighteningly popular Japanese series about a young ninja in training. (Here's a promo.) The animated show is one of the Cartoon Network's highest-rated programs, and the Naruto manga, now on Volume 16, consistently debuts as one of the top-selling novels on Bookscan. That's top-selling novels, not graphic novels.

In early June, a Naruto feature film called Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow debuted in a one-night-only screening at 166 theaters around America—many of which sold out in advance. If you're an adult or can only consume pop culture that's safely sealed away between quotation marks, you probably haven't heard of Naruto, but he does for ninjas what Harry Potter did for wizards. Naruto is misunderstood, but infinitely powerful, and watched over by kindly mentors who teach him powerful techniques. He arrives as the ultimate power fantasy for kids who feel not only underestimated by their parents but also that there must be something more to life than school and family—that somewhere there must be a supercool place like Hogwarts or a ninja academy where they'll finally fit in. So, while we were distracted by hipsters and their insincere ninja worship, real ninjas slipped in and brainwashed America's children to their cause. For that is the ninja way.

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Grady Hendrix, a New York writer, runs the New York Asian Film Festival.
Naruto movie poster image courtesy Wikipedia.
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Remarks from the Fray:

As a kid, I was caught up in the first American ninja crazy during the mid 1980s (the first I recall at least) and despite the corny movies with ninjas fighting off evil overlords or space aliens, I really got into the history of ninjutsu and went on to study the martial arts—including ninjutsu and associated historical arts—in depth. Perhaps if it had not been for the pop culture aspect of the ninja I would not have become interested in the first place or perhaps through shotokan karate I would have later discovered ninjutsu anyways. It's hard to tell.

I say this to mean that Naruto may have his worth even yet, but even though I love animé in general Naruto is sadly so removed from any real ninja roots that they could have based the story around another theme altogether. Most of Naruto concerns—like Harry Potter—some form of magic which has long been a western association with ninja lore but a very incorrect one. The rest of the ninja pop culture references I think we may attribute to something a friend of mine in the entertainment industry once said "ninjas, pirates, and robots always sell . . . if you can get all three into a cartoon, even better". Ninjas have become a standard device that kids now recognize and you can throw some ninjas into any setting from a top secret lab to a high school and get your readership/viewship's attention.

As for real ninjas, they seem to be something that neither Hollywood nor journalists really want to touch. Probably because their real history is both less astounding and more complex to understand than the broad fictional atmosphere that has been created around then. Sadly, a great movie could probably be made about ninjas in modern times even that would blend in more actual history but it would take a really dedicated and innovative group of people to make it . . . given how bad most action-adventure films are these days, I don't see directors going out on a limb to do this anytime soon.

--Cloud

(To reply, click here.)

We call kids who watch Naruto "Narutards", a portmanteau of Naruto and retards, because that's what they act like when they aren't bolted to the floor watching the latest episode. They constantly try to chop, kick, or yell their way through everything and everyone, just like their idiot heroes. They are so annoying, even people that LOVE Japanese anime (cartoons for you Westerners) ABSOLUTELY HATE these imbecils.

I kid you not, I was at a Japanese culture expo, answering questions about kendo (japanese swordfighting martial arts) when one of these little retards, complete with show-branded headband, strolled right up, grabbed a wooden sword, casually dropped to his knees and mimed the suicide act known as Harikari or seppuku. Literally pretended to kill himself in front of a crowd of old ladies proudly demonstrating the finer aspects of kimonos, origami, and zen meditation. We were ourselves speechless. Needless to say, I don't mention that I watch anime around my martial arts friends too often for fear of association with these mental defectives.

Then again, kendo is the art of the samurai, the natural enemy of the ninja...

--speedracerx

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