Jan 25, 2025
Ninja Slayer has the most insane real world backstory of all time!
In the 90s, two American OG weebs, inspired by bad dubs of 80s and 90s cheesy Japanese media like Gundam, Japanese B movies and what little anime aired in the West, decided to write their own story in that style. Naturally, it was awful. Considered, in a sense, "The Room" of light novels, except for how obscure it was, as compared to how popular, or should I say - infamous - The Room is. It contained badly used, romanized Japanese words, constant references to the few bits of Japanese culture they new - constant
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references to ninjas B films and the character craving sushi, things randomly exploding, characters bowing, saying "Domo" in an English language novel and introducing themselves before brutally killing eachother, the main character being so edgy and one note. Like a Goblin slayer for ninjas made by 90s Weaboos - Ninja Slayer, if you will. This series faded into obscurity, the two likely forgot they published this in their youths and the books collected dust in random book stores, archives and libraries. Randomly, in the late 2000s, some Twitter users stumbled onto it and began translating it into Japanese and some mangaka, named Yuuki Yogo (same mangaka as Akumetsu!) accidentally stumbled onto this and had such a laugh that he decided to make a manga out of it. Then studio Trigger made it into an anime in 2015 as one of their first major anime (well, technically, their anime more closely resembles the Kills version up to episode 20, the "Stranger than fiction" arc, featuring the lovely Nancy Lee), as well as one of the most often forgotten about. They went above and beyond to take the piss out of it, using amazing coloring, the amazing character designs by Yogo-san and amazing animation....in the scenes that matter the least, while using godawful animation during the fight scenes. I LOVE esoteric memes and this series itself is an esoteric meme. It somehow turned out great not just ironically, but unironically somehow, because they made the most out of this concept, as did Yugo - well, almost. Here's where this manga comes in. Kotaro Sekine took this concept and somehow perfected it even further! With even better character redesigns, looking closer to the characters in the Trigger series, an even better artstyle than Yugo (despite this being his first manga!) and unbelievably cool action and retelling of the story. Where it really shines is how it improves on the way in which the story was told in the original Ninja Slayer manga. The original had to work under bad conditions, having to adapt a story that was coming out page by page on Twitter OUT OF ORDER, translated by random bilingual Twitter users with no prior experience and adapting one of the worst and most amateur novels ever written. Considering all of these factors, it's rather impressive, but when this came out, it completely blows the original out of the water when it comes to coherent storytelling that isn't out of order. Yes, you heard that right. The other version of the series is canonically out of order and it makes trying to understand what's going on a nightmare.
I just finished reading it for the 3rd time. This is, no joke, without a hint of irony, one of the best manga I've ever read. It's only flaw is that it finishes in the middle of nowhere, story wise, whereas the original novels, manga and the Trigger anime all go further into the story than this iteration. Despite being the shortest, this is without a doubt my favorite version of Ninja Slayer, despite being a fan of all iterations.
9.5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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