High School ninja-ry amongst whey faced Japanese teenagers plays out against the nicest looking background paintings I’ve seen this season.
Waif like teenage boy Rokujo Miharu has some kind of ninja weapon of mass destruction bound in him. This is revealed by his teacher, the extravagently named Thobari Kumohira Durandal, a secret ninja who wants him to become the ruler of ninjas and aims to protect him from the ninja clan that the technique belonged to originally. Oh, and when the secret ninja power is activated Rokujo comes over all Jinsei Shinzaki with his body covered in MYSTICAL NINJA SCRIBBLE.
Rewatching this now as I write, the animation has more flaws than my early morning watching caught. The main “flaw” being some scenes are lacking any inbetween animation at all. But this is anime, shortcuts and limited animation should be expected. The other flaw is the character designs are a little too detailed to be consistently animated to the same standard. That being said, when the ninja malarky kicks off we get some funky action direction that didn’t disappoint.
But as I said at the start, what really impresses is the background painting. Most resemble pencil drawings, painted with water colours, giving the show a soft edged organic look that sets it apart from the usual overly glossy digital fare we get nowadays.
The background paintings and action scenes excited me enough that I’ll be sticking with it to see if director Kunihisa Sugishima can live up to promise the early episodes of Speed Grapher had.
