Summary: >

One night in a city a man named Ryu is attacked by mysterious ominous villains. He manages to come out unscathed, but something evil is brewing. Ryu is the Ninja Dragon. He is the last of his clan, who years earlier fought Jacko in a fateful battle to decide if the Dragons would once again prevail over their age old enemies: the demons. It turned out that Ryu did indeed win, but the power is never truly sealed.

Now things are beginning to stir again. A scientist announces that he has found the cure for cancer, but Ryu senses something else. A comrade of Ryu's named Robert is also investigating this scientist only to discover gruesome human experiments. Obviously the scientist Dr. Friedman must be stopped, but that certainly won't be easy with his army of genetically engineered monsters. And now that he is trying to harness the power of the demon realm, he may be unstoppable. Dr Friedman did however make one mistake: you never kidnap the girlfriend of an uber ninja.

Thoughts: >

Hmm... odd things to say about this one. This anime is loosely based off of the video game franchise of the same name. I know Ryu you say, so where's Kasumi? Hold on there cowboy, you're way ahead of yourself. Ninja Gaiden started out as an Acadia game brawler where a Ninja just randomly comes to the United States to beat the crap out of this gang/cult while on vacation. When that got ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, it sort of evolved to this strange game where these Ninja fight these demons with this special sword - main ninja being Ryu of course. Ryu goes on to fight demons, more demons, and eventually even aliens. It wasn't until years later that Ryu made a random appearance in the Techmo game Dead or Alive - possibly being the only character without gigantic boobs of some sort. So anyway this anime goes back to the original NES game line - somewhere around Ninja Gaiden II.

So first of all this anime is about 50 minutes ling. 20-30 minutes of it is 'blah blah blah' story that makes no sense. Well I shouldn't say that, there's a story, but I don't think we ever see enough of it to make sense of it. Robert is this guy who used to be in the army but apparently runs a newspaper along with two other cohorts. Ryu is a simple man who runs a "Japanese Shop" in the city, along with this girl Irene. So there's this evil scientist, a bit of plot unveiling, then everyone joins in to assault the secret research laboratory.

The story is not put together very well. It is obvious that the intent of this anime was to capitalize off the game and make an action (horror) type anime. The characters are poorly developed but seem to be put in situations where we're supposed to care about what happens to them. Unfortunately that doesn't work because we don't get the time to get attached to them. Likewise there's a slight plot twist, but sadly there isn't really enough plot to twist.

Ryu, who is the main character; is actually quite unlikeable. He seems rather emotionless, like one of those "I only live to fight" sort of characters. Then there is Irene, the girl who is hopelessly devoted to Ryu for no apparent reason. "I'll always be waiting... for the day you come back to me." No I'm serious, she actually says that. Anyway the anime sort of plays it self out in the action based gore fest that was common in many titles back in the 80's. Unfortunately Ninja Gaiden doesn't offer anything unique enough to make it stand out and it just seems dated.

Animation wise, it's actually not that bad. I mean sure the animation is dated, but it certainly did well for itself in a few sequences. Not as meticulous as big budget 80's anime, but quite well all the same. So in a nutshell I'd say avoid this anime. There really isn't much to see here that makes it stand out over other titles which are now remembered as classics of anime from the 80's.

Screen Caps: >