To the best of my knowledge, the
whole idea behind ninja (the plural of which I’m pretty sure is “ninja,” in the
same way that the plural of “moose” is “moose”) is that you don’t see
them. They are “invisible” assassins,
skilled in the arts of stealth, camouflage, and murder. But what do I know? I’m gaijin. If you were growing up in America in the
Eighties, however, ninja were highly visible, at least in pop culture. There were ninja comic books (Grendel, Whisper, et al), magazines (Ninja,
Ninja Combat, and Spirit Of Ninja, among many others),
television series (The Master,
natch), and films too numerous to mention.
My friends and I looked up to the
martial skills of Sho Kosugi in Pray For
Death as much as we lusted after Lucinda Dickey in Ninja III: The Domination (which also featured Kosugi, though even
with his guy-liner, he could just never attract us in the same way), and we
even wrote a “screenplay” (yes, that really should be in quotes) for a ninja
movie we were going to shoot on video.
Thankfully, it never came to fruition, but that didn’t stop us from
buying cheap-ass shuriken and darts and whipping them recklessly at any object
made out of wood that would stand still long enough to let us. We all dreamed of owning our very own ninja
uniform (the best ads for these, in my opinion, came from a company called
Asian World Of Martial Arts, Inc), but they were simply out of our (more
specifically our parents’) price range, and we were too uninventive and too unresourceful
to just make our own (then; today I could probably whip up a kickass ninja
outfit in minutes, were I of a mind to, and no, I’m not of a mind to). But I would wager we derived more pleasure
from simply fantasizing about being ninja than most actual ninja ever got from being
ninja. I would also wager that any
self-respecting ninja reading this review (ha!) would be more than happy to
take that bet.
A giant and a lady in a red dress (pro
wrestler Mayumi Ozaki) unceremoniously (and violently) kill several
yakuza. Okay. Shinobu Nindo (Etsuko Shinkoda), daughter of
prominent yakuza boss Takeo (Ikkô
Furuya), has a dream wherein she is saved from villains by the three Ninja
Defenders: Suzuka Hatai (Matsui Tetsuya),
Jun Saruwatari (Cutey
Suzuki, significantly also a pro wrestler), and their leader Ryu Momoji (Kenji Otsuki). Ryu hands Shinobu a dragon bell, which will
glow and ring when she’s in danger to bring the Ninja Defenders to her
aid. Meanwhile, Gô Ranjuji (Rikiya Yasuoka),
begins his play to take over the yakuza’s rackets for the entire Kanto
region. But there’s something odd about
him and his cohorts (y’know, the giant and the lady).
The Ninja Dragon (aka Legend
Of The Shadowy Ninja: The Ninja Dragon aka Kûsô-kagaku Ninkyô-den: Gokudô Ninja Dosuryô) is the first (in
fact, the only) live-action feature directed by manga artist/author
extraordinaire Gô
Nagai. For my money, Nagai ranks up
there with the best of the talents in manga/anime, and though he rarely gets
the sort of accolades afforded to Miyazaki and Tezuka (at least not popularly
in this country), I like to think he is just as influential as either (and if
that statement doesn’t get me in trouble, nothing will). As I seem to so very often state, I am by no
means an expert on the life and works of Nagai, but his oeuvre is singular in how
groundbreaking it is (at least to me).
One of his most popular creations, Cutie
Honey, concerns a girl who can transform into a variety of take-charge
women, the process for which involves her becoming stark raving nude for a few
moments at a time. Or take Kekkô Kamen, about a superheroine who
doesn’t wear a stitch of clothing aside from her mask and all the
sadomasochistic misadventures she gets into.
Or Mazinger Z (initially known
in the United States as one of the Shogun
Warriors line of toys from Mattel under the name Mazinga and slightly later as the titular anime character Tranzor Z) which standardized the
template for damn near every Super Robot/Mecha show to follow straight on to
today.
Nagai loves pushing the
boundaries of acceptability. He loves
delving into transgressive material, but even at his most outrageous, his work
(what I’ve seen) is always entertaining.
Despite his sticking to certain generic contrivances, there is always
something onscreen which must be beheld, not simply looked at. This film is no different. It is extremely lean in the story
department. The characterizations are
non-existent. But there’s a building up
of weirdness beginning from the very first scenes, and once the inevitable
showdown hits, Nagai removes all the stops (or more precisely all the stops he
could afford to remove) and releases the hounds, so to speak.
Like a great many of Nagai’s narratives,
this film deals with prophecies and fate.
Characters are chosen to be leaders or warriors by forces beyond their
control. So Shinobu is given the dragon
bell, a talisman that marks her as special, someone whose destiny insists that
she be protected over others. By that
same token, Shinobu just wants to be a young girl. She wants to experiment with smoking, go
shopping, ogle boys, and so forth. It’s
the struggle between these two forces (service to a higher power on one side,
personal satisfaction on the other) that has driven stories like this one for
decades. It is also a very Japanese
idea. Their culture (or my understanding
of it) is built on an idea of honor in service to a group harmony which is
supposed to provide a person’s ultimate satisfaction. To give one’s all to their employer is
tantamount to the attainment of (private) happiness. Ryu and the Ninja Defenders embody this facet
of selflessness for a common good. Conversely,
Shinobu is taken out of her complacent comfort zone, and she has to deal with
what that does to her life.
Unfortunately, she never truly grows as a character in the film. Her arc is hinted at, but it is never
explicitly depicted, and this is an aspect shared across the board in this
film.
The film has other ideas that are
teased; themes like maturity, personal responsibility, and so on, but none of
them are developed. They are tinsel on a
Christmas tree and little more. In fact,
The Ninja Dragon is strictly
surface-level on the whole. It is a pure
entertainment, since it has absolutely no other purpose whatsoever. But on that level of amusement it modestly succeeds. Despite the broad humor seemingly endemic to most
Asian genre films (and whatever you do, do not watch this film with the English
dub on, as it will actually make you dumber, though I’m sure, being good little
cinephiles, you would never dream of watching this in anything other than the
subtitled version), I never found myself bored.
Needless to say, I was never elevated, either, and though I don’t think
this is one of Nagai’s best products, it also isn’t wholly offensive. This is a decent time-waster, and sometimes
that’s all you need.
MVT: Nagai wins the MVT
spot. This is his baby, and it bears his
stamp all over it. That it doesn’t reach
the heights of some of his other work is most likely a result of the obviously
tiny budget of the piece. But the film
still has its share of the bizarre and the quirks on which Nagai built his
reputation.
Make Or Break: The Make for
me is the “spontaneous” pro-wrestling-style melee that breaks out between Suzuki
and Ozaki. It’s so out of left field
while still being enjoyable and just a little sleazy, you can’t not like it.
Score: 6.25/10
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