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© SOLA ENTERTAINMENT/Sunghoo Park
I’ve been a longtime fan of Adult Swim’s revival of the Toonami block and most of its properties, but their track record with original anime not titled Space Dandy has been something of a mixed bag. miscellaneous. While I’m not as opposed to FLCL sequels as many people, they still leave a lot to be desired, and the same can be said for shows like Fena: Pirate Princess, which started out as just promises to end. finally creating a crater. Still, I’m always disappointed when I see new original anime projects being made, and I’m especially excited about this one because of one name: Sunghoo Park.
While most Shonen Jump fans will recognize his work as director for the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen, he also directed the film adaptation of God of High School, the film delivered a series of stunning and perfectly directed fight scenes across the board, all of which helped set the stage for a lot of his later work in Jujutsu Kaisen. More importantly for the purposes of this show (and mine), he’s the director of the criminally underrated Garo: Vanishing Line, which reimagined the dark tokusatsu series as equivalent to a High-energy Hollywood action film and easily one of the most enjoyable anime experiences of the late 2010s.
All of that was done while he was still working at Studio MAPPA, and he has since left the black hole of the MAPPA mine to found his own studio, E&H productions, with this series as one in its first major introductions. Visually, this is also a pretty impressive debut as no one knows how to direct a fight scene like Sunghoo Park, and his talent is on full display throughout this debut. All of the action is fast-paced and extremely flashy, with some pretty impressive-looking animation and equally impressive cinematography, combined with a level of brutality and over-the-top violence that has feels on par with a ’90s anime OVA. All of that comes together to give the film a real sense of cinematic sophistication and energy, not unlike the action genre has the high octane it celebrates and that’s why I’m here.
On the other hand, I was a bit cold towards the story as there wasn’t too much to enjoy with this premiere. We follow a man named Joe Logan, who is living quietly with his family in the countryside until they are killed by a group of mysterious ninjas equipped with advanced technology, and he is ready to go. on the path of revenge. Even without knowing the premise of the show, it’s pretty obvious that his wife and son are doomed from the moment they appear on screen, and the fact that we don’t even hear their names until after they die doesn’t help either, making the cliche revenge movie here feel heavy and shallow.
At least it provides a pretty good sense of mystery, since we know nothing about the group that attacked Joe’s family or why. For that matter, we don’t even know anything about Joe himself, as he and his wife seem very aware that someone is after them; the end of the episode reveals that they used technology to hide their true faces from both the suitors and the audience, so it’s very possible that Joe Logan isn’t even his real name. It’s enough to keep me curious, so hopefully the plot will have more substance in the upcoming episodes, or at least, enough to not feel distracting. Story concerns aside, I had a good time with this launch and it’s almost exactly what I signed up for, so if it can deliver some action If it’s high quality without overindulging in the obligatory revenge movie tropes, this series could make for quite the fun ride.
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Ninja Kamui airs on Adult Swim and streams on Max.