English Dub Season Review: Shinobi no Ittoki Season One

Overview:

After surviving an attack from the rival Kouga clan, Ittoki Sakuraba, an ordinary boy, discovers that he is the 19th heir of the Iga ninja. Ittoki learns to become an Iga clan ninja and joins the war between the Iga and Kouga clans.

Our Take:

I always get excited when I see an anime original get announced. When this was getting a dub I was eager to cover it because it was a somewhat unique premise. I wouldn’t say that ninjas are special to anime but modern ninjas who permeate all walks of life are. You have business ninjas, engineer ninjas, and of course, you have your typical ninjas. It’s not the most believable of scenarios, but it is still fun.

The voice acting for this was enjoyable, there was some overlap with VAs and characters but not too bad. Sometimes when you see what character a VA is playing you might think to yourself “Oh yeah that makes sense”. Ittoki is such a Howard Wang character that I wasn’t surprised in the least when I saw that he was playing him. The highlight of this series was Ian Sinclair though, I feel like I have been saying that a lot lately whenever he’s involved. I loved his portrayal of Tokisada mainly because it was so different from what type of character he usually voices. My only negative to say about his performance was that it was so good it made me wish Tokisada was the actual main character.

As far as animation goes, it was adequate. It didn’t do anything too crazy and I would say mostly played it safe. Which is fine, I didn’t have any complaints and when there were action scenes they were animated well and I enjoyed watching them.

Anime originals excite me for one big reason, a complete narrative. When you do an anime original you don’t have source material to fall back on and you don’t know if you will get another season. So, with no guarantees on more, they have to usually put out a complete narrative. Some get greenlit for another season early on but I would say Shinobi no Ittoki is complete. There is some room for more seasons but I would say all the threads are tied up by the end.

Shinobi no Ittoki is a solid anime that I enjoyed watching. It wasn’t the anime of the season and it didn’t blow me away. But I enjoyed watching it and it brings some uniqueness to a medium that could use a bit of that. If you’re looking for a fun anime to spend the weekend on that will actually give you a complete ending you could do a whole lot worse than this one.