English Dub Review: Ninja Kamui Season One

Despite the ever encroaching demise of Cable TV creeping ever over closer, Toonami still insists on making new stuff in the grand hopes of bringing us a better cartoon show. This time, they decided to bring in rising animation star Sunghoo Park, best known for his directing of the anime for The God of High School and the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen, the latter of which put that anime on the global map. With this hot name in employ, work began on what would eventually become Ninja Kamui, the tale of a man who seeks vengeance against those in his former life for destroying his current one. Yeah, you can definitely detect some John Wick influence in it, but that’s very much bound up in its own ideas. Not necessarily original ideas, but ideas they’ve made their own, all mixed together with Sunghoo Park’s signature badass animation style and an actually serviceable mixture of hand drawn and CG animation. But does that add up to an adequate or serviceable series to add to Toonami’s catalog of original shows? Well, let’s take a brief look back at the show’s thirteen episodes and find out to be sure. Boy will we be sure.

The story of Ninja Kamui starts pretty strong and pretty simple, with a man, later revealed to be the former ninja Higan, having himself and his family killed by technologically advanced ninjas, only to reveal that not only has he survived, but he and his wife were targeted because they were former ninjas themselves. And thus begins a journey of one man’s vengeance to take down the entire clan that killed his wife, assisted by a cop on the verge of retirement and is sassy assistant. You can definitely feel the underdog aspect of the story as Higan has to work with what little special skills he has to take on the organization, which has joined forces with an all consuming tech company. But around the middle point, things take a shift. A few key ninjas are singled out as the major threats, one of which being revealed to be a secret ally, another being a FORMER ally, and yet another basically falling into the background until near the end, along with the introduction of CGI powersuits called Kosugi that mostly all blend together aside from Higan’s whose is red to show he is the main character.

While Ninja Kamui does let the edginess overtake it at times, the show does end up more or less working well enough once all is said and done. I can’t say it was the most engaging show I’ve seen this past calendar year, but it ended up with a solid conclusion and a fun enough time watching people say the word “ninja” over and over in hopes that we’ll somehow take it seriously. It definitely feels like a throwback to the grittier and more ultraviolet anime of the 90’s, which plays to its advantage more often than not, but this doesn’t stop from having some rather melodramatic moments that don’t always land, even in the fun ways. But I can’t say I regret watching it, let alone getting to discuss it for the latter half of its episodes, so I suppose that adds up to a totally acceptable viewing experience. Hopefully this is a good sign for whatever Sunghoo Park plans to do in the future, and a glimmer of hope that the current iteration of Toonami still has a solid number of hits left to its name in these days of precariousness in legacy TV media. And if not, then this is certainly a fine note to go out on, just don’t commit seppuku over it.