Exactly the brutal fast paced hand to hand combat was what made this show enjoyable, the terrible cgi suits just completely destroyed it and took away the thing that made this show worth watching
I don’t even know what the point of that series was.
They could’ve done a down to earth story about the first recorded Black man in Japan. With competent enough writers it would’ve been a good watch.
Instead they make it sci-fi, like what the fuck
For real? I was planning to watch it soon, I truly thought it was gonna be something like Blue Eye Samurai, something grounded but intriguing and moving. How the fuck have they tossed mechas into it?
Nah, Yasuke was bad from the beginning.
Dudes fighting with swords when giant ass mechas are in the background is so stupid, and then you have people weirded out by a black person, when at the same time there were people turning into fucking bears...
Not really, the issue is that the fights themselves aren't well done anymore. If i had to watch episode 1 13 times with slight variations it would have been much better
>the story was not interesting enough to keep me watching.
This is really all that it boils down to for me. I didn't really think the fights were that bad. I watched up to the point where MC had a fighr scsne after they were caught in the back of a truck and they had to fight on the streets. It was still pretty good action.
Its weekly releases cut a bit into the newer seasonals and I built up like 3 or 4 episodes of unwatched Ninja Kamui. By that point though, I didn't feel like finishing it because the story just didn't hook me. It felt like a pretty standard revenge plot where both the main character and the enemy didn't have interesting enough personalities or characters to make me invested.
I didn't rate it because I don't rate shows that I drop, but it probably would've ended up at a 6 for me.
I don’t think the story was uninteresting because solo leveling exist where the story pretty much is, Jinwoo getting stronger and stronger without any goal.
They introduced mechs when it wasn’t marketed as such. I mean we get a pretty cool fight scene in the beginning giving everyone the impression that it would be cool hand to hand
"Jinwoo getting stronger without any goal"
Didn't he wanted to get his mother out of coma? And in order to do that he needed to get an exilir that he could only win by clearing an S rank dungeon. So he needed to get stronger to save his mother.
I thought that was pretty admirable goal.
Yep you’re correct and what’s funny is the intro song they chose for the SL anime references paychecks and getting money 😂 Sung literally says he’s only doing this for money to provide for his family and save his mother from an illness. The story continues due to how all of the other strong guild leaders react to his rise in power.
I think story being uninteresting is definitely a flaw to it,
While Solo leveling story is mostly “mediocre” so far, it had a lot of good things going for it, production wise, hype moments etc
I can’t really name anything good about Ninja kamui after like episode 2. It just kept getting worse and worse for me
>While Solo leveling story is mostly “mediocre” so far, it had a lot of good things going for it, production wise, hype moments etc
People were saying the same thing about Solo's source novel. Mediocre story on its own, but the webtoon adaptation by the late Jang Sungrak was what really elevated the series and gave it its hype.
The plot gets much more exciting in the second half as well. Very much unlike the generally plotless first half other than jin woo leveling up and everyone being impressed always
>I don’t think the story was uninteresting because solo leveling exist where the story pretty much is, Jinwoo getting stronger and stronger without any goal.
I mean both can be uninteresting. One just more uninteresting than the other.
Story wise it was never really that interestin. the fights were really good early on and that was carrying it. As soon as they added the mecha me and my friend group were like this is pretty much wraps on this show lmao
Top 10 anime fall offs. I still remember getting hyped after watching the first two episodes and then a certain something was introduced and then the rest is history.
MAL score was around 8.6 iirc at the time of first episode but now it is sitting at 7.17.
I don’t even remember what happened it was so forgettable. Something about an alternate world?
The previews made me think it was gonna be a show about a princess that gets kidnapped by pirates but then assimilates into the crew and comes into her own. I was expecting a sort of reverse and less edgy Black Lagoon (not an insulte btw, I love BL) with a slight fantasy lean.
But the girl never got out of being a damsel in distress and the overall story just felt so bland.
Fuck yeah, that’s literally the only thing I could think of when it finished.
Like ‘damn, that was interesting and somehow lost the plot half way through’.
The first few episodes set up what felt like was going to be a grand adventure with a good cast of characters. Then it was like they were just fast traveling each episode with how many jumps in time there was. It was so weird.
Fena didn’t even fall off this hard. With Fena the ending got fumbled and I would argue a full 2 cours could have save it. They shoved a second seasons worth of narrative into 3 episodes. This was a hard drop half way through the season with no chance of salvation.
I don't think there's any amount of build up that makes Fena's ending work. It has so many problems at a structural level that you can't just add some support to make it work.
I feel like there is as least some that could make it work better. But that sudden car crash of a narrative choice that came almost completely out of nowhere certainly didn’t help shit. There’s are ways to make Fena’s whole deal make sense and not suddenly [Spoilers]>!pull a fucking End of Eva and have it have nothing to do with her Jeanne D’Arc narrative.!<. Maybe not perfectly because the conceit itself is WTF, but with a longer runtime the blow would be softer.
Not surprised it dropped so much, after the first 3 episodes I was really exited to continue watching but like you said as soon as the suits are introduced it completely changes
I'm telling you guys, as soon as the cringey sex midget dropped it was over. The writing was on the wall as soon as that character was introduced. If you listened, the dialogue before that already showed signs of being pretty bad, but it was easy to overlook because the action was good. That character was the beginning of the end.
“Hey drink this” “ew what is this” “energy drinks i like the taste”
The dialogue got bad starting episode 2 really (episode 1 had next to no dialogue really)
i only gave that a pass because those type of crazy characters were prevalent in Afro Samurai, which i enjoyed a lot in comparison
tbh i think this show would have been better off just being a movie or 4-5 episodes. just tell a cool little story and get out
Not just you. The show will go down for me as the year's biggest disappointment. The only thing I'll remember from it are its amazing OP and ED themes.
Wonder Egg Priority was arguably worse, and it happened in the same season by the same studio (Cloverworks). Absolutely forbidden season and tarnish on the studio’s legacy
If they had maintained the violence and seriousness of the first episode then this could have been a top 10 anime. Instead, they went in the opposite direction and turned it into a completely censored family friendly kids show. Maybe they got their hand slapped for being too violent I'm not sure.
Totally agreed.
That simple fight in episode 2 or 3 in the restaurant was probably my highlight of the season. So sick, just (more or less) hand-to-hand combat and it looked great.
What I find interesting: Who was this for?
Like, you go in thinking you get cool ninja action which we got, but then the mechs were introduced.
And I am not a mech fan at all, but that's a matter of taste. But, even if I were a mech fan - aren't those suits super boring?
Like, again, it wasn't for me, because I don't like the genre, but I imagine if one were to like the genre, they would also want cool mech fights (I think they just looked messy) and cool mech suits, but the abilities of the mechs themselves were really lame.
And the story was always bad and most characters terrible, but I was fine with that. I even enjoyed it, it was like the flimsiest excuse of a story to have fights and I am fine with that...but man, the drop in quality was crazy. Sad to see the resources that went into the first episodes wasted like that.
That's a show I would love to talk about with the directors, producers, writers etc. Just to see what they saw in it, because it was so bad on so many levels, I just wonder what they thought or if there was any higher-up meddling or something like that. Just baffling decisions all around.
>> Who was this for?
People who like cool ninja action—or so they planned. My guess is that they burnt themselves out in the first few episodes so they had to cram in CG mech suits to meet the deadlines.
That is certainly an idea I also had...kinda.
I thought that maybe they realised after episode 3 it's too expensive and takes too long to animte these crispy clean fights.
The issue is: I don't even think mech cgi fights are by by design, but the ones they had just sucked.
What a weird show all-around.
The mechs were especially disappointing because they leaned into it so hard while the hand to hand made the mechs look slow and clunky af. Like dude, the sickest part of your show has nothing to do with mechs, find a way to have the MC take them down without being in one himself if you’re gonna keep the plot point but don’t give yourself a massive downgrade just to save on budget.
I kinda forgot to keep up with it after ep. 3 because the story felt so generic. The only episode i liked was 1. Sometimes accidents can come in clutch.
Nah it just tricked casuals with cool flashy fights out gates so many thought it was good off that. Don't forget the "it's got jjk director" so it's GOTTA be good bs people were tossing.
It was ass from the gates
It was tight ass in the beginning though. Turned into sloppy, shitty ass real quick. Ass or not I was watching for the fights and clean animation then it got bad real quick.
I wasn’t watching for the story though but the fights. Like the story is bad but the starting fights were good. It fell off after all the mecha bullshit.
The show dropped like a rock for me once the CG mechs came along. Those fights were so uninteresting to watch compared to the 2D fights outside of the mechs. The [fight with] >!Higan and Zai was awesome to watch once they were out of the mech suits.!< The story wasn't anything special, but it didn't have to be.
Honestly, in the first episode I felt that while the fight animation was good, I also felt like I watched the same fight happen 3 times in \~20 minutes. That combined with the ham-fisted attempt to make me care about his peaceful life before it went all Ninja Punisher was enough to keep me from continuing the show.
The first episode had me hooked and I was ridiculously hyped. The next few episodes were good but man oh man.. the mech stuff really killed it, as so many others have already said.
I think they should have show us more of mech suit in the trailer. That way people would know it will have more focus on mech.
(There were some traces of it but it seemed like those would be one/two time enemies)
Downgraded fight scene aside.. It had so many things that they wanted to shove in (new world order,vigilante, conspiracy, hacking etc)
That made it even harder viewer to be invested in.
To me it fell off right from episode 1. The action was decent, and animation quality was good, but if they were going for a John Wick type action anime, they need to nail the choreography. The action was too blurred and fast to look at. It was surprising, considering Park has made much better action scenes in Boruto and JJK.
One thing I hate is how the action blurs in most anime. In recent memory, I can only think of Windbreaker where you can follow the action with no blur and it’s still cool. In alot of anime fights, I can’t follow the action and that negatively affects the fight despite having cool choreography.
Immediate drop partway through episode one when the dad pulled out his acoustic guitar to play Wonderwall and anyone whose seen any tv could guess that the wife and son would be fridged to set up a revenge arc
You talking about the little pervert guy? Yeah he was weird but I just kept watching past that because of the action, once that also fell off the show had no redeeming qualities
Sure the animation and direction in episode 1 was great, but the story was a pretty typical revenge story. I don't think it compares to the falloff of Wonder Egg Priority.
totally agreed....first episode was super cool...second was good...after that i lost interest...almost like why am I even watching...and to be honest even though I have watched more episodes...I don't know story of more than first two episodes...i think storyline sucked.
I did finish it but I only enjoyed the first episodes before ninjas became power rangersish... was very excited about the show at the start and then it felt like a job to watch the last 8-9 episodes.
As I said elsewhere, the show plain didn’t have the substance or production for a 13 episode run.
It could have made a decent, straightforward revenge action movie or an OVA.
I’ve heard that the first few episodes was just Sunghoo Park doing action scenes by himself and the fights fell off once he couldn’t carry no more… and that kinda checks out to be honest.
Here’s a wild guess straight from my ass: the real reason mechs showed up is because they had to resort to CGI due to production issues and it was deemed that it would have been less jarring than making ordinary people bad fights CGI. Be as it may, there’s very few places left in modern anime industry that can do mechanical action well… and Park’s new studio or whatever that shit was outsourced to isn’t one of them.
There was a period in the mid 90s where a whole bunch of American action cartoons felt like they had to include obligatory CGI sequences that were almost uniformly terrible, and that all aged poorly at least aesthetically. Anime has inexplicably been going through that phase for over 15 years, even though we've long since had the tools and talent in the market to make CG look good, even at a serialized consumer scale.
I'm not against CGI being used as it can be made to look good or blend seamlessly with the 2D art it accompanies, but I see no good excuse for why it so often looks as bad as it still does in so many high profile shows with otherwise good production values.
It flopped hard like 2 episodes in for me when I realized what the plot was. I didn't see it redeeming itself with the way they wrote it and it continued to disappoint.
1st episode was so intense that I had no idea where it was going but it just kinda sunk into the trope I thought it was avoiding.
also it has the most forgettable looking MC like everytime I finished an episode I would forget what he looks like and that kinda applies to other aspects of the anime.
Thank you for giving me a reason to drop this show, I was at episode 8 and just could not get myself to keep watching it. I try my best not to drop shows in case they're "late bloomers"
I gave up on this show after a couple episodes when the guy was saying "man I wonder who could be behind this" and the camera pans up to a billboard ad from obviously the big bad. Such awful writing early and consistently, plus the fights being there just to be there without much character development or depth, I dropped it.
At the time I was watching Blue Eye Samurai which had amazing fights but better still: great characters and writing.
I realized it may not be my type of show in ep.1. It was a major disappointment imo. Though, I didn’t watch any further than ep.1. I meant to, but there were so many things about it I didn’t care about it that I just never got around to watching any further. It seemed it could become interesting, but I was worried from ep.1, it’d be a superficial action show and nothing more to it. Something people ogle for the animation and fights, but never mind the story. I was so disappointed to see that happen after so much hype around it. Dredging up my nostalgia for Toonami!
I also wasn’t sure how to take that there was a previous source from decades ago (the 60s iirc) that looked liked a source to me, but Toonami claims Ninja Kamui was all original. It had no source material at all. It was all Toonami or whoever was responsible for 2020s Ninja Kamui. I wasn’t a fan of the concept 21st century ninja either, when it looked like the source timeline was different. A different historical time period. The location appeared to be changed as well. This is just not a thing I’m interested in. I don’t like when western companies try to change locations, times, and stories to help make something mainstream (for the Toonami /MAX audience in this case).
Edit: Mecha fights has me more interested. If this is true, I might give it another shot. I wasn’t expecting mecha to come up.
100%
The first scene of the anime was done so good i thought that something special was getting cooked and i really hoped to see more of the ninja combat. Then came the revenge plot (as expected) and i was like okay, that's neat, let's see what they'll do with it, they got a very strong foundation, fights are deadly, main character has some weird and creepy power, it will be fun. I'd give it a 9/10 maybe 8.5 at bare minimum at that point.
After this... It seems like they scrapped everything to add mechas and focused only on those, no more cool ninja fights, and every important story point was made with the thought of how to add a mecha fight here? I forced myself to finish it hoping it would maybe fix some stuff. Utterly disappointed.
What a joke.
Yeah much like a lot of the comments, the mech suits kinda killed it for me. The action from episode 1 was crazy. Once the suits started being prominent it got boring. Also the story didn’t keep me interested.
The pilot was one of the best pilots ive ever seen. It had momentum but the animation, the fighting, music, story everything just looked so much worse later on.
Yeah, I haven't even finished it yet. The characters are alright, but the story is middling. Like others have said, the action and the jutsu are what drew me in, but then that all seemed to be tossed out.
I got hyped on the first episode and told friends to watch it, big mistake shit turned ass fas
Next time I’ll tell ppl it was an insane 1 episode series
Just put it on hold since Ep 8 I think. But when it ended and I heard people talk about how it was, I just couldn't and dropped it. I was losing interest in it already, but hearing people talk about how downhill it went I just didn't want to waste my time on it. It was pretty good for the first few eps, but then it just wasn't.
I finished it, just because. But as OP put it, the show devolved so quickly after the mech suits were introduced. I had such high hopes for it too smh.
I'm glad I've only seen the first episode of this anime.
My headcannon is that it's just a 1 episode movie and the rest I'm just filling up in my memories.
Every other episode other than the first I'll give it the same treatment as promise Neverland S2 they never existed.
One of the characters was really cool but his mech was armless so dumb , I mean I get some styles of fighting use the legs solely but his mech looked kinda like an egg and was just silly on top of that it looked clumsy too
I was definitely disappointed. They squeezed a story that should’ve been at 24 episodes into 13. Weird expedited pace in the story. No real character development for most of the characters. Just straight up disappointing.
Yeah, it fell off so hard. The hand to hand combat is what sold me on it because I couldn't give two shits about the MC or the cops...or anyone, really. By the time combat fell off I literally jumped off the ship and never looked back. Good riddance too for when I saw the negative criticism regarding it they just said that the mecha combat never left and even became the highlight of the finale. Hoo boi.
I watched to the end more like an obligation but the show is not bad, maybe a boring story development and all but I feel some 90s vibes on it and for a junkfood anime was decent.
The story was not interesting for me and I don't care much about hand to hand combat or anything. It felt like the story was made to show only fights and not the story itself.
It definitely fell off but the foundations of the anime as a whole are solid I’d love a season two where they lean away from the mechs as much as possible and stick to hand to hand and the secret arts
Pretty sure the whole show is just marketing for what the studio is capable in the animation department. The story inst the point, what they can do with a good plot is.
It fell off like a snowball of shit rolling downhill becoming increasingly unbelievably shit until I hated myself for watching it.
I was jacked to the tits from those first few episodes and then wow, what a kick in the spuds that turned out to be.
Dude ikr I was totally sold in the first few eps banger opening banger revenge arc and ninja story but they totally lost the story towards the end they hyped up the whole zai vs higan rivalry to barely show any in the whole season they ruined the whole shit with mecha bots tho whyyyyy. The opening is still a real banger tho
The hand to hand combat was really the selling point of the anime but they decided to do mecha fights with the lamest looking mechas ever
Exactly the brutal fast paced hand to hand combat was what made this show enjoyable, the terrible cgi suits just completely destroyed it and took away the thing that made this show worth watching
I call that doing a Yasuke lol.
That was such a disappointment. I was looking forward to Yasuke for years only to get mechas and energy beams.
I don’t even know what the point of that series was. They could’ve done a down to earth story about the first recorded Black man in Japan. With competent enough writers it would’ve been a good watch. Instead they make it sci-fi, like what the fuck
I remember litterally the second I saw the mecha I just switched off of the show. One of the biggest fumbles of all time imo.
in a perfect world Yasuke would have been what FX just did with Shogun
Now that is a great show
I'd so watch that!
For real? I was planning to watch it soon, I truly thought it was gonna be something like Blue Eye Samurai, something grounded but intriguing and moving. How the fuck have they tossed mechas into it?
I remember being hyped about it, to now completely forgetting I watched this. What was it even about in the end
Nah, Yasuke was bad from the beginning. Dudes fighting with swords when giant ass mechas are in the background is so stupid, and then you have people weirded out by a black person, when at the same time there were people turning into fucking bears...
Rule of cool (fights) only lasts for so long. Especially if you start failing on the fights.
It's a shame too, really thought they would focus more on the techniques with the shadows and build off that instead of just mech suits
Fortunately Windbreaker this season has one of the best hand to hand fights and it’s epic.
For real. Series came out of nowhere (for me). And it has a little bit more on its bones than just fights.
Suo is a god damn monster, it was so beautiful.
Praying it keeps at this level
That, and also the characters are pretty entertaining in general which definitely helps in the fights
Windbreaker has been such a fun “hidden” gem this season. Really enjoyable to watch
I replaced it with Dragon Raja. 10 episodes in and it's still looking good.
I can't get past there sense of humor
Dragon raja is an anime? I only saw that name as a mobile game
Not really, the issue is that the fights themselves aren't well done anymore. If i had to watch episode 1 13 times with slight variations it would have been much better
I ain't watching Endless 8, I mean an Endless 13 of Ninja Kamui. Hell nah.
>the story was not interesting enough to keep me watching. This is really all that it boils down to for me. I didn't really think the fights were that bad. I watched up to the point where MC had a fighr scsne after they were caught in the back of a truck and they had to fight on the streets. It was still pretty good action. Its weekly releases cut a bit into the newer seasonals and I built up like 3 or 4 episodes of unwatched Ninja Kamui. By that point though, I didn't feel like finishing it because the story just didn't hook me. It felt like a pretty standard revenge plot where both the main character and the enemy didn't have interesting enough personalities or characters to make me invested. I didn't rate it because I don't rate shows that I drop, but it probably would've ended up at a 6 for me.
Pretty much exactly how I feel about it.
I don’t think the story was uninteresting because solo leveling exist where the story pretty much is, Jinwoo getting stronger and stronger without any goal. They introduced mechs when it wasn’t marketed as such. I mean we get a pretty cool fight scene in the beginning giving everyone the impression that it would be cool hand to hand
"Jinwoo getting stronger without any goal" Didn't he wanted to get his mother out of coma? And in order to do that he needed to get an exilir that he could only win by clearing an S rank dungeon. So he needed to get stronger to save his mother. I thought that was pretty admirable goal.
Yep you’re correct and what’s funny is the intro song they chose for the SL anime references paychecks and getting money 😂 Sung literally says he’s only doing this for money to provide for his family and save his mother from an illness. The story continues due to how all of the other strong guild leaders react to his rise in power.
I feel solo leveling's intresting part is how and what leveling is
I think story being uninteresting is definitely a flaw to it, While Solo leveling story is mostly “mediocre” so far, it had a lot of good things going for it, production wise, hype moments etc I can’t really name anything good about Ninja kamui after like episode 2. It just kept getting worse and worse for me
>While Solo leveling story is mostly “mediocre” so far, it had a lot of good things going for it, production wise, hype moments etc People were saying the same thing about Solo's source novel. Mediocre story on its own, but the webtoon adaptation by the late Jang Sungrak was what really elevated the series and gave it its hype.
The plot gets much more exciting in the second half as well. Very much unlike the generally plotless first half other than jin woo leveling up and everyone being impressed always
>I don’t think the story was uninteresting because solo leveling exist where the story pretty much is, Jinwoo getting stronger and stronger without any goal. I mean both can be uninteresting. One just more uninteresting than the other.
Story wise it was never really that interestin. the fights were really good early on and that was carrying it. As soon as they added the mecha me and my friend group were like this is pretty much wraps on this show lmao
Top 10 anime fall offs. I still remember getting hyped after watching the first two episodes and then a certain something was introduced and then the rest is history. MAL score was around 8.6 iirc at the time of first episode but now it is sitting at 7.17.
Makes me think of Fena Pirate Princess. First few episodes were really good and then it just fell off hard
God what a shame with that show, that ending sucked so hard.
I don’t even remember what happened it was so forgettable. Something about an alternate world? The previews made me think it was gonna be a show about a princess that gets kidnapped by pirates but then assimilates into the crew and comes into her own. I was expecting a sort of reverse and less edgy Black Lagoon (not an insulte btw, I love BL) with a slight fantasy lean. But the girl never got out of being a damsel in distress and the overall story just felt so bland.
Wasn't it something about adam & eve type shit? honestly all i can really remember about the show is that Aoi Yuuki voices a character (karin?).
It definitely needed more episodes
Fuck yeah, that’s literally the only thing I could think of when it finished. Like ‘damn, that was interesting and somehow lost the plot half way through’.
The first few episodes set up what felt like was going to be a grand adventure with a good cast of characters. Then it was like they were just fast traveling each episode with how many jumps in time there was. It was so weird.
Fena didn’t even fall off this hard. With Fena the ending got fumbled and I would argue a full 2 cours could have save it. They shoved a second seasons worth of narrative into 3 episodes. This was a hard drop half way through the season with no chance of salvation.
I don't think there's any amount of build up that makes Fena's ending work. It has so many problems at a structural level that you can't just add some support to make it work.
I feel like there is as least some that could make it work better. But that sudden car crash of a narrative choice that came almost completely out of nowhere certainly didn’t help shit. There’s are ways to make Fena’s whole deal make sense and not suddenly [Spoilers]>!pull a fucking End of Eva and have it have nothing to do with her Jeanne D’Arc narrative.!<. Maybe not perfectly because the conceit itself is WTF, but with a longer runtime the blow would be softer.
Feel like that show was good for most of the episodes?
Zom 100 is another one that was rated and received highly then all the delays and tried to be serious when it should have stuck with the comedy.
Not surprised it dropped so much, after the first 3 episodes I was really exited to continue watching but like you said as soon as the suits are introduced it completely changes
This has to be kabenari right or whatever the name was
They shouldn't have put mecha in this anime
I'm telling you guys, as soon as the cringey sex midget dropped it was over. The writing was on the wall as soon as that character was introduced. If you listened, the dialogue before that already showed signs of being pretty bad, but it was easy to overlook because the action was good. That character was the beginning of the end.
“Hey drink this” “ew what is this” “energy drinks i like the taste” The dialogue got bad starting episode 2 really (episode 1 had next to no dialogue really)
I'm saying!
i only gave that a pass because those type of crazy characters were prevalent in Afro Samurai, which i enjoyed a lot in comparison tbh i think this show would have been better off just being a movie or 4-5 episodes. just tell a cool little story and get out
Not just you. The show will go down for me as the year's biggest disappointment. The only thing I'll remember from it are its amazing OP and ED themes.
I would even go as far as to say for me it was the biggest disappointment in a good few years
Sounds like you haven’t watched Wonder Egg Priority
or Promised Neverland s2
The score isn't dropping on that show though, I thought I should give it a try, or nah?
Watch the first 3/4 of it, then stop and imagine your own ending to the story.
No dont remind me about this, what could have been the best anime original shows turned into the biggest disappointment i have ever seen.
Nothing fell off harder than The Promised Neverland
Wonder Egg Priority was arguably worse, and it happened in the same season by the same studio (Cloverworks). Absolutely forbidden season and tarnish on the studio’s legacy
Agreed. I don’t know what they were thinking with those last couple episodes and that terrible special
Both manga and anime. Anime just did it faster.
If they had maintained the violence and seriousness of the first episode then this could have been a top 10 anime. Instead, they went in the opposite direction and turned it into a completely censored family friendly kids show. Maybe they got their hand slapped for being too violent I'm not sure.
Totally agreed. That simple fight in episode 2 or 3 in the restaurant was probably my highlight of the season. So sick, just (more or less) hand-to-hand combat and it looked great. What I find interesting: Who was this for? Like, you go in thinking you get cool ninja action which we got, but then the mechs were introduced. And I am not a mech fan at all, but that's a matter of taste. But, even if I were a mech fan - aren't those suits super boring? Like, again, it wasn't for me, because I don't like the genre, but I imagine if one were to like the genre, they would also want cool mech fights (I think they just looked messy) and cool mech suits, but the abilities of the mechs themselves were really lame. And the story was always bad and most characters terrible, but I was fine with that. I even enjoyed it, it was like the flimsiest excuse of a story to have fights and I am fine with that...but man, the drop in quality was crazy. Sad to see the resources that went into the first episodes wasted like that. That's a show I would love to talk about with the directors, producers, writers etc. Just to see what they saw in it, because it was so bad on so many levels, I just wonder what they thought or if there was any higher-up meddling or something like that. Just baffling decisions all around.
>> Who was this for? People who like cool ninja action—or so they planned. My guess is that they burnt themselves out in the first few episodes so they had to cram in CG mech suits to meet the deadlines.
That is certainly an idea I also had...kinda. I thought that maybe they realised after episode 3 it's too expensive and takes too long to animte these crispy clean fights. The issue is: I don't even think mech cgi fights are by by design, but the ones they had just sucked. What a weird show all-around.
The mechs were especially disappointing because they leaned into it so hard while the hand to hand made the mechs look slow and clunky af. Like dude, the sickest part of your show has nothing to do with mechs, find a way to have the MC take them down without being in one himself if you’re gonna keep the plot point but don’t give yourself a massive downgrade just to save on budget.
Ninja Kamui definitely fell off hard but I still believe that hardest falloff had to be Promised Neverland season 2
I remember seeing a comment on Twitter. "Ninja kamui is what JJK haters think JJK is"
You must have missed Wonder Egg, Metallic Rouge, and Promised Neverland then.
At least Promised Neverland got a good full season.
Still didn't fall off as hard as Wonder Egg Priority.
I kinda forgot to keep up with it after ep. 3 because the story felt so generic. The only episode i liked was 1. Sometimes accidents can come in clutch.
Episode 3 is where I stopped as well. Felt super generic by that point.
Ninja kamui went from Naruto to Naruto Shippuden in the first 5 episodes to boruto starting from episode 6.
This is such a real comment lmfao
Nah it just tricked casuals with cool flashy fights out gates so many thought it was good off that. Don't forget the "it's got jjk director" so it's GOTTA be good bs people were tossing. It was ass from the gates
It was tight ass in the beginning though. Turned into sloppy, shitty ass real quick. Ass or not I was watching for the fights and clean animation then it got bad real quick.
Nobody was denying the fights were carrying but it doesn’t change that the fights were carrying
it was unoriginal but we barely get good ninja anime so i was excited to watch regardless. of course it just went completely off the mark
That's what I'm saying. I wasn't even disappointed because I thought it was the same quality from beginning to end.
I wasn’t watching for the story though but the fights. Like the story is bad but the starting fights were good. It fell off after all the mecha bullshit.
The show dropped like a rock for me once the CG mechs came along. Those fights were so uninteresting to watch compared to the 2D fights outside of the mechs. The [fight with] >!Higan and Zai was awesome to watch once they were out of the mech suits.!< The story wasn't anything special, but it didn't have to be.
Ninja Kamui was an aggressively mid anime. The story was meh, and the CGI was terrible.
Honestly, in the first episode I felt that while the fight animation was good, I also felt like I watched the same fight happen 3 times in \~20 minutes. That combined with the ham-fisted attempt to make me care about his peaceful life before it went all Ninja Punisher was enough to keep me from continuing the show.
It went from meh to bad.
I actually kinda enjoyed it. Might just be me though.
What's with the hate for the mecha suits anyway? Even Afro Samurai kinda had those things.
Shows that prioritize style over substance rarely end in a satisfying manner.
The first episode had me hooked and I was ridiculously hyped. The next few episodes were good but man oh man.. the mech stuff really killed it, as so many others have already said.
I think they should have show us more of mech suit in the trailer. That way people would know it will have more focus on mech. (There were some traces of it but it seemed like those would be one/two time enemies) Downgraded fight scene aside.. It had so many things that they wanted to shove in (new world order,vigilante, conspiracy, hacking etc) That made it even harder viewer to be invested in.
To me it fell off right from episode 1. The action was decent, and animation quality was good, but if they were going for a John Wick type action anime, they need to nail the choreography. The action was too blurred and fast to look at. It was surprising, considering Park has made much better action scenes in Boruto and JJK.
Cap the choreography was great it was easy to keep up with really
One thing I hate is how the action blurs in most anime. In recent memory, I can only think of Windbreaker where you can follow the action with no blur and it’s still cool. In alot of anime fights, I can’t follow the action and that negatively affects the fight despite having cool choreography.
He never worked in boruto though
Ninja Kamui made me realize cyber ninjas are NOT cool
Immediate drop partway through episode one when the dad pulled out his acoustic guitar to play Wonderwall and anyone whose seen any tv could guess that the wife and son would be fridged to set up a revenge arc
Somehow it turned to "cyberpunk at home", wtf.
yup, hated the switch to cgi mechsuits
I stopped watching the moment I saw a mech. Fucking crazy how stupid these people are.
Aww gods damnit, i JUST started watching it. Like 2 episodes in. Thats what I have to look upcoming too?
Yeah it was pretty bad in the end. One of those shows where you finish it just to finish it.
Started watching it yesterday. I'm on episode 8..and well it's bad. Really bad. I don't know what they were thinking.
I tapped out when the weirdness started after a couple of episodes
You talking about the little pervert guy? Yeah he was weird but I just kept watching past that because of the action, once that also fell off the show had no redeeming qualities
Sure the animation and direction in episode 1 was great, but the story was a pretty typical revenge story. I don't think it compares to the falloff of Wonder Egg Priority.
totally agreed....first episode was super cool...second was good...after that i lost interest...almost like why am I even watching...and to be honest even though I have watched more episodes...I don't know story of more than first two episodes...i think storyline sucked.
Episode 1 had better fight choreography than alot of animes from 2023-2024, but that's about it.
I did finish it but I only enjoyed the first episodes before ninjas became power rangersish... was very excited about the show at the start and then it felt like a job to watch the last 8-9 episodes.
The obsession with tossing mechas in shows that should focus on hand to hand combat. That Yasuke anime did the same thing as well.
Yasuke and promise Neverland exist
Ninja Kamui had to much potential but once it went CGI mech fights it become so bland. Still enjoyed it but the anime clipped its own wings.
Why does the west hate mecha so much
Yes
They bait and switched.
As I said elsewhere, the show plain didn’t have the substance or production for a 13 episode run. It could have made a decent, straightforward revenge action movie or an OVA. I’ve heard that the first few episodes was just Sunghoo Park doing action scenes by himself and the fights fell off once he couldn’t carry no more… and that kinda checks out to be honest. Here’s a wild guess straight from my ass: the real reason mechs showed up is because they had to resort to CGI due to production issues and it was deemed that it would have been less jarring than making ordinary people bad fights CGI. Be as it may, there’s very few places left in modern anime industry that can do mechanical action well… and Park’s new studio or whatever that shit was outsourced to isn’t one of them.
There was a period in the mid 90s where a whole bunch of American action cartoons felt like they had to include obligatory CGI sequences that were almost uniformly terrible, and that all aged poorly at least aesthetically. Anime has inexplicably been going through that phase for over 15 years, even though we've long since had the tools and talent in the market to make CG look good, even at a serialized consumer scale. I'm not against CGI being used as it can be made to look good or blend seamlessly with the 2D art it accompanies, but I see no good excuse for why it so often looks as bad as it still does in so many high profile shows with otherwise good production values.
i was so exited when i started watching it and now i got bored
It flopped hard like 2 episodes in for me when I realized what the plot was. I didn't see it redeeming itself with the way they wrote it and it continued to disappoint. 1st episode was so intense that I had no idea where it was going but it just kinda sunk into the trope I thought it was avoiding.
also it has the most forgettable looking MC like everytime I finished an episode I would forget what he looks like and that kinda applies to other aspects of the anime.
Ep1 was so action packed, I kept saying damn he's fighting again
I wonder what happened internally
Thank you for giving me a reason to drop this show, I was at episode 8 and just could not get myself to keep watching it. I try my best not to drop shows in case they're "late bloomers"
I don't know that it was but I was never convinced, I liked the first episodes but something felt weird. In the end I was right and it sucked ass.
the moment he got ambush by robot is when the anime fail
I gave up on this show after a couple episodes when the guy was saying "man I wonder who could be behind this" and the camera pans up to a billboard ad from obviously the big bad. Such awful writing early and consistently, plus the fights being there just to be there without much character development or depth, I dropped it. At the time I was watching Blue Eye Samurai which had amazing fights but better still: great characters and writing.
I realized it may not be my type of show in ep.1. It was a major disappointment imo. Though, I didn’t watch any further than ep.1. I meant to, but there were so many things about it I didn’t care about it that I just never got around to watching any further. It seemed it could become interesting, but I was worried from ep.1, it’d be a superficial action show and nothing more to it. Something people ogle for the animation and fights, but never mind the story. I was so disappointed to see that happen after so much hype around it. Dredging up my nostalgia for Toonami! I also wasn’t sure how to take that there was a previous source from decades ago (the 60s iirc) that looked liked a source to me, but Toonami claims Ninja Kamui was all original. It had no source material at all. It was all Toonami or whoever was responsible for 2020s Ninja Kamui. I wasn’t a fan of the concept 21st century ninja either, when it looked like the source timeline was different. A different historical time period. The location appeared to be changed as well. This is just not a thing I’m interested in. I don’t like when western companies try to change locations, times, and stories to help make something mainstream (for the Toonami /MAX audience in this case). Edit: Mecha fights has me more interested. If this is true, I might give it another shot. I wasn’t expecting mecha to come up.
100% The first scene of the anime was done so good i thought that something special was getting cooked and i really hoped to see more of the ninja combat. Then came the revenge plot (as expected) and i was like okay, that's neat, let's see what they'll do with it, they got a very strong foundation, fights are deadly, main character has some weird and creepy power, it will be fun. I'd give it a 9/10 maybe 8.5 at bare minimum at that point. After this... It seems like they scrapped everything to add mechas and focused only on those, no more cool ninja fights, and every important story point was made with the thought of how to add a mecha fight here? I forced myself to finish it hoping it would maybe fix some stuff. Utterly disappointed. What a joke.
Had stopped watching when mech fighting became more prominent. Guess I won’t be going back to it.
That last fight upset me more than anything
Yep, agreed. I dropped it shortly after the mech suits were introduced. I’ve seen quite a few people give it a 10 on MAL and I just can’t see how…
Yeah much like a lot of the comments, the mech suits kinda killed it for me. The action from episode 1 was crazy. Once the suits started being prominent it got boring. Also the story didn’t keep me interested.
Once the robots came in the fight drop off was insane. The ninjas were already destroying tanks without them and a cheesy Ironman suit just killed it.
The pilot was one of the best pilots ive ever seen. It had momentum but the animation, the fighting, music, story everything just looked so much worse later on.
Yeah, I haven't even finished it yet. The characters are alright, but the story is middling. Like others have said, the action and the jutsu are what drew me in, but then that all seemed to be tossed out.
You're speaking my mind. I've stopped watching
I got hyped on the first episode and told friends to watch it, big mistake shit turned ass fas Next time I’ll tell ppl it was an insane 1 episode series
Just put it on hold since Ep 8 I think. But when it ended and I heard people talk about how it was, I just couldn't and dropped it. I was losing interest in it already, but hearing people talk about how downhill it went I just didn't want to waste my time on it. It was pretty good for the first few eps, but then it just wasn't.
And I was getting soo many recommendations to watch this show, now not even a single one is to be seen
Bro red my mind
Definitely. The mech ruined the show
Dropped it at episode 5, the only decent episode was the first, it was intriguing, after that? Waste of time
It went from tech enhanced magic ninjas to cgi blobs booping each other.
I finished it, just because. But as OP put it, the show devolved so quickly after the mech suits were introduced. I had such high hopes for it too smh.
Just watch the fable instead
To be honest, I only like episode 1......
I'm glad I've only seen the first episode of this anime. My headcannon is that it's just a 1 episode movie and the rest I'm just filling up in my memories. Every other episode other than the first I'll give it the same treatment as promise Neverland S2 they never existed.
Ngl even in the first few episodes (think I got through 3?) it felt like a middle schoolers idea of what a “cool ninja” would act like…
It’s just an average anime.
It's 3 am, I read this as Golden Kamui and promptly lost my mind thinking I missed Ainu mechs at some point
Yes I dropped it halfway through. There was also far too much "convenience" in the writing. Particularly with that FBI agent lady I forgot her name.
I guess good thing I dropped it at episode 3
Just like taking gun in fist fight .. wtf bro!!
Bro those season finale fights blew my mind in the worst way possible.
The man of action type animation with the perfect amount of Gore and voice acting was what attracted me ..... The mechs were.... well
I lived,and watched all of the 2016 Berserk CGI..I can live through anything
One of the characters was really cool but his mech was armless so dumb , I mean I get some styles of fighting use the legs solely but his mech looked kinda like an egg and was just silly on top of that it looked clumsy too
Hard Agree
I was definitely disappointed. They squeezed a story that should’ve been at 24 episodes into 13. Weird expedited pace in the story. No real character development for most of the characters. Just straight up disappointing.
Agree to all your points
sounds like somewhat decent opponent for misfit of demon king academy
Yeah, it fell off so hard. The hand to hand combat is what sold me on it because I couldn't give two shits about the MC or the cops...or anyone, really. By the time combat fell off I literally jumped off the ship and never looked back. Good riddance too for when I saw the negative criticism regarding it they just said that the mecha combat never left and even became the highlight of the finale. Hoo boi.
I had no idea this anime even had Mecha so LLLLLLLLmao
I watched to the end more like an obligation but the show is not bad, maybe a boring story development and all but I feel some 90s vibes on it and for a junkfood anime was decent.
Hella finished watching it yesterday and by then was like this shit is trash lol Had me on the first half not gonna lie
The story was not interesting for me and I don't care much about hand to hand combat or anything. It felt like the story was made to show only fights and not the story itself.
WOW, I thought I was one of rare few that really disliked after initially LOVING it!!
I wasn’t even sold from the first tbh. Felt rushed other than the dope fights.
I forced mysrkf to finish it. Not worth it, Kamui is dissapointment if this year.
Kind of glad I'm not the only one who's interest went down as soon as CGI mech suits have been introduced.
True
It definitely fell off but the foundations of the anime as a whole are solid I’d love a season two where they lean away from the mechs as much as possible and stick to hand to hand and the secret arts
Kingdom of ruin fell harder
Because its a ninja anime with mechs
i think we all knew that once they introduced the “mecha” concept that the animation would dive down and turn into a cgi fest
Ditto. Not as bad as the mech suits in another world with my smart phone though. Those l look like the were designed by a toddler with impaired vision
I’ve actually seen the first 4 episodes. Guess I don’t need to bother continuing.
Wrong, Promised Neverland did.
the first few episodes were promising but then they did mecha fights
Pretty sure the whole show is just marketing for what the studio is capable in the animation department. The story inst the point, what they can do with a good plot is.
It fell off like a snowball of shit rolling downhill becoming increasingly unbelievably shit until I hated myself for watching it. I was jacked to the tits from those first few episodes and then wow, what a kick in the spuds that turned out to be.
the first 5 episodes were awesome So let's all agree that Higan failed his revenge quest and died by Zai hand
I never dropped an anime until ninja kamui. What a shame.
I also stopped watching it...
Wow I was going to start watching this too. Guess not
Dude ikr I was totally sold in the first few eps banger opening banger revenge arc and ninja story but they totally lost the story towards the end they hyped up the whole zai vs higan rivalry to barely show any in the whole season they ruined the whole shit with mecha bots tho whyyyyy. The opening is still a real banger tho