Wrath of the Ninja

Back in the day, the anime fans that existed really had very little to go on.  The internet wasn't as widely available as it is now, and VHS copies of things were effing expensive.  In fact the average price of an anime VHS was $30 to $40 dollars, regardless of quality.  Often times if you wanted a whole series the entire thing wouldn't come out, or every tape had around 2 or 3 episodes if you were lucky.  Add on the fact that the most widely available series was Ranma, which didn't seem to have numbers on the cases to tell you which one was next and you have a confusing world of releases you had to already know about to get.

Luckily you had Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.  These companies tended to carry a decent amount of OVA or movie releases that you could simply rent for the evening.  The titles that they seemed to have the most of were released by two companies, Urban Vision and U.S. Manga Corps.  They had others sure, but for whatever reason they got almost every release these people did.  This one is from U.S. Manga Corps so we get to look at that little M.D. Geist logo on the cover somewhere.  If that doesn't say "quality" I don't know what does.

Anyway, this film was pretty common.  Wrath of the Ninja: The Yotoden Movie is of course a movie edited together from a longer OVA series.  I have seen both, and I can say that the OVA is better, but this isn't as bad as some people think.  When we start this movie we are greeted by some woman named Kasumi/Ayame who is almost raped by some dudes she runs across.  It turns out she is a ninja and kills a few of them.  Fairly soon, she meets two other ninjas and it is discovered that these three wield magical weapons that can stop some demons with their cool powers.

It also pays to mention that Nobunaga Oda is rapidly taking over as well.  Various groups of ninjas must fight various other ninjas who are backed by various demons.  Oda of course gains demon powers and they must use their cool weapons to kill him.  Each character gets a redemption arch and there is plenty of action.  Violence is all over this movie, and that is great because the story isn't very strong.  When watching this, the story seems to go both way too fast, and way too slow all at once.  If you are wondering if the story is improved by watching the longer OVA instead, it is but not by a whole lot.  Sadly it is near impossible to find the OVA now, but rather easy to get the VHS or bootleg DVD of this so good luck with finding it.

The English dub is fine by the way.  By fine I mean good in that 90's we don't care sort of way.  There is a baseball reference for example and this thing takes place in feudal Japan.  However, it is likable in that cheesy way that other not so great dubs like Gundam Wing are.  I would say however that the overall acting quality is just a tiny bit better than you could expect from this era though.  The story makes enough sense but it seems like there is something missing from the exposition that would otherwise make it more interesting.  This is also present in the OVA but not nearly as bad.  One of the worst things about this movie is that there are characters who are killed in a very dramatic way shortly after being introduced to them.  The problem is we don't get enough time to really care about these people so the deaths just don't seem to matter much.  This of course is not so much a problem in the OVA version.

I would honestly recommend this movie if you want some cheesy, violent, anime ninja action.  It is pretty easy to get through and isn't incredibly long.  Don't take this movie seriously and you will probably enjoy watching neon red blood and neon blue swords slashing.  Really, it is fairly entertaining for this kind of thing if you don't mind just turning your brain off and letting it be fun.  That's what these types of releases are all about anyway.  If you need that old school 90's anime nostalgia fix, this is a great start.  Then you can move on to things that are much better, but seeing as how this is pretty cheap, I'd say go for it.