Kabamaru

Ninja Kabamaru

I was 1^st introduced to Ninja Ninja (iga no Kabamaru) through a friend of my brother’s who seemed to have an unlimited access to a stash of anime videos (that’s what I thought at the time but the so called ‘stash’ wasn’t that good as he was never able to get me the 1^st and 2^nd episodes). He briefly described the story to me as being about a ninja boy who lived in Tokyo , which was more than enough to get me excited as I began to anticipate the likes of Sasuki , one of my most fav animes. With that in mind I was totally unprepared for what the series had to offer. Basically the story is about a young Iga ninja named kabamaru , Iga is a mountainous region in Japan (the iga and koga regions are even considered to be the birthplaces of ninjutsu ) , who seemed to come from a long blood-line of ninjas . The story actually begins with the death of his grandfather, leaving poor kabamaru an orphan, but on the day that of his grandfather’s funeral an old lady appears who claims to know his grandfather from way back. She also claims that his grandfather actually instructed her to look after him . So they head together for Tokyo where the woman, Ran Akoko , enrolls him in her prestigious school and even allows always him to stay at her mansion . What follows is a cocktail of side-splitting funny , unbelievably weird antics , romance , drama , action , and mystery (yeh its really all there) . Unfortunately the ending of the series still felt a little like a cliff-hanger so naturally I was left starving for more episodes. But there was also a sort of bonus episode which had nothing to do with the original story but was rather a fan-service thing which was a real treat. The story apparently was even adapted for a live-action movie and I would have really loved to see how that turned out J. In a nut shell I guess what I really enjoyed about the show was the wonderful mix of themes that didn’t quite place it in any specific genre. Years later I was to find out that the author was well known for mixing themes usually found in shoujo (girl’s comics) and shounen (boy’s comics). It is very rare that a show is able to successfully balance comedy (which usually involved ridiculing the main characters) whilst also portraying them as deep realistic individuals capable of very serious emotions.