It has to be said that although the idea of adapting a kids cartoon comedy set in a Ninja Academy to a live-action feature appears to be a sound enough proposal, it’s hard to imagine that the wayward talent of the bad-boy of Japanese underground cinema would be the first choice in mind to direct NINJA KIDS!!!. But then again, perhaps not, since the only consistent and predictable feature of Takashi Miike’s prodigious output is its inconsistency and unpredictability.

… he does have a surprisingly hard head, even if about 90% of it appears to be made of snot.

It also has to be said that, at first sight, the young students enrolled in the first year of Ninja Academy don’t look the kind of stuff that silent, deadly assassins are made of. Shinbei, for example, is a little overweight and has a tendency to fall asleep at inopportune moments; but he does have a surprisingly hard head, even if about 90% of it appears to be made of snot. Another student, Kirimaru, has to mix baby-sitting duties with class time, and you probably can’t execute too many elaborate manoeuvres with a baby on your back. As for Rantaro, the diminutive hero of the comedy, he has a lot of pressure placed on him by his poor farming family. Formerly ninjas themselves, Rantaro’s parents have placed all their hopes on their son becoming the greatest ninja ever. That doesn’t really look all that likely.

NINJA KIDS!!! does, however, look promisingly funny as a film; Miike enters fully into the spirit of the comic adventures and employs cartoony exaggeration, cheap-looking prosthetics, snooker-ball bumps on heads, explosive CGI action effects, pools of snot and inconvenient piles of dog poo lying around for the unwary ninja assassin to slip around in. If nothing else, the film is assured some measure of success for the idea alone, as the only thing cuter than Asian kids in movies is Asian kids doing comedy in movies. Other than perhaps cute Asian kids doing ninja comedy in the movies. Set some ninja kids loose with some shuriken, involve them in some mishaps with caltrop needles and, really, it doesn’t get much better than that.

…an incident involving singing hairdressing martial artists is certainly off-the-scale in terms of colourful bizarreness…

Which is why it’s disappointing that NINJA KIDS!!!, and the anarchic possibilities afforded by the combination of kiddie ninja adventures and Takashi Miike, never really lives up to its full potential. There’s really not enough room in a feature-length film to include all the funny little episodic incidents and wacky characters without sacrificing any unifying plot development and character progression. The attempt to build up a world of competing rival ninja schools based around an incident involving singing hairdressing martial artists is certainly off-the-scale in terms of colourful bizarreness, but the rivalry between one of the ninja groups and the first-year academy students is resolved by a “Wacky Races” kind of competition that never generates much excitement and feels a little bit anti-climatic.

Consequently, there’s little solid character development – weird characters and egg-headed villains are only briefly introduced, and few of Rantaro’s classmates make any kind of impression – with the result that the film feels a little bit episodic and the humour tends to be somewhat hit-and-miss. There are however enough laughs and cuteness guaranteed in the premise for NINJA KIDS!!! to be a pleasantly diverting entertainment, and ensure that there is a strong likelihood of further sequel adventures.

Once Upon a Time in Japan

Reinventing the Past Through the Eyes of Japanese Contemporary Filmmakers

Marking its 10th anniversary, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme looks back into the past through the eyes of contemporary filmmakers. Touching upon a trend prevalent in recent Japanese cinema, this season showcases a series of works from directors including Takashi Miike, Sunao Katabuchi, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Isshin Inudo, who all share the same aspiration to reinterpret and relive moments of times gone by through a variety of genres, styles and tones. The programme began on 1 February 2013 and its nationwide tour runs until 27 March 2013.