Ninja Scroll

Ninja Scroll is often recommended as one of those 90s anime, one the visual masterpieces that cell animation fans point to as an example of just how good cell animation can look. This set a fairly high standard of expectation, though knowing absolutely nothing about the story of the movie was definitely to its benefit because it would be a stretch to call it anything particularly original.

The visuals met the expectations and then went beyond them. I've always been a particular fan of cell shading, but Ninja Scroll really exceeded itself in how gorgeous it looked. A mixture of strong shading and realistic character designs made the movie feel grounded and serious before it had the chance to lay out the sincerity it was going to present later. Animation wise, there were some simplistic moments, but these were played into benefits due to the excellent cinematography and colour work - one fight in a strongly contrasting orange on black scene stuck out most in this regard though most fights were laid out in similarly impressive more diverse ways.

Jubei comes off as a fairly cool, if somewhat generic protagonist, "the good Ninja" kind of deal. He does jobs cheap and has a tragic backstory, the standard stuff but he works for his purpose. The beginning of the film is a bit incoherent, some clans send out ninja's and Jubei fights some people and there's a rape scene and it's just really weird. Half an hour in, more sense starts to be made, and some old man teaches Jubei about a huge conspiracy with the ominously named "Shogun of the Dark" (who we never meet incidentally). The huge conspiracy isn't really the point in the movie though, it seems to be more about the isolated role of Jubei and the woman Kagero, who was much less generic since we see exploration of the denial of humanity and the aim to achieve it with her. Jubei fights 8 different "demons" throughout the film, with equally unique abilities and quirks. The fights actually don't last very long, but the simplicity of them lends itself to grounded nature of the film. This creates an interesting contrast with the insane powers of the ninja and the more logical and grounded solutions to each conflict, I'm not really sure if that was supposed to represent something but it was cool. The movie ends both dramatically and tragically and then trails off into the potential for "there's more to come" - but Jubei's arc really ends here, he's made his peace, and it's time for him to move on with his life.

To conclude, the movies peaks were very high, great animation and scale in the fights helped to create an awesome experience, though the generic nature of the story and the fumbling, seemingly random nature of the beginning prevent me from being able to call it overly special on the whole.