Ninjai

Ninjai: The Little Ninja is a Flash cartoon.^[1] It is available on the Ninjai Gang website and on G4's Late Night Peep Show during Midnight Spank.

Overview

A creation of The Ninjai Gang,^[2] Ninjai is a web-based animation that centers around the life of Ninjai, a young samurai/ninja who is traveling the world looking for meaning and purpose in his life. Along the way, his path is crossed by characters like rogues or people who help him. Ninjai's best friend is 'Little Bird', a cute and brave sidekick with whom Ninjai often converses.^[3]

Chapters

Currently there have been 12 chapters released by The Ninjai Gang. There was speculation on whether the twelfth episode would be Ninjai's last performance. However, the Ninjai Gang made an announcement declaring the continuation of the series. From the FAQ:

Question: Is Chapter 12 the end?

Answer: No.

The latter two chapters caused unrest within the Ninjai community after taking longer than expected to complete. This problem was due to a lack of animators able to complete the animations. The 11th chapter was released on the 25th of January 2005. Because of the bloodthirsty and demoniac attitude portrayed by Takagawa and his Ninja in the 11th episode, the Ninjai Gang added warnings and produced a special "mellow version" for Ninjai's younger audience. The 11th chapter showed a large shift in the quality of the animation.

Chapter 12 was also announced next to Chapter 11, and released shortly after on the 15th March 2005.

Apart from confirming a sequel to Chapter 12, the Ninjai Gang have made no other announcements about the remaining installments in the series.

In December 2008, the Ninjai gang had said that they are coming out with a feature length movie that will be high quality and appear in theaters.

Fans

The Ninjai Gang have a large community of avid fans on their message boards, the veteran posters of which refer to themselves as Ninjaiers.

The Ninjai Gang site also has a dozen games created and submitted by various fans.

A wikispace was created by one of the veteran member of the boards, Cogline (aka Robin), as an information center for the long history of the Ninjai Message Boards. The space is appropriately called Ninjaipedia

• Quentin Tarantino has stated that he is a fan of the series^{[citation needed]}

Controversy

This cartoon started several years ago and has taken a very long time in coming out with new episodes. They were unable to provide enough bandwidth to show the cartoon for a while, so later on they teamed up with Atomfilms to distribute their content. This cartoon is generally not for children and should not be viewed by anyone under 13 without consent of an adult or parent.

Characters in the series

• Ninjai: The titular protagonist of the series is a boy of unstated age with a nearly unnatural skill as a warrior. Not much is known about his identity, he seems to suffer from a form of amnesia and is on a quest to find out the answers about himself. "Who am I?" "Where do I come from?"

• Little bird: A small, grey and brown canary(?) bird that Ninjai has befriended. It is a loyal friend, who cares very much about Ninjai staying with the young boy even in the Swamp of Ghosts.

• Dotoshi of the Blue Lotus clan: A mysterious man that Ninjai met during his travels, aiding him by helping him cross a river. His, or his clan's, purposes are unknown, and he has not re-appeared yet.

• The Mad inventor: An eccentric man that swears in most of his sentences. Ninjai helps him out of an unseen contraption that managed to snag him with a rope, leaving him hanging by his feet from a tree.

• Maha: An old man that Ninjai is seeking. He is last believed to have gone to the Keoki mountains, leaving the village of Yamuri behind. He is not yet seen, by name, in the series.

• Takagawa of the Red Dragon clan: An evil, broadsword wielding man. He is a sadistic, mentally unstable villain in the series who takes pleasure in others' pain.

• Sakuri of the Red Dragon clan: Apparently Takagawa's right hand man. Though he speaks little, he displays loyalty towards his master Takagawa and apparently enjoys the evil works about. He has a mystical tattoo of a snake that can move off of his arm and into a stringed weapon to allow it to fly, hone onto and attack targets. The serpent that forms from the union of weapon and tattoo is killed in chapter 12 by Ninjai, causing grief to Sakuri. It is unknown if there is, or will be, long term effects of this form of severance.

Appearances In Other Media

• The Christian Deathcore band A Thousand Times Repent featured the exchange between Ninjai and the first two demons he encounters in the first episode. It is as follows: "You are demons, I think the only thing you will taste today is, your own blood." The CD is titled, "Virtue Has Few Friends" and the Song is titled, "Curses! Another Shape-Shifting Wraith!"^[4]

• The psychedlic trance artist Raz (Raz Kfir) also featured the exchange between Ninjai and the first two demons he encounters in the first episode. It is as follows: "You are demons, I think the only thing you will taste today is, your own blood." The April 2011 CD is titled, "Static Noises" and the Song is titled, "My Path". There's samples of Ninjai throughout the other 3 tracks and one track is titled "No One Knows I'm Ninjai"^[5]

KarmaKula

The Ninjai website also features KarmaKula, which is the Ninjai Gang's live-action action/adventure series made exclusively for the web. Some people on the Ninjai Message Boards speculate that KarmaKula is the story of grown up Ninjai.^[6] Newest developments as of January 2009 on the Ninjai website allow you to add Karmakula as a friend on such sites as Myspace and Facebook.

Known members

Satya Bellord, who was Uma Thurman's martial arts double in Kill Bill, is a member of the Ninjai Gang^[7]

References

1. ^ Eastman, Susan Tyler; Ferguson, Douglas A.; Klein, Robert A. (2006). Media promotion and marketing for broadcasting, cable, and the Internet. Focal Press. pp. 239–. ISBN 9780240807621. http://books.google.com/books?id=XYKnPW8huJQC&pg=PA239. Retrieved 29 June 2011. 
2. ^ "Little Ninja is a Big Hit on the Web". Black Belt: p. 66. April 2002. http://books.google.com/books?id=WtsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT98&dq=Ninjai+flash&hl=en&ei=QkMLTuuSCOTmiALm_7zQAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Ninjai%20flash&f=false. Retrieved 29 June 2011. 
3. ^ Smith, Krispijn (4 May 2006). "Filmpjes als snacks: Atom onafhankelijk platform" (in Dutch). NRC Handelsblad. http://vorige.nrc.nl/media/article1679674.ece/Filmpjes_als_snacks_Atom_onafhankelijk_platform. Retrieved 29 June 2011. 
4. ^ "Review of The Deathcore band CD mentioning the line taken from Ninjai". http://www.indievisionmusic.com/wordpress/2008/02/28/a-thousand-times-repent-virtue-has-few-friends/. Retrieved 2008-09-11. 
5. ^ "Raz's album Static Noises". http://www.ektoplazm.com/2011/raz-static-noises. Retrieved 2011-05-04. 
6. ^ "Ninjai Message Boards > Ninjai Discussion > The Man on the Mountain". http://forums.ninjai.com/showthread.php?p=693442. Retrieved 2008-09-11. 
7. ^ "Interview with Satya Bellord". http://www.ninjai.com/bbmag_excerpts.php. Retrieved 2008-09-11. 

External links

• Ninjai Website
• Ninjai Chapters
• Ninjaipedia
• Ninjai Gang's original live-action adventure web series KarmaKula
• Ninjai photo gallery at G4TV
• Animosity Online: The Essentials - Ninjai (Internet Archive cached page)