The Ninja Scroll series is a revisionist take on the cult fav feature. © Urban Vision.

Ninja Scroll: The Series. V.1, Dragon Stone. V.2, Dangerous Path. V.3, Deliverance.
TV series (13 episodes), 2003. Director: Tatsuo Sato. V.1-2, four episodes/90 minutes; v.3, five episodes/117 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $24.95; VHS dubbed $19.95. Distributor: Urban Vision Entertainment.

Ninja Scroll (Jubei Ninpucho), the 1993 movie, has been one of the most critically praised anime theatrical features and an international film festival favorite. It and Wicked City are largely responsible by themselves for making the reputations of the Madhouse studio and writer-director Yoshiaki Kawajiri. For its 10th anniversary, Madhouse created this TV version.

Ninja Scroll: The Series (Jubei Ninpucho: Ryuhogyoku-hen; literally Chronicle of Jubei, the Wind Ninja: Chapter of the Dragon Jewel Treasure), a 13-episode TV serial from April 14 through July 14, 2003, was actually directed by Tatsuo Sato, but it sticks so closely to the original story and character designs by Kawajiri that it looks like a pure Kawajiri production.

A lengthy DVD-extra interview with Sato about his decisions on how to present the production (for example, he decided to model Jubei after the "wind" element, like a Spaghetti-Western loner hero who drifts into the story and then drifts out again at the end; he decided to design the story as a cross between traditional historical ninja drama and modern TV "monster of the week" sci-fi series) sound creative until you consider that he was actually locked into copying these from the movie 10 years earlier. One intriguing revelation is that the TV series' actual writer, Toshiki Inoue, has also been a writer for the famous Masked Rider live-action series; one of those that established the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers genre.

Ninja Scroll: The Series is not a sequel to the movie as much as a revision of it. The basic plot is the same: in the early 1600s a deadly feud over possession of a mysterious treasure is being fought between two ninja clans, each of whose members are divided between "normal" ninja (masked, black-clad assassins) and super-ninja who look like comic-book super-villains, each of whom has a grotesque monstrous appearance and "unstoppable" killing specialty. Jubei Kibagami, the only ninja in Japan who fights for honor more than for money, becomes inadvertently involved. He ends up protecting a beautiful girl; a ninja by birth whose heart is not in all the killing. A major supporting character is Dakuan, apparently an elderly Buddhist monk but actually a spy-assassin for the recently established Tokugawa Shogunate. The revelation at the climax is that the villains want the treasure to finance an overthrow of the Tokugawas and restore an earlier dynasty.

There are enough differences to make the TV series fresh for those who have seen the movie. It is a more "gentle" version. Shigure, the "ninja princess," has been raised to be naively innocent of her clan's deadly profession. Dakuan remains loyal to the Shogun, but there is no implication that he plans to kill Jubei and Shigure for Knowing Too Much after they are no longer useful. Which older Japanese dynasty the villains want to restore is different, and the climactic battle is much closer to an Indiana Jones finale. There are new supporting characters, notably the comedy-relief young thief Tsubute. Each of the monster super-ninja are all-new and spectacularly unique. You can't see just one version of Ninja Scroll; you have to see them both.