Nintama Rantaró

Miike’s third contribution to the genre of children’s movies (after The Great Yokai War and Yatterman) clearly shows that the most productive of the current top Japanese directors understands children very well. Indeed, the melancholically conceived motifs relating to childhood and adolescence comprise one of the recurring elements across his varied filmography. This time, however, the adult perspective on childhood remains on the sidelines and everything is rather subordinated to a superficially childlike view. On the one hand, this means the lowest-brow jokes based on children’s fascination with poop, farts and other manifestations of human bodily functions at which parents take offence. As in a number of previous comic-book adaptations, Miike brings into Ninja Kids!!!  various elements of comic-book stylisation, which this time leads to a slapstick exhibition of physicality. In accordance with the kids’ view of the world (and with the original manga), all of the adult characters (perhaps only with the exception of the main protagonist’s parents) have the form of caricatures with bizarrely deformed faces and expressively exaggerated facial features and other physical attributes (the ninja that looks like Robert Z’Dar is one of the more normal ones). Simply said, the film literally makes it clear that in the eyes of children, adults and old people in particular are bizarre monsters who speak strangely and fart constantly. And that’s not to mention the literal preservation of the characteristic comic-bookish appearance of the baseball-sized lumps that appear on the heads of characters who have taken a beating. Of course, the superficiality here does not imply the insipidness or dullness of the creators. On the contrary, with its disarming rendering, the film demonstrates the sincere interest and imaginativeness of Miike’s approach to filmmaking. Frequent sequences involving monologues, by means of which one character explains something to another or to the viewers, break up the silly jokes, while gratuitous variety-show gags are inserted into the plot sequences, and everything is subordinated to concise comic-book stylisation. When the character of the veteran ninja cuts through the background of a scene so that he can interrupt the action with a factographic explanation and then tells the heroes to tape it back together after him, which they do before the scene resumes – but the sequence just described is far from the most creative of the whole film. That honour goes to the captivating theatrical handling of the end of the race, when the actors run around on a rotating platform with papier mâché decorations. Even past the age of fifty and having established himself in the mainstream, Miike simply has not lost any of his creative distinctiveness, and especially among the works in his filmography of recent years, Ninja Kids!!! is a welcome departure. (2014.04.20)

Takashi Miike simply knows how to film everything and everything he films meets both basic and more demanding genre requirements. In this case, he made a film for children, which is about children, has great characters and excellent comedic moments throughout, plus a pleasantly outlandish story that can also entertain adult viewers. It may be overly stylized, possibly kitschy, but still fun. (2015.06.21)