Karakuri Ninja Girl Book 1 & 2 (Box Set) Review

Running Time: 56 min.

Production Date: 1996

Director: Sabage Sukizo

Cast: Animated

Initial Expectations: Although there have been some decent anime features, NuTech has been putting out lousy DVDs. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect here.

Initial Reaction: It’s pretty tame for anime, but kinda fun too.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody who’s looking for their first anime feature.

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody who wants an anime feature that feels completely uncensored

Audio /Video Quality: The English dubbing is very clear and well balanced. The video is also nicely clear. The animation isn’t very developed, and is very similar to most of the Japanese cartoons, like Pokemon that you can find on television currently. The only real problem is that there’s a red tint that appears through some of the scenes that doesn’t seem natural.

Music: The music is cartoonish, and nicely balanced with the rest of the audio.

Disc Complaints / Possible False Advertising: The movie appears to be censored despite the “Totally Uncensored” Claim at the bottom of the front cover. You never see a true penis in the movie, with some of them being blurred out in the standard ways and some being covered up with what looks to be traditional Japanese images. There are a few penile images, but they’re all explained to be magical.

Menus: The main menu has a nice bit of animation that gives a decent first impression. The chapter menu lets you choose a scene based on a small clip of each scene and a title for the chapter.

The Feature: The Karakuri Ninja Girl Box Set consists of Karakuri Ninja Girl Book 1 and Karakuri Ninja Girl Book 2 Since I’ve already reviewed each of these DVDs separately already, I’ll cover some general points here and leave out most of the details of each episode.

Karakuri Ninja Girl is basically an adult cartoon that falls somewhere between Pokemon and Dragonball Z. It’s an ongoing story about three ninjas who have left ninja country and are trying to live a normal life. Instead of going out and saving people, they normally stay in and fuck. Moon Shadow and Fawn Bell are a committed couple, but Morning Mist has feelings for both of them which causes trouble in each episode. No, it’s not much of a plot, but it’s decent for a cartoon.

The sex is very different in the Karakuri Ninja Girl series. It often has the non-consensual feel that permeates so much of Japanese porn, but it also has a light and fun feeling to much of it. Although a person might start out drugged in a scene to initiate the sex, they often end up enjoying most of it or even preaching about loving somebody else to explain them not popping while drugged or under a spell at the end of the scene. The light and fun feel really throws me for a loop here, and while it made the scenes a lot more enjoyable to watch, it also made me a little uneasy because it comes close to justifying the drugging. The sex also suffers from the animation. It almost looks censored, as there’s never a cock shown other than an occasional flash of something that looks like a glowing banana. Even when a blowjob is being shown, all you see is the girl’s open mouth and her head bobbing. It makes things very odd, and interfered with every sex scene for me.

The biggest problem with the Karakuri Ninja Girl box set, however, is the DVDs themselves. To me, box sets like Karakuri Ninja Girl make NuTech look like a moneygrubbing company who wants to milk porn fans for every dollar they can get from them rather than putting out a product that anime fans would feel proud to pick up . Each DVD doesn’t even have a full half hour feature on it, and while NuTech puts out sets like this, companies like A18 / Central Park and Kitty are putting out entire series on one DVD and doing a very good job on them (such as Night Shift Nurses and Slight Fever Syndrome). If that’s not enough, you can pick up the DVDs from A18 / Central Park and Kitty that have the entire series on them for just a few bucks more than you could pick up one of NuTech’s Karakuri Ninja Girl DVDs that don’t even last a half hour, and they look just as good and have as many or more extras.

Sadly, from what I understand of authoring costs, NuTech could have authored the entire series onto one DVD for the same price as authoring just one episode on a DVD. I’ve heard from a couple places the NuTech all but stole the rights to these features, so they don’t have a lot of money into developing them. Cutting their processing and shipping costs by half, as well as reducing the amount of stock and products they’d have to handle, should make putting out a DVD with an entire series like this much more affordable for people, while probably letting NuTech make just as much money on it. Yes, I knew what I was getting into when I bought this set, and even though the series surpassed my expectations, I still feel a bit ripped off. That’s not a feeling any company should be proud of leaving their customer with, but from what appears to be much of the thought behind the Karakuri Ninja Girl box set, as well as the other NuTech box sets I’ve seen, I just don’t think NuTech gives a damn.

Extras: The extras are the same on each DVD. Three photo galleries are included on the movie side of the DVD. There’s a movie gallery that lasts just over a minute, a gallery for Alexa Rae that lasts two minutes, and a gallery for Trisha Uptown that lasts two minutes. In each case, you get about six seconds per nice looking full screen photo. The B-side of the DVD contains roughly forty trailers for other NuTech anime DVDs.

Themes: Anime, straight, drugs, masturbation, voyeurism, lesbian, rape, toys, and group

Raincoat Factor: Medium high

Condom Usage: None (damn lazy animators!)

Overall: Currently, the Karakuri Ninja Girl Box Set can be found online for between $10 (on clearance sale) and $38 with several stores offering it for around $25. Unless you can pick it up at the $10 level, rent this one first. It’s kind of fun, but the DVDs as a whole are extremely lacking.

Note to NuTech: It looks like your marketing scheme is to gradually bleed people’s money away rather than giving them a decent product at a fair price. With companies like A18 / Central Park offering a similar product at a better price and more attractive offering, such as offering entire anime series on one DVD (which would have been easy to do here) for roughly the same price as what you get for a single episode, as well as giving them extras and a great transfer. I’m sure your competition is very happy to have you continuing to produce DVDs like this. It’s the best thing they could hope for.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight