Y’know that place you have to go to during the day where people make you do stuff, and then give you money so you can pay your rent and shit? Well, my decidedly non-ninja-riffic PAYING career really kicked my ass in December and January. Coming out the other side of huge deadlines and 8-day weeks now though, so VN will go back to regular updates come February.
In the meantime, while doing some emergency house cleaning on an old computer, I found these:
Way back… like 2005 or so… I had this silly notion of PRINT still being viable and adapting the old Ninja80 website into square-bound manga-sized ‘zines. Mocked up some kind nice covers, too.
I’m a much happier puppy pushing out stuff online though, and while I would certainly entertain a book offer from another publisher, my days of losing my own shirt and lugging books to the post office are long gone.
I do miss designing book covers though…
Many thanks to VN regular RG for sending me this link:
Ninjerktsu!
The Dreamworks storyboard artist who refers to himself only as ‘Michael’ really captures something here. Who didn’t hurt themselves with these things back in the day?
With the 80s craze came a lot of repurposed merchandise – stuff that for the previous decade’s boom had been sold as kung-fu gear now emblazoned with ninja logos. The above looks to have been a Chinese-esque design probably inspired by something David Carradine tossed around on network TV. But any 70s leftovers were given new life in the “ninja star” obsessed 80s.
The notion of shuriken pendants wasn’t exclusive to this company, either. In the dodgy swap meet, dirt mall, subway blanket, Chinatown video store realm you’d see full-size, razor sharp throwing stars with tiny holes hastily drilled into them somewhere to technically make them jewelry, not illegally sold weapons.
Now just what made a net a “Ninja Capture Net?” I don’t know, and I never this particular item, but I’m pretty certain it was some type of conventional fishing deal shinobi-fied for mail order. They made some pretty strong claims here about the net’s effectiveness. Not sure I’d trust something I mail-ordered for less than $15 against a “sword-weilding enemy.”
I also like their observation for item #704A – A black stick is invisible at night!
Nothing however, beats my all-time favorite piece of repurposed merchandise, the Ninja Boomerang.
Tags: 80s martial arts supply ads, vintage magazines
A follow-up to this post on what was quietly one of, if not the best, ninja figures of the 80s.
Bought myself a Christmas present this year, a mint-on-card Eagle Force Savitar!
What I adore most about this shadowy saboteur is how rooted in traditional Japanese character design he is. The 1980′s saw a lot of ninja toys designed after the Sho Kosugi look in Revenge of the Ninja, plenty of bare-armed muscly assassins, and tons of cartoonish shinobi in white, red and myriad other non-stealth-friendly colors. Basically, they were as superhero as they were shinobi.
Not the case in this very early entry into American ninja figures.
Mego’s ill-fated Eagle Force line was released in 1982, but copyrighted in 1981 and likely concepted and designed as early as 1980, making Savitar as close to a pre-craze ninja figure as the U.S. would ever see. From the ‘stingray’ folded hood to the waraji rope sandals, this could just as easily be a Goemon figure from Shinobi no Mono.
I’m really curious as to what they were using as reference.
Alas, the Eagle Force 2.75″ scale and die-cast metal molding did not lend the detail to do justice to the designs.
Here’s the card back, with a nifty little comic to build up the character:
What a nice illo this is. I really dig the notion of Savitar choosing to adopt the silenced sub-machine gun, too, best of both eras and whatnot.
The heroic Eagle Force had their own on-board martial artist to counter Savitar’s shadow skills, but “Kayo the Judo Fighter” just sort of looks like a big douche. Way to not guard your inside and leave that arm hanging, Mr. I’m-Too-Cool-For-Shoes!
If only these figures were a more detail-yielding plastic or vinyl, and a few inches bigger, we would have had a ninja figure that rivaled anything ever done in Japan.
Tags: Eagle Force, Mego, Savitar
Alright you, and you all know who you are…
Make me a promise right now that you won’t hurt yourself Christmas morning on any new sharp-pointy things Shinobi Clause brought you. (Like I did in, what was it, 1983, 84, 85, 86 and/or , well, you get the picture…)
Here’s a mid-80s haul I got after Santa evidently stopped off at Asian World of Martial Arts before coming down our chimney:
Oddly, the shinai is alive and well today, but the zinc-alloy katana with the hollow plastic handle they used to pawn off on the unknowing is long gone. The sais and shoge survived several moves cross country as well, and after coming out of more than a decade of storage were refinished and re-detailed for a photo shoot a few years back.
Enduring Christmas memories of the 80s craze. I hope kids today are getting some sort of shinobi swag that has the same lasting impact…
Tags: Asian World of Martial Arts
These beautiful character design illos are from the 2003 video game artbook Shinobi THE WIDE.
This sleeve-slinging swordgirl is ‘Ageha.’ I’m digging the flapper sensibilities of her hair and make-up.
You can see the rest of this long-out-of-print book here.
(special thanks to Dustin DeLeon)
Tags: Shinobi, video games
Been thinking about this.
Spaghetti Westerns – films made by Italian directors, shot in Spain, released by studios in Rome and imported into the US. In the 60s they turned the tried and true American Western on its ass. Gone were the clean shaven John Waynes and Randolph Scotts, replaced by gritty and sardonic anti-heroes like Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Absent were grandiose tales of heroes shaping the American frontier, ousted by amoral bloodbaths in which villains killed each other over scraps of gold in grimy Mexican border towns.
New audiences devoured films like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but old-school American Oater-fans were aghast at this foreign corruption of their cinema traditions. Reviewers at the time often spewed hatred on Italian imports, dismissing even the works of Leone and Sollima as low grade exploitation. Regardless, a huge craze saw hundreds of EuroWesterns cranked out in the mid-60′s to the early 70s, changing the landscape of the genre as a whole.
Here then is my question: Did ninja movie fans in Japan raised on the likes of Shinobi-no-Mono have the same contempt for 80′s American ninja movies? Were the Cannon films with Kosugi and Dudikoff like Spaghetti Westerns to the Japanese who previously enjoyed genre exclusivity?
There are a lot of similarities here:
1.) Both mutated genres wrote out fundamentals of the source traditions due to being filmed in a foreign land. Native Americans were rare in Italian Westerns, replaced by Spanish actors playing Mexicans. Nary a proper cattle drive in sight, either, as cowboys were replaced with bounty hunters to accomodate smaller casts and budgets.
American ninja films were based on sole shinobi superheroes operating in modern times and in American cities. Canon wasn’t about to fund a period film set in 1600s Japan. No castles to invade, no daimyo, no armored samurai to outwit, no tales of downtrodden villagers lost in an oppressive class system.
2.) Both mutations were high on contemporary style. Cannon’s thoroughly 80s keyboard synth was as new and radical to ninja as Ennio Morricone’s experimental scores were to Westerns. And ninja suddenly started using hair products. Bright colored, graphic logo-emblazoned, satin outfits and fingerless leather gloves weren’t far behind…
3.) Both invented distinct signature gimmicks not seen in the source tranditions. Spagettis had these long, drawn out stare-downs before gun fights, with extreme close-ups of grungy-faced brutes that would never be cast in Hollywood. American ninja movies introduced the “one-weapon-one-kill” logic to the genre to exploit our fetish for the exotic tools of the supposed assassin trade.
4.) Both sub-genres ended up being influential back upon their traditional sources. Eastwood brought back Leone’s sensibilities and the American Western was never the same. Back in Japan, even period-set ninja TV and movies showed shameless 80s-ness. You see the American influence on Kage no Gundan and the big budget Kadokawa effects epics of the 80s, and the digital ‘ninja-in-the-woods’ films being made in Japan now owe as much to the 80s as they do the 60s.
and…
5.) Both featured Lee Van Cleef!
So were the Kosugi flicks received like a prodigal son of the Japan Action Club going abroad and making good? Were they a curiosity at best? Or were they downright laughed at for how clueless they were as to ‘real ninja’ action?
I’d love to hear from some older Japanese readers…
Tags: Cannon, Sho Kosugi
After a well-received debut at this year’s Tribecca, Eddie Mort’s Dead Ringo will see the light of day for what is currently planned as 13 three-minute webisodes TV interstitials. Details on who, where and when to follow, but in the meantime get a load of production art previews at Eddie’s new tumblr: deadringoseries.tumblr.com.
Ninja, demons, snow monkeys? Cannot wait…
Tags: DEAD RINGO
…German collectible figurine experts Schleich!
Their newly released 3.5″ “Mysterious Ninja” from their Heroes line is a major throwback to the 80s, looking like the bastard love child of Sho Kosugi in Revenge of the Ninja and Tadashi Yamashita in American Ninja. Ornate straight swords, big dragon logo, gold-plated shuriken assortment across his chest right out of a mail order catalog, bright red stealth-unfriendly costume elements… could not get more retro.
They even gave him non-Japanese and/or non-shinobi weapons, like an ignorant or lazy 80s prop-master would have in a low-budget ninja-sploitation flick. Nice nunchucks, European stilettos and Persian re-curved bow pal.
Schleich has been making high-end animal figurines since the 50s. You’ll see their nature, horse and rider, dragon and knight and other non-property-based figures in toy boutiques, learning, art and book stores. Not sure if this is their first ninja, but they have done a pretty ornate Chinese dragon with a liquid-sword warrior set, so maybe they’re expanding their adventure stuff beyond Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean knock-offs.
The swords are removable, allowing for a more “authentic” reverse grip pose if you’re so inclined, and it stands perfectly on its own. The vinyl is flexible, but small parts make this not-so-child safe. This is more a collectible than a toy.
The “Mysterious Ninja” will set you back about $8, a bit pricey for a non-articulated figure, but worth it in my opinon.
As today is ‘Small Business Saturday’ seek out a higher-end toy or collectible store and shop independent.
Tags: Schleich Mysterious Ninja
