So where have I been? True story… on my way to posting new features I was attacked by ninjas and they ate my homework!
But seriously, in the ‘good problem to have’ vein, occasionally you don’t have time to write about ninja pop culture because someone has actually hired you for a ninja pop culture gig.
Also, one’s energy level is taxed by mere physical, mental and emotional survival nowadays. Just as my region begins to recover from apocalyptic fires earlier in the year, there are now ammo-sexual gestapo-wannabe’s rolling through our neighborhoods false-arresting sinister babysitters and taco stand vendors, police are shooting tear gas canisters at YouTubers and the local economy is collapsing as multiple entertainment fields finally figure out all at once that streaming loses money. And then my car got stolen. But otherwise…
Being able to distract myself by tunneling in the ninja content mines has been a real life-saver. I’m under non-disclosure for the time being, but as soon as we’re able to talk about these things I’ll have some nifty news for you physical media collectors!
In the meantime, here’s catching up on some various odds and ends deserving your time, attention and dollars:
I’m in Love with Critical Ninja Theory!
For the past year or so, Rob Tuck has been writing a regular Substack newsletter on ninja history that I feel is absolute must-read stuff. I first ran into this while researching pre-1960s ninja pop culture, and he’s not only a wealth of that all-too-rare material, but also dives deep into everything from biased historians to pop media sources of popular myth to fantastical smutty kunoichi films.
It’s the sort of multi-faceted approach to the larger sphere of what ‘ninja’ is, without the overzealous slants too often taken by martial arts writers, military historians, film genre enthusiasts etc. and so forth — too often people trying to prove through history what they’ve always felt, and now want historical truths to back it up, wether the evidence merits it or not.
I cannot recommend this enough.
Radiance gives us more Raizo
The Radiance label did so well with the initial Shinobi no Mono trilogy Blu set they’ve committed to the next three films. Everyone grab this so they give us the last three, as we REALLY need Mission: Iron Castle in HD!
Purchase from Diabolik DVD here.
Samurai vs. Ninja VERSUS Ninja vs. Samurai
So one day not too long ago there was suddenly a channel on YouTube called “Samurai vs. Ninja” uploading tons of subtitled jidai-geki movies and TV, and just as quickly a knock off channel sprang up called “Ninja vs. Samurai” with a deep selection of grey-to-black market chambara and shinobi-cinema of their own. One might have been legitimately licensing material, the other not, or vice-versa, who knows, but lately they’ve both rebranded as “24/7 Samurai-Shinobi” and the other is just “Otaku” and a lot of movies and shows went away but some came back and new stuff still populates.
It’s dizzying, confounding and wonderful all at once, and who knows how long the historically over-protective Japanese studios will continue to be with their libraries outside of Japan. All I know is this — 10-15 years ago, guys like me used to spend $100+ a month with the likes of Kurotokagi-Gumi to get the same stuff floating around YouTube for free, so I’m down while it lasts. Although I could really do without the awful AI-generated thumbnails, JFC…
Samurai DVD and Far East Flix go Blu
While I’m damning myself by quasi-endorsing grey market third parties (if half this article disappears tomorrow I’ve come to my senses or been reminded by a paying client not to do this publicly) its interesting to note a lot of fan-sub disc hawkers are now offering short run and made-to-order Blu-Ray’s. I’ve sampled two of these so far — a Blu of Kaze no Bushi (Warrior of the Wind) which looked absolutely great, and a second of Castle of Owls (’63) which was disappointingly dark, inky and drab of color compared to previous DVD-R’s I’ve had forever.
HD mastering is a crapshoot — if you know what you’re doing the results are superior, if you don’t know or in too many cases care, you end up with a really super high resolution copy of what was a bad image in the first place, and that does more damage than good for a movie’s posterity. We’re living in a time when a small boutique label passionately invested in a niche genre can generate a better looking print of a rarity than that title has ever received before. Meanwhile a multinational media conglomerate studio will lazily AI up-rez their library for a result so awful its laughable, and serial double-dippers with too much faith in corporations are getting burned bad.
So let’s see where this all goes…
New Masterverse “Ninjor” really delivers!
I was never a fan of Masters of the Universe back in the 80s — I was too old for the cartoon, and I was frustrated at how Conan it all was but wasn’t Conan, but it was, so meh… BUT, needless to say I had a Ninjor on my desk forever. I got the retro-styled re-issue years ago too, and now we have the super-high-falootin’ Masterverse/New Eternia edition hitting shelves, and it’s pretty damn great.
The fantasy elements inherent in the He-Man realm overlay a basic muscle-ninja figure and whether or not this was intentional, the 2025 Ninjor feels like something right out of a 1980s Kadowkawa production like Legend of the Eight Samurai. He’s also right at home on your Mortal Kombat shelf or he could even be a ‘roided-up big-boy cousin to your GI Joe Classified ninjas.
Not Just MUTA, but Muta with MIST!
There was a point in the 1980s when the WWF had gotten too cartoony, then got literally cartoony, and burgeoning cable TV gave us other options like the blood-soaked “real shit” of World Class Professional Wrestling from Texas. That’s where I fell in love with The Great Kabuki, and in the 90s that would re-kindle with his spiritual ‘son’ The Great Muta in WCW.
Muta did a lot of Kabuki’s schtick – the ninja hood ring entrance drip, the garish face paint, spraying poisonous green mist in opponents faces, etc. but he added speed, severity, acrobatics and athleticism that made him a living video game character. Now from Mattel we get this phenomenal nostalgic action figure complete with decorative hood and an actual cloud of mist that fits into his mouth. Just superb.
Get it at Ringside Collectibles
A Rainbow of Lady Ninja from Lady Jaye
One of the smartest things GI Joe: A Real American Hero creator Larry Hama did was inject ninja into the already over-the-top military goings-on. It gave years more life to the franchise than it would have enjoyed otherwise, in comic book, animated and action figure form alike. After the ground-breaking Storm Shadow, the red-clad kunoichi Jinx was probably the most popular ninja character. She and her re-painted Cobra counterpart Vypra, possessed distinctly Western qualities of lazy pan-Asian-isms — a costume half Japanese–half Chinese, kung-fu weapons and Japanese swords, etc. It all made for a character that was essentially a hot babe who shopped exclusively at Asian World of Martial Arts, and I was fully on board.
Recently, independent niche toy-makers have been creating short run bespoke versions of these old 80s toys, exploring alternate color schemes and dream-figure combination never done by Hasbro back in the day. Lady Jaye Toys is one such vendor, cranking out versions of the Jinx/Vypra figure in Night Force colors, Cobra colors, all sorts of variants that look totally consistent with the vintage line. There’s even cross-pollenated stuff like Game of Death yellow body suit variants. Love it! And I dig supporting these indie makers, too.
Shop their eBay store for the latest offerings here.
So stay tuned…
In the coming weeks I’ll be posting a long-form interview/podcast I did with a great martial arts movie channel on YouTube, and probably TWO release dates of the for-now secret work coming to fruition.
Happy to be a source of shining good deeds in a weary, weary world.
Keep safe out there everybody, and try not to be dicks to anyone, the world doesn’t need to be any worse.
Keith J. Rainville — July 2025
P.S. — I made a primitive little video collecting the ninja gorilla scenes from the original “Time of Apes” TV series Saru No Gundan. Who doesn’t love ninja suits over gorilla suits??? Enjoy…
