We’ve been basking in a Golden Age of 1960s-era Japanese ninja media becoming available for the first time in English, and this awesome run continues with a bang as AnimEigo is now shipping the 3-disc blu of Shirato Sanpei‘s 1968 anime SASUKE.
NOTE: Screen caps below are lesser quality than the actual HD video you’ll see on your TVs
By 1968, the mid-20th century Japanese ninja boom was approaching its 10th anniversary — a long run for any film genre — but things were definitely starting to wane. The kids and teens that were fervent in the early 60s when it all really took off were now discovering girls in high school, entering college or getting their first jobs. The flagship Shinobi-no Mono franchise was in the rear-view, and the gritty black & white photographic style that defined both that franchise and the entire genre was facing the all color film and TV future of the 1970s.
However, kids audiences could always be lured by action, violence and lead character they could relate to or wanted to be themselves. Sarutobi Sasuke was that very character, dating back to the chap book mania of the initial ninjutsu boom of the 1910s-20s. A re-imagining of Sasuke by manga legend Shirato Sanpei, whose Ninja Bugeicho (1959-1962) was probably the major ignitor of the new ninja craze would seemingly be a no-brainer to add years of life to the bankability of the ninja genre. The manga had a successful run from 1961-67, paralleled by his other bestselling ninja properties Kamui — Sanpei’s shinobi version of the angsty teen, and the axe-wielding ninja kid Watari. Seriously, in the mid-60s this was just sitting in a cave somewhere generating multiple iconic ninja comics by the metric ton.
Watari became an insane live action film in 1966, Kamui would be adapted for anime in 1969, and Sasuke came to TVs a a few months earlier. Why Kamui and Sasuke didn’t get the same big-budget live action treatment Watari did, or what took so long to bring the anime series to fruition is a head scratcher. Both were good enough to be a shot in the arm to the waning ninja movement, but maybe they were too little too late in the bigger picture. OR, maybe they were all ahead of their time for the all-kids oriented phase of it all when things went Tokusatsu with Akakage, Lion Maru and Henshin Ninja Arashi…
None of that speculation dilutes how utterly enjoyable SASUKE is on BluRay more than a half century later. All the best ninja tropes are here — seemingly magical powers given practical explanations, superhuman athletics, impossible shuriken skills, multi-colored ninja suits and hood designs based on clan allegiance, different specialized bosses to defeat, etc. We’ve got Hattori Hanzo, Sanada Yukimura vs the Tokugawa, the ‘Men of Iga’, Koga, Fuma, Negoro and beyond. This anime is in that amazing sphere of radically different treatments for the same story, done dozens and dozens of times previous — you’re basically watching the same character line-up and historical scenario seen in Renegade Ninjas, Sasuke & His Comedians, Ninjutsu Osaka-Jo and Sanada-Jo, Samurai Spy, etc. x100…
Then there’s the thoroughly Japanese trait of undulating between the utterly juvenile and the jaw-droppingly adult — its high-register kawaii slapstick one minute, then bloody massacres the next. [Trigger Warning for animal lovers!] At one point Sasuke’s living in a cave eating the meat from a mastodon frozen in a glacier, the next he’s contemplating the existential dread of being an orphan driven by revenge. All the while, grown-ass adults are trying to eliminate him, with extreme prejudice, and the body-count for this grade-school aged ninja boy just keeps growing…
Sanpei’s take on the much-adapted pillar character flips the script a bit — instead of our hero having the nickname of “Sarutobi” (the leaping monkey) due to his unique acrobatic movements, the name instead refers to Sanada Yukimura’s elite ninja squad known as the “Sarutobis,” with Sasuke being the eventual last-standing inheritor of their outré style. After Hanzo’s evil ninja kill his mother, he wanders the land, avoiding evil ninja bosses and their gimmick-skills-of-the-week, and does right whenever he encounters those in need. He is mentored by big burly square-jawed ninja Daisuke, who is revealed to be his long-lost father.
The astoundingly wide-ranging character design is lifted right off the pages of the manga — both in print and on screen Sanpei had to variate common ninja costumes enough to be interesting from week to week. The action is explosive and ferocious — especially considering the limited animation possible on budgets of the day — with plenty of exotic ninja weapons and crazy combat techniques on display. The music often sounds lifted from a Spaghetti Western and you’ll have the main theme stuck in your head for days.
The picture quality is remarkable [again please note the above screen caps don’t do the actual HD blu justice] — in fact for someone raised watching this sort of show broadcast on UHF to an antenna-dependent wood cabinet ancient TV, it is almost too good. For new audiences the transfer quality is as good as anything new they’re watching, save for the 60s partial animation of course. I believe this series was remastered a while back in Japan for a box set release, and they gave sound and picture A LOT of love. AnimEigo goes an extra mile for our version, providing a really interesting English dub track option. Part of the English sounds new, part vintage, possibly from an effort to syndicate the show in a previous decade?
AnimEigo’s marketing for this set leans on SASUKE being an ancestral property to the now more well-known version of Sarutobi seen in Naruto. That’s probably the best angle to take nowadays but by now we are, what?, a decade and half past the apex of Naruto‘s popularity world-wide, so who knows if that will help. I’ve tried forever to get Naruto fans to look back on the old movies and books that spawned the characters they now love with very little success, so I’m regrettably doubting the interest is there. Conversely, the material is really kiddie and primitive in a 60s way for jaded old farts who would otherwise be standing in their yards yelling at clouds. I just pray they find a big and sustainable audience somewhere in between.
I know for a fact that if you’re on this site reading this, YOU are that audience, so go do your job ninjamaniacs!
SASUKE: The Complete Television Series is 3-discs, containing 29 episodes (nearly 800 minutes of kids animation ninja slaughter), with options for either English or subtitled Japanese audio. It currently retails in the $40 ballpark, and as secondary market prices for sold out essentials like the Shinobi no Mono sets from Radiance illustrate, act now before its too late.
VN’s preferred vendor for this is DiabolikDVD.com, and while you’re there, sign up for their email newsletter because I have a vague Nostradamus-like premonition that they’ll have some sort of good news for old ninja movie lovers sometime in the next few months…
Keith J. Rainville — November 2025
