Ninja Gaiden was one of the first videogames to have "cinema scenes" in between stages to flesh out the story, so it would seem natural for it to spawn an anime. And it did, although we western fans never got a chance to see it at the height of the series' popularity . Anyway, through the magic of other people having a lot of free time on their hands, you can now easily watch the Ninja Gaiden OVA fansubbed via the internet. I bought my copy in DVD form from eBay a few years ago and just rewatched it, and I figured I'd review it while it was still fresh in my mind. Relatively fresh anyway, most of the incidental character's names elude me.
The story starts with a man being pursued through dark New York streets by a pair of weird masked creatures with blades. The guy turns out to be Ryu Hayabusa in street clothes, and when he gets to a nice open spot he uses the Dragon Sword to make a bloody mess out of the attackers, who keep coming after taking an incredible amount of damage. After he finally puts them down, he goes home to his antique shop which he runs with Irene Lew the former CIA agent, who is really mousy and helpless in this story. He doesn't tell her about the monsters and acts all distant, telling her she need to go stay with her family. The next day she complains about their relationship to her friend, a reporter who's dating Robert T. Sturgeon from NG2. It seems the monsters didn't eat old Jungle Rat Rob after all! He runs a detective agency these days, and the reporter-girlfriend starts nagging him to make Ryu be nicer to Irene. Then she goes off to cover a press conference for a scientist who claims to have the cure for cancer- it turns out, this guy is pretty shady.
Following up a lead from a Professor Bucky-Wise (seriously! It's in English on his door and everything), Ryu, Robert TS and the reporter investigate his home lab and discover the scientist is doing a lot of genetic experiments, he made the bionoids that attacked Ryu in the beginning using part of Jashin's body (the last boss in NG1). They want his sword to harness the life energy it holds to make better monsters, or something. Ryu tears the place apart and later the bionoids attack his antique shop and kidnap Irene. I think you can guess how the rest goes- Ryu, Rob and their buddies raid the scientist's main building and kill a lot more creepy crawlers in rich red gouts of late-80's anime blood before the big showdown. Incidentally, Ryu cuts down a whole lot of the same monsters he had such trouble with in the beginning in one stroke- either he's getting better or the later batches needed to bake a little longer.
The animation is pretty good, and it's obvious the filmmakers watched a lot of American 80's action movies when they were plotting this out. There are a lot of car chases, motorcycles crashing through plate glass windows, male bonding and heavy ordnance. I was a little disappointed with Irene's weakling personality which doesn't fit with what we know about her already, and also that Ryu didn't wear his traditional NES getup. Instead he has an outfit with long sleeves, spikes on each shoulder and no full head ninja mask. He wears the part over his face for about two seconds before taking it off. Interestingly, I saw the original Japanese box for NG3 the other day, and it's Ryu wearing the suit he has in this OVA. The plot about bionoids seems also to lead into NG3, and Ryu's Dead Or Alive bio lists his occupation as curio shop owner, so I guess this movie is canon.
If you're even half the Ninja Gaiden fan I am, I recommend you see it. It's only an hour, and not bad for its age. Good fights, good animation, so-so story and character development.
