This Week in Anime

Gnarly Ninja Robots

Jean-Karlo

Well Nicky, it's 2022! It's a new year, it's a fresh start for all of us. How about we kick it off with a look to the future, via an old show?

The future is in the past, and how bad could future past be, right?

There's a history behind this show; dubbed in English by a studio in Miami, Ninja Robots never actually aired in the United States—it only aired in Australia and the Philippines. Like many of the beloved works Discotek has license-rescued, they went through a lot of trouble to recover the dub that was thought to be lost. Discotek went above and beyond to restore the Ninja Robots dub specifically for fans of bizarre old dubs, which is why we're covering it instead of Ninja Warrior Tobikage, even though both are streaming on RetroCrush.

It truly is endearing how much Discotek did to restore Ninja Robots, but those guys already had my heart when they license rescued Eat-Man in 2016 (and released it on my birthday, lol). In an era where media archival is a tremendous issue, it's nice to see Discotek making sure the weird, bizarre stuff is still kept alive and in good condition.

But where does that leave Ninja Robots? Well, in a weird place. Most people are familiar with the Voltron or Robotech school of 80s dubs where shows were completely rewritten. Think Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs. Ninja Robots... doesn't do that. The names are mostly kept with minor changes—Joe is still Joe, Mark is still Mark, only Rennie is now Jennie. The plot is largely identical, too. It's to the point where even the intro is kept... kinda. Much like with Sailor Moon in the 90s, the Ninja Robots dub kept the Tobikage intro melody but changed up the lyrics into expositing about the main plot as sung by a very low-rent guy trying too hard to be David Bowie. It's... something to experience.

Right off the bat, the story feels very influenced by Mobile Suit Gundam. It takes place on a Martian colony, ruled over by a military despot. General Director Hazard forces anyone over the age of 16 to work in the colonies, be it in the military or in construction.

Earth isn't much better; ongoing civil unrest has reached dangerously violent levels. Case in point: the Statue of Liberty is now rubble.

I cannot understate just how much that line is made by the completely bizarre-o delivery of the dub. Like, it's English and it's spoken by someone who speaks English natively. Maybe the guy can't act, but it's not said incorrectly, it's just got the delivery of some weird alien. Is it meant to be a joke? Is he serious about food shortages? Am I supposed to laugh? Because I am anyway but I don't know if I'm supposed to.

When the Military Police finds Joe being a little truant in a bar, they make to arrest him and his buddies, so Joe beats a trail to the desert where he comes upon a crashed alien ship set upon by other alien robots.

Immediately, Hazard and his stooge Doc Tock (not a doctor, his name is just Doc) think to take advantage of the situation. After all, aliens haven't been found in 200 years, but now that they've arrived they might as well see what they can steal from them! It seems even Hazard resents Earth's leaders for forcing him to oversee Mars.

Also, 1980s references to American science fiction! I had to pause to catch it, but yes: that's the Enterprise! It seems a lot of people making anime liked Star Trek as much as folks making Star Trek: The Next Generation loved anime!

Studio Pierrot is a workhorse of the industry, currently working on Boruto while also producing the upcoming fourth season of Kingdom. And nothing hits like those old painted backgrounds for science fiction shows. The actual fights might be stock footage and shortcuts for animation, but when this show wants to look good, it looks good.

We're getting a little ahead of ourselves—see, the evil red ninja robots annihilate Hazard's forces, and they turn their sights to the alien ship. Joe manages to steal his way onboard where he meets what appears to be an alien princess (who is a total space-babe). But they literally can't speak the same language, so they just leave Joe to fend for himself.

I know they used to say "Earth girls are easy", maybe Joe thought the rules applied to Andromedan? At any rate, Joe is followed by an evil robot into a gold lion-shaped robot, and finds he can pilot it. So he goes on a rampage fighting off the other evil robots.

Yes! A random ninja robot also appears from nowhere and merges with Joe's robot, turning it into a robot lion that mops up the rest of the alien army. The show dubs this robot "Cybertron", but we learn precious little about them.

It's just the ninja art of merging. Mind, body and soul, and what not. Just two dudes being dudes.

The owners of the ninja robots—the good ones—are a little miffed that Joe somehow managed to make one work, and capture him along with Mark and Jennie. But none of them can get the robots to move again, so they're held prisoner by them. Meanwhile, Hazard is contacted by the leader of the evil alien robots—Grathan of the Kroken. Grathan strikes a deal with Hazard to give him weapons in exchange for the capture of Rowena the Alien Princess (the intro sings about her, remember?), and Hazard all too happily agrees in the hopes of backstabbing Grathan.

Again, this isn't anything that the subtitles can quite do justice—this is just a bizarre, bizarre dub. You just have to hear Hazard yourself to grasp how much he sounds like he's about to get his voicebox cut out so he has to use one of those weird electric buzzers on his throat.

You forgot the part where the guards saw him punch the wall like some angry teenager...

...wait, on second thought, that's perfectly in-character for Joe, what was I thinking?

It's also worth pointing out that in the first six episodes we've watched there is terribly little going on: Joe gets the lion's share of the attention, so what little mediocrity there is to be had from Jenny and Mark isn't much to go off of. To wit, Jenny and Mark use their robots all of once.

Joe manages to rescue Rowena with the help of Cybertron, while Hazard and Grathan settle into the roles of the evil bickering married couple, constantly trying to one-up each other while helping each other fight Rowena, Joe, and company. Grathan's army was ordered by King Annex to start a war on her planet in Andromeda because after a millennia of peace, their people had lost, ah... their "generating instincts". Nothing like a war to start a fire in people's loins, yeah? Ladorio, Rowena's father, insisted it was just overreliance on technology. At any rate, Rowena was tasked with heading to Earth to find the legendary ninja, whom could possibly pilot the Ninja Robot and fight off Annex's armies while also teaching the Andromedans how to bone. Rowena's expression says it all.

Yeah, the fight scenes where Joe's robot transforms just have really generic Casio music playing that sounds like it's trying too hard to be royalty-free adventure music. Not the kind of thing you'd set to a show about giant robots, more like something you'd play over Crundle Quest V: The Crystals of Gingledoof.

Jenny and Mark seem to care even less, it's almost like Joe's the only one who sees him.

He just wants to smell those mountains, man.

A daring rescue is launched which involves crashing the Andromedan ship into Hazard's base. Hazard takes it disarmingly well.

The rescue goes off without a hitch but even jackass Joe manages to acknowledge that Cybertron, who merges his mech with Jenny's in order to wipe out Grathan's mechs, is a "real ninja". In pursuit of other real ninja, the gang heads to the Martian polar ice caps. It seems there was another persecuted group of humans living there in resistance to Hazard's regime, and it's hoped they can tell the cast more about the legendary ninja.

I'm more bothered that there always seems to be the one class of ninja leading them. We don't know if these ninja robots are piloted or pseudo-organic (they have creepy mouths that shoot teeth and breathe fire), or what. But I guess you have to have mass-produced mooks.

The Polar Martian welcoming committee isn't very nice and... so, like... they act as ninja and do all kinds of ninja tricks, but they never call themselves ninja or even cop to being the ninja the Andromedans are looking for. They just do some ninja-like tricks. But they're not ninja. That includes this guy here whose life Joe saves, Damian. He's a ninja who talks like a surfer. Hey, it was the '80s...

It definitely is. Our six episodes end with the crew finally getting an engine and charting a course for Earth, and while I can't say I enjoyed my time with Ninja Robots a whole bunch... I'm glad it's here and I'm glad it's available. For every time a current shonen series is ported to a new streaming site, there are a bunch of other shows that get forgotten purely by accident or clerical error. People joke about Discotek only handling stuff like Galaxy Defender Linguini, a (fake) mecha show that only aired on Italian public access television—but Ninja Robots is the perfect example of that. Right now, I work with people at ANN who grew up watching this and were excited to hear this being brought back on DVD. This show, and many other obscure oddities like it, matter to a lot of people. Which is why it's important to keep this stuff around. It can vanish just as easily.

It's not just Ninja Robots that they tirelessly sought out to restore and rerelease, either! Discotek alum (and former Answerman) Justin Sevakis went through hell trying to get all the materials for Cyborg 009. And that might not even be the hardest thing they did; the folks at Discotek tracked down the third season for Medabots and even managed to rediscover the lost masters for Project A-Ko. That's a lot of anime archeology, and I don't think Discotek gets enough love for how much work they put into this stuff.

Ninja Robots is what a beloved buddy of mine called a "museum piece". Shows just aren't made like this anymore. They don't look like this, they aren't written like this—and they definitely aren't dubbed like this. But we're lucky we get to see how this stuff used to be, and we're lucky that it's so easily available. So check it out, it's worth a goof, just know that it can vanish whenever. Which I guess is a good mood to take into 2022—enjoy what you have while you have it.