NINJA SCROLL the series – volume 2: Dangerous Path

If you thought that previous volume was too brutal and too weird, don’t buy “Dangerous Path”, you won’t have the stomach for it. Story continues to be a collection of duels between Jubei and various creatures, starting with amusing episode ‘ The Diamond Child’. You could almost call it a ‘comic relief’ part - nothing deadly here except superb direction by Tatsuo Sato.

This extraordinary skill of his saves the volume, I’ll tell you why: when you have vampire-man with metal wings sucking blood from tree-lady’s private area and ninja-spirit in form of an eye that invades dead bodies in gruesome fashion, you need REALLY good director to present it, otherwise no one would enjoy watching such weirdness. As sick as it sounds, Sato makes it even pleasureable. Shot angles, cuts and superb Madhouse animation change disgusting into ‘just creepy’, no, ‘a bit too creepy’ , but still surviveable.

You have to be really hooked to the story to endure all those battles and action-scenes. In “Dangerous Path” there’s nothing else. Honestly speaking, the film itself wasn’t much of an epic itself, but here focus is only on Jubei. So much that he even gets separated from rest of the group and, of course, keeps on killing his way through episodes.
So yes, although framework of the series is excellent and characters are magnificent
(courtesy of gentlemen Kawajiri and Inoue), scripts for this volume are far too thin. Absolutely amazing direction, animation and storyboard keep this series afloat. That and the unmistakeable charm of roaming ninja, young thief, old crook and beautiful princess.

Did I mention that music is terrible again?