When the ‘House of Ninjas’ series was released, I was excited to see it. 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and the Internet was loving it. It leads to me having high expectations. After watching it, it was hard for me to admit that it was not as good as I hoped it would be.
The Shinobi Problem
‘House of Ninjas’ is a story about a ninja family, the Tawaras. They worked for the government for secret missions until six years ago, the eldest son, Gaku, died in a battle.
The Tawaras retired since then. The father, Soichi, runs a brewery business and forbids his family from returning to their ninja lives again. Unfortunately his family is still secretly doing so. The mother, Yoko, uses her ninja skills to shoplift. The sister, Nagi, commits high-profile museum theft. The youngest son, Riku, is unaware of his family’s secret ninja lives. The second-oldest son of the family, Haru, is burdened with guilt because the assailant he spared six years ago, ended up killing his brother Gaku. He’s been keeping this secret for years.
At a first glance, this is an interesting premise. Each of the family members has their own conflict that could only be resolved as a family. However, the execution was not as strong as I hoped.
Questionable Family Theme
The thematic core of this series is family. However, the family did not spend as much time interacting with each other as I hoped. Haru spends too much time away from the family with his love interest Karen, doing their little journalism adventure together. Nagi spends most of her time grieving on Gaku’s death alone. Riku spends the majority of his screen time training with his grandmother, Taki. By the way, Riku and Taki barely did anything that had a huge impact on the story at all. They never really did anything impactful together, as a family (until only the last episode). Only the story of Soichi and Yoko working on their trust issues was interesting enough to be watched.
Lack Of Action Sequences
Another issue that is lacking in this series is the action. When I watch a series named the ‘House of Ninjas’, I am expecting loads of ninja and martial art shenanigans. Unfortunately, for each episode, the fighting sequences only lasted from three to five minutes. Never lasted more than 10. And the fight scenes in this series are slow-paced, weak, short, and poorly choreographed. It makes me question, is this merely the ‘Room of Ninjas’?
Poorly Executed Twists
Another issue that I had is the attempt at executing the plot twist. Gaku is actually alive–I have no problem with it being predictable. But his narrative of turning to the dark side is very poorly executed.
Fuma is the cult leader that stabbed Gaku in the heart and threw him into the ocean where his leg was chopped off by the blade of a ship’s propeller. Gaku somehow survived. And then Fuma took Gaku to a grave. Fuma said, “This is the grave of the person that the government ordered you to kill. His only sin is being in love”. ‘Being in love’, by the way, means that he’s loving his secret affair and cheated on his wife. Based on that grave visit, Gaku said, “Yeah, the government is really corrupt. Let me be a terrorist and betray my family, no problem”.
Another ‘plot twist’ that I find ridiculous is when the Tawara family was trying to find out Fuma’s grand evil plan. One of Fuma’s men was captured and even after being tortured, he won’t talk. His accomplices then set him free from being detained. The Fuma’s man then said, “Don’t worry guys, I tell them nothing about our ‘Eclipse’ plan”. His accomplices took off their masks, revealing that they’re actually Soichi and Yoko in disguise. They were like, “Hehe… we fooled ya”, and left the place.
The entire time I was wondering why they reveal their identity so soon? They still don’t know anything about their evil plan other than its title.
Another thing that remains a mystery to me is the point of the mission that got Gaku ‘killed’. The Tawara family was tasked to save a politician from Fuma’s clan. But the thing is, in the last episode, it was revealed that the politician herself was a member of Fuma’s clan. That makes me wonder why Fuma kidnapped his own people and risked the lives of his own clan fighting the Tawara family in a pointless battle.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that this show could’ve been better had they made this series with a better pace, include more interactions among the family members, and crank up the violence in their fighting sequence. I really wanted to love this series because it seems like everyone is enjoying it. Because of its flaws, I had no choice but to rate this series 3 out of 10.