Anime Review: Ninja Collection 1

Ninja Collection

Studio: ILCA, DRAWIZ

Genre: Horror, Supernatural

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Ninja Collection is a short anime series set in modern-day Tokyo – something of a spin-off from another short horror series called Yamishibai (Japanese Ghost Stories), it follows in the same idea of bitesize mini-stories. The two share a similar distinctive style, with the animation seeming more like moving manga stills jerkily moving from one panel to the next with very little actual animation but the difference between the two is jarring. In Yamishibai, the effect is eerie with the drawings and movements conveying that sense of uncanny valley which unsettles the viewer. Something about how this is done in Ninja Collection however, just doesn’t work – it comes across more as clumsy and comedic and lacks any real sense of unease.

First, just to get it out of the way, this series is extremely short – the first episode clocks in at about four minutes in length including the ending animation. This first episode features a student in a classroom who watches in horror as a sinister smoke comes into the room, turning all his fellow students and teacher into eyeless zombie creatures. A scenario that could be effectively creepy, but in this sense, it doesn’t really get across that sense of fear. Something about the lacklustre voice acting and the clumsy animation makes it come across more goofy than anything else, effectively killing the creep factor. Whilst this might just be down to a case of a low budget, there’s just so little energy put into the end product that it just seems lazy.

If there is some sort of continuing story between the episodes, the first episode doesn’t give much away regarding this and only one of the characters seen at the end actually features in the episode, briefly. That would be fine if this was just a way of setting the scene but it also means that we have no real connection to keep watching the series. There was a good special effect used with the way the smoke filtered into the classroom but that is one of the few things I can say that worked well in this episode. The promo image for the show has a very clear, attractive art style but when you actually watch the show… it’s a very different art style and practically unrecognisable which seems a little like false advertising.

Overall, this is a show that even whilst having such a short run time, I can’t recommend it. I love horror series so I was hoping this one would scratch that itch for this anime season  but ultimately this was disappointing and the scariest thing about it was how bad it was.