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On July 24, a horizontal action game called "Ninja Slayer: Burning Shin-Saitama" was launched on the Steam platform, followed by "mostly negative" player reviews and all kinds of weird words written by fans of the original work in the comment section.

As a work that has been around for some time, it is half a miracle that "Ninja Slayer" can wait for an official adaptation game in 2024. Why is it half? Because the other half is ruined by the crude production of this cheap game:

Poor handling, perfunctory map design, and even the voice acting that should have injected soul into the game was absent. If it weren't for the art and dialogues that restored some of the charm of the original, the game's already bad reputation would have continued to sink.

The poor performance of "Ninja Slayer: Burning of Shin-Saitama" may not be surprising. After all, high-quality fan-oriented games are scarce. However, the hidden popularity of "Ninja Slayer" in China has been further proven with the release of the game. Even the little kids in the dojo can speak a few standard "Ninja-killing words" when they see the word "Ninja". This is probably one aspect of the Dharma Ending Age.

The phenomenon of "the meme is more popular than the original work" is not uncommon for Ninja Slayer. In 2010, several Japanese netizens, as a translation team, started a serialization journey of Ninja Slayer on Twitter and other websites. According to these translators, Ninja Slayer is a novel written by an American author. In order not to destroy the atmosphere of the original work, they used a rigid and stiff machine translation style when translating, and the main purpose is to confuse people.

Excerpt from the original article "RAGE•AGAINST•Tofu#7"

The use of meaningless foreign words in the text and the use of extremely prankster style to describe quite serious scenes have become a major factor in the viral spread of "Ninja Slayer". Those brainwashing and magical words and sentences made this work quickly popular on Twitter, and the fans' behavior of "using memes to communicate" has also derived the popular Ninja Slayer language.

However, as the popularity of the work gradually increased, some readers began to wonder: such a puzzling writing style and setting are inevitably suspected of performance art - so is there really a so-called English original of "Ninja Slayer" in this world?

At that time, there was a theory that "the original work of "Ninja Slayer" did not actually exist."

It is not surprising that readers would make such an argument, because there are indeed not many novels that would write the four big words "Preface" in the first paragraph of the entire work. Whether you can understand it or not, just read it.

It is also a feature of Ninja Slayer to mention characters and settings that have never appeared before in a casual way.

Of course, the English original of "Ninja Slayer" definitely exists, and it has been serialized since the 1990s.

Judging from the few pieces of information left on the Internet today, "Ninja Slayer" should be a novel co-authored by BRADLEY BOND and PHILIP Ninj@ MORZEZ. BRADLEY BOND has a nephew who lives in Japan and he usually sends him a lot of photos and videos of Japan. The two Americans who have never been to Japan relied on these materials and the inherent ideas in their minds to piece together the bizarre world in "Ninja Slayer".

In Ninja Slayer, you can enjoy a mess of all kinds of Japanese stereotypes, such as the polite greetings that ninjas must make before a fight, and the format must be correct, it must be "Domo, XX=san", because greeting each other before a fight is a sacred and inviolable act;

Or after the battle, the loser is usually required to recite a haiku. If he dies too quickly and doesn't have time to recite a haiku, he must at least shout "Sayunara" before exploding and scattering.

Once you match the author's brain waves and accept this kind of nonsense and spoof style, the essence of "Ninja Slayer" will be self-evident. It's a pity that most passers-by may still find it difficult to accept this kind of expression that is full of brain waves.

For example, during the game development of Ninja Slayer: Burning Shin Saitama, a developer working overseas said that he didn’t understand why the advertising sign in the game had an ambiguous slogan like “Now selling good dogs”.

In response, the team leader, who is a die-hard fan of Ninja Slayer, replied: "I don't understand it either."

The slogan was copied from the comics

As I said, whether you can understand it or not, just watch it.

So when "Ninja Slayer" was adapted into an animation in 2015, the animation production company Trigger chose a very confusing and shoddy adaptation method, which made it completely unclear what the production team and the characters in the play wanted to do.

There is also a saying that there is a shortage of funds for animation production, and there is no money to make it like this.

Perhaps thanks to the animation's highly abstract expression techniques, "Ninja Slayer" gained a fairly good wave of popularity after the animation was broadcast. And it should be said that the animation's "serious and perfunctory" is a perfect match for the tone of the original work.

I believe that those of you with ninja dynamic vision saw a wonderful fight.

But no matter how much you try to make up for it, you can't change the fact that the "Ninja Slayer" animation is a "cheap animation" from beginning to end. After the first episode of the animation was aired, only 30% of the viewers on the Japanese Niconico barrage website were willing to give it a positive review, which shows that the reputation of this work at the time was basically the same as that of "Ninja Slayer: Burning Shin-Saitama" today.

However, with the completion of the last episode of the animation, Niconico's audience approval rating rebounded to 90%. Most of the viewers who had patiently followed the entire series retracted their previous harsh reviews and gave positive reviews to the "Ninja Slayer" animation.

The reason why the animation of "Ninja Slayer" has gained a good reputation is certainly related to the outstanding ability of Tetsu Amamiya, who served as the director, but the meticulous character portrayal and the ups and downs of the plot development of the original work are definitely also a great contribution. The story of "Ninja Slayer" is not complicated. To put it bluntly, it is the story of our protagonist Ninja Slayer who kills ninjas all the way to avenge his family under the structural oppression of the cyberpunk worldview.

Tear off the absurd and funny outer packaging, and savor the serious plot mixed with black humor. Everything is impermanent and everything is the result of cause and effect. "Ninja Slayer" writes one Zen-filled revenge drama after another from the perspective of two Americans. On the premise that the story is exciting enough, flaws like "PPT animation" are not such a serious problem.

Although the animation has always received mixed reviews among fans of the original work due to excessive deletions, the publicity effect of the animation is still obvious to all. But after so many years, "Ninja Slayer" has become a cultural symbol and a few buzzwords, but there is no news about the second season of the animation.

Unfortunately, the influence of the "Ninja Slayer" IP may not be able to support the investment in the second season of the animation. The official actually responded in 2021, saying that there was an opportunity to produce a second season a few years ago, but unfortunately the several animation companies contacted at the time did not have schedules, and the animation production was delayed again and again. As of today, the plan for the second season is probably dead.

Another more miserable situation is that there is no sign of the physical version of the fourth novel of "Ninja Slayer" being published so far. The main reason may be that the investors cannot see the commercial prospects of "Ninja Slayer". After all, even the long-awaited official adaptation game was taken over by an independent game team. If the game "Ninja Slayer: Burning Shin-Saitama" can be really done well, it may be a topic worthy of attention.

Many years later, "Ninja Slayer" still maintains its lukewarm status, but the whole world has quietly undergone earth-shaking changes.

In the new anime schedule in July this year, there is a funny anime called "Kanoko, Noko, Noko, Eyeing the Tigers", which is similar in style to "Ninja Slayer", and is mainly based on the exaggerated camp style of creating wonders. But unlike "Ninja Slayer", this anime exploded the Internet with a catchy and brainwashing music before it was broadcast, and grasped the traffic code in this abstract era.

No one can say whether the animated remake of "Ninja Slayer" can dominate the hot searches for three days in this era. At least in China, with the craze of weird words set off by "Baki" and "Kaitora", Ninja Slayer language has finally shown signs of returning to the public eye. If abstract culture does not invade every social platform equally, the resurgence of "Ninja Slayer" in China may always be a false proposition.

The popularity of the meme is greater than the popularity of the work. This is not the tragedy of "Ninja Slayer". Perhaps it was just born in the wrong era, or it is still in the period of accumulating strength for a breakthrough.

At the moment when the official has not taken any action, the spread of "Ninja Slayer" can only rely on the efforts of fans. Just like the birth of "Ninja Slayer: Burning Shin-Saitama", it was because the "Ninja Slayer" fans in the production team realized that no one was making an official adaptation of the game. Since no one was willing to do it, it would be better to do it themselves, although the final result was not very satisfactory.

The transmission of memes requires accumulation over time and a suitable explosion point. The popularity of "Baki" depends on Prince Kaihuang's Anko, and the popularity of "Kaito" depends on the explanation of the Buddha Bead God of War. Can "Ninja Slayer", which has a similar temperament to the above two, wait for its own explosion opportunity? Let's leave the answer to time to test.