Gnarly Ninja Robots – This Week in Anime

Discotek‘s long journey to restore this ridiculously entertaining dub is finally complete and is now available for streaming. Is Joe a slick enough dude to save an alien princess, find all the Ninja Robots and restore peace to outer space?

This series is streaming on RetroCrush and Amazon Prime

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Nicky

It can’t be all bad as long as it’s got NINJA ROBOTS in it! Today we’re talking about the new and old release of Ninja Warrior Tobikage. This out-of-this-world mecha series was produced in 1985 by Studio Pierrot has now been transported straight into modern day thanks to the hardworking folks at Discotek.

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.

Since RetroCrush has no closed captions for the dub, we’ll be using the (incomplete) Amazon Prime version for subtitle reasons. We wanted to replicate at least some of the magic presented by this truly cheesy show. This really let me appreciate all the work that Discotek put into trying to preserve this show. I took caps from both versions and you can definitely notice how much more vibrant it is. First one is the version on Amazon and the 2nd is the version on RetroCrush.

They even significantly cleaned up the dub audio compared to the previous version. The original had a sort of tinny-sound that was not playing nice with my audio processing issues.

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.

Well, the colonies are also pretty miserable compared to their previous lives on Earth. The construction workers say that jail is favorable than the daily grind of hard labor and omnipresent military rule.

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

We first see Joe and pals using guns to hunt rabbits for sport instead of taking his mandatory military exam. They carelessly throw their spoil at Jenny by means of negging her when she comes to lecture them, where we get our first amazing dub line of THIS. It’s a funny line in the dub but checking the sub it also highlights a sad reality that meat might not be highly available. Also wow, Joe is a real charmer (sarcasm).

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.

Having looked heavily at both versions for these six episodes, the dub isn’t actually that unfaithful to the original script as far I can tell. Like yeah, Joe is a hothead macho asshole in the original saying almost the exact same things here but adding the “2 Cool 4 School” ‘tude delivery to everything makes it much more ridiculous compared to the more straightforward original. It’s not quality but it’s very funny if you enjoy that kind of thing and get any sort of nostalgia from it.

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!

While we may be here to joke about the dub, we can still appreciate the artistry of the original. The bright blue of the city is very cool with the large UFO-shaped building overhanging everything. If anything, I’m really glad I was able to appreciate it this way where there was no way I could’ve before.

It’s not devoid of sakuga though. It may be stock but the transformation when Tobikage merges with Joe’s Gold Lion is very sleek, and there’s some small touches here and there in a way that’s nice for a 43 episode series.

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.

Okay but the fact that the whole reason Joe is doing anything is just cuz he finds the alien princess hot is very funny/exhaustingly typical for a dude of his time.

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.

Also, this lion has GUNS! Pew pew! Serious firepower.

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.

Don’t you just love it when guys just merge with you?

I gotta add I love Hazards intense “smokes 10 packs a day” voice in the dub. It’s very despicable. He’s unsubtle scum so it works.

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.

Or the little things like Joe’s insane laugh after Jenny his not-gf gets a little miffed at him for going along with this without any real reason to trust these new aliens.



“I do this all the time.” Yeah, buddy, sure ya do.

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?

I’m unsure what Joe’s character is supposed to be other than this somewhat unhinged boy. He’s not very likeable, but he is somewhat fun to watch. I wouldn’t describe the other characters as likeable either. Jenny gets the short-end from Joe a lot including being casually sexually harassed or insulted for not being feminine enough. His friends Kenji and Reel are both unlikeable and, in the early parts, can’t do anything. And I’m not sure Mark translates well because he’s sensible but whiny.

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.

It also takes a while to set up, really. It’s not until episode 3 that Princess Rowena gets captured to be used as a bargaining piece and he decides to go off to save her by himself even if all his pals are determined to help.

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.

The legendary hero, everyone.



Another thing I’ll note about the dub vs sub, it seems like not all the original music was licensed or that some of it was changed during localization for whatever reason. This was common for dubs at the time but it means some scenes are just totally tonally different on top of the delivery worse than some of the kids in my high school drama class.

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.

Speaking of, Joe still has no idea who the heck this mysterious Cybertron is or where he came from. Which is pretty rude of him. Joe should at least ask the name of the guy he keeps merging with.

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.

It’s also funny how flippantly the kids take Hazard even though he’s got an ENTIRE ARMY. Like, Joe at least has a robot but Reel and Kanji try to fill the same role as the kids from Gundam and just say ‘No you won’t!” when Hazard says he’s gonna execute them all. Like it’s a game. Maybe it’s just trying to soften a serious situation from feeling too dark. But also, I would not care if Reel died.




Kanji can stay but Reel can definitely be executed.

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

And that kind of dry sarcasm isn’t just invented from the dub. The whole show is just…like that!

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.

Also, here’s another question for you? Why do the robots have to be ninjas? No particular reason other than they look cool it seems. There’s no other reference to feudalism in this show, and we don’t even know if the main characters are Japanese, but they are ninjas, okay!

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.

They also sometimes have what seems to be blood!

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…

And then a big battle ensues, and Mike helps out. I really enjoy this part where Mike and Joe are JUST broin’ it up. And then your bro transforms into a dragon. Honestly, I rag on Joe’s delivery a lot but Mike’s voice acting is like 10x more bizarre. It’s so baffling and does his character no service, but also weirdly charming. That’s a lot of how I’d describe this show.




I wouldn’t call Ninja Robots remarkable, especially for it’s time. It’s not incompetent, I think the robots are cool. The plot and characters aren’t great, they’re pretty unlikeable, but weirdly charming?

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.

Oh totally, this show may not be good, but I get exactly why it’s remembered and what makes it memorable, and I’m excited to be able to enjoy it in it’s current state. It seems like something great to put on with a bunch of friends and couple of beers and just laugh and watch some robots shoot each other. And there’s many other shows that deserve the same treatment. Plus, I saw how tirelessly the people of Discotek had to search to find ALL the dub episodes, they might’ve seriously been lost to time if they didn’t do anything about it.

That might not mean much if you didn’t already know about those shows, like myself. But I still like being able to have them. Everyone who has ever created something, knows how much time and effort it goes into making things. Even a garbage anime or a garbage dub had tons of talented people just working their butt off like you couldn’t believe. And some people can recognize that, even if it doesn’t always show up in the end product. And that’s particularly why it sucks when we see stuff get lost, it’s like all that effort gets thrown in the trash. I’m not even that old and there’s some things I’m worried about just being totally forgotten. Every show that gets saved feels like a miracle, even Ninja Robots!

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.