|
In a neverworld that marries feudal Japan to some futuristic machine
age: The warriors of the Suwabei clan fight the robot ninjas of the Dark
Falcon - and are annihilated. Only Jiromaru (Hiroki Ida), a young warrior,
survives the ordeal, and from here on he sets out to have revenge, also
for his brother, who vanished during battle. Three years later: The
Suwabei clan is pretty much defeated, but in a final effort to turn the
fates of the war, it moves its new superweapon, an all powerful cannon,
towards the headquarters of the Dark Falcon. This would indeed be a
critical time to destroy the Dark Falcon's headquarters, because the
Bishop of Darkness (Shohei Yamamoto) is presently preparing to resurrect
the Dark Overlord (Masaaki Emori), the leader of the organisation. But the
Dark Falcon still has an ace up its sleeve, as it has kidnapped Princess
Saki of Suwabei (Eri Morishita) and now uses her as human shield. To
free the Princess without sacrificing the entire army and burying its
ambitious plans with it, the Suwabei hires mercenary Akagi (Hanbei Kawai)
to get her back accompanied only by five Suwabei warriors, Jiromaru one of
them. Of course, this little attack force suffers great losses in its very
first battle, and ultimately, only Akagi and Jiromaru survive, but they
are helped by Shiranui (Makoto Yokoyama), a mechanic ninjathat has gone
rogue and that eventually turns out to be made from a former Suwabei
warrior whose brain was wiped, but whose instinct still let him fight on
the side of good - and of course, eventually, Shiranui will turn out to be
what's left of Jiromaru's brother. Anyways, after much fighting, our
heroes make it to where Princess Saki is held, kill the Bishop of Darkness
and his head warrior Shoki (Mizuho Yoshida), free the princess, but flee
by some flying contraption, unable to prevent the Dark Overlord from being
resurrected ... and resurrected he is as some sort of giant robot that
pretty much grows out of Dark Falcon's headquarters. But this is where the
Subabei clan's wunder weapon comes into play, which blasts the Dark
Overlord-robot right from the face of the earth. In a way, Cyber
Ninja is great fun: Most of the robots look cool, the combination of
vintage Japanese architecture and futuristic technology is exhilarating
(and the blend is well-executed), and the battle scenes that combine
martial arts and high tech weaponry are maybe silly but also quite
entertaining. Yet Cyber Ninja is no masterpiece by far: Basically
it suffers from a way too formulaic plot, a lack of original plottwists
and a total absence of self-irony. And the many battle scenes seem tiring
after a while as well. In all, it's simply an age-old story in a new
outfit, a film that does more credit to its art designers than anyone
else, but it might still make for a good party movie!
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
find Cyber Ninja at adultvideouniverse.com
