Black Magic Hijacks the Samurai Movie

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MOVIE REVIEWS
Ninja Wars
–

Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Year Released: 1982, 2026 Blu-ray
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: Kosei Saito
Writer: Ei Ogawa, based on the novel by Futaro Yamada
Cast: Hiroyuki Sanada, Noriko Watanabe, Jun Miho, Sonny Chiba, Akira Nakao, Mikio Narita, Hiroshi Tanaka, Yuki Kazamatsuri
Where to Watch: available September 29, 2026. Pre-order your copy here: www.toyrobotvideo.com, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: Martial arts movies have never automatically been my thing, which makes the ones that completely abandon common sense a lot easier to appreciate. NINJA WARS apparently reached the same conclusion. Kosei Saito's 1982 fantasy takes ninjas, feudal politics, romance, prophecy, sorcery, grotesque villains, bodily transformation, copious blood, and a young Hiroyuki Sanada, throws everything into the same pot, and never worries too much about whether any sane person would have combined these ingredients.

That enthusiasm is both the movie's greatest strength and the reason it never quite rises above a solid three stars. There are stretches where NINJA WARS is wonderfully ridiculous, especially whenever the supernatural abilities of its villains take over. Then somebody starts explaining political alliances, relationships, prophecies, and schemes again, and the movie somehow becomes harder to follow than the parts involving impossible magic.

The basic conflict at least gives us something to hold onto. A prophecy claims that whoever marries the beautiful Lady Ukyo will eventually rule, making her extremely valuable to anyone hungry for power. Danjo Matsunaga wants her for himself and turns to the mysterious Kashin and his collection of Devil Monks to help make that happen. Unfortunately for everyone involved, their plans cross paths with Jotaro, a wandering ninja played by a very young Sanada.

Calling the resulting events complicated doesn't really do them justice. Sisters resemble one another, identities shift, forbidden rituals unfold, supernatural warriors clash, and the manipulation is enough to make the political maneuvering seem almost normal by comparison. NINJA WARS keeps piling another idea onto whatever strange development just happened, frequently moving forward before we've had much time to decide whether the previous one made sense.

Eventually, trying to force everything into a perfectly organized narrative becomes the wrong way to watch it. The movie is much more enjoyable when you treat it as a series of increasingly bizarre obstacles separating Jotaro from revenge. The Devil Monks are exactly the kind of villains this approach needs, because none of them seem interested in behaving within normal human limitations. They bring strange weapons, unnatural powers, and the possibility that almost anything could happen once a confrontation begins.

That's where the practical filmmaking earns most of the movie's goodwill. Effects that might look crude beside modern digital work actually suit NINJA WARS because nothing about this world needs to appear completely natural. Blood sprays enthusiastically, bodies endure impossible punishment, people fly through the air, and magic follows whatever rules are most useful at that particular moment. The insanity has an appealing handmade quality.

Sanada gives the whole thing considerably more physical credibility than the story deserves. Long before most American audiences knew him from later international work, he was already moving with the agility and confidence that make action scenes convincing before any effect gets involved. Jotaro may not be the deepest character Sanada has ever played. Still, the performance has enough energy to keep him from disappearing beneath all the monsters, schemes, and supernatural nonsense competing for attention.

Anyone approaching NINJA WARS primarily because Sonny Chiba's name is sitting prominently in the credits should adjust expectations, though. His presence adds instant genre credibility, but this is fundamentally Sanada's movie. Chiba contributes to the world around him rather than taking control of it, and expecting another showcase built around THE STREET FIGHTER star would probably lead to disappointment.

Noriko Watanabe has an even stranger assignment because the movie turns resemblance and identity into part of its supernatural machinery. That could have produced genuine emotional weight, particularly once loss and romantic attachment start colliding with the increasingly bizarre magic. Instead, the movie is usually in too much of a hurry to get to its next outrageous development to spend much time processing what any of this would actually do to the people involved.

That's a recurring limitation. NINJA WARS has plenty happening, but having plenty happening isn't the same as building momentum. Some sequences charge ahead with tremendous confidence, while others get tangled in the complicated mechanics required to connect one supernatural confrontation to another. The movie can feel both fast and strangely cumbersome, which is an impressive contradiction but not necessarily a compliment.

Its treatment of women hasn't exactly improved with age, either. Sexuality, nudity, and violence against women are baked into the exploitation elements, sometimes in ways that are clearly designed to provoke before they serve anything happening emotionally. That's hardly unusual for this corner of Japanese genre filmmaking from the period, but historical context doesn't require pretending those choices aren't noticeable now. The female characters regularly become prizes, victims, or ingredients in male ambition while the men get most of the opportunity to drive the action.

Still, blandness is never among the movie's problems. Even when NINJA WARS isn't working, it's usually failing because Kosei Saito has attempted something much stranger than necessary. I'd much rather wrestle with a movie that has too many demon monks, magical tricks, and bizarre transformations than one that spends a hundred minutes competently doing absolutely nothing memorable.

The new Toy Robot Video release understands the kind of film it's preserving, too. Beyond the movie itself, the Blu-ray includes a new commentary from Jonathan Clements and Matt Alt discussing NINJA WARS, Daisuke Miyao examining the ninja in Japanese cinema, theatrical trailers, and perhaps most appropriately, the old VHS version in standard definition. Including that battered earlier presentation beside a modern Blu-ray feels particularly appropriate for a movie that gained part of its reputation through home-video circulation rather than pristine prestige screenings.

That VHS option may actually be more than a novelty for viewers who encountered movies like this through fuzzy tapes and late-night television. The cleaner presentation offers the obvious way to appreciate the costumes, sets, action, and visual effects, but the older version preserves another part of the movie's history. NINJA WARS feels like exactly the sort of title people would've stumbled across with little explanation and then spent years trying to convince friends that, yes, they really did see all of that.

I still wouldn't call it especially good storytelling. The mythology gets cluttered, characters rarely have enough room to breathe, and several of the movie's nastier exploitation instincts are harder to overlook than its goofy supernatural violence. Those problems keep the experience firmly in the middle, rather than letting all that imagination become something great.

Yet three stars feels considerably more affectionate here than dismissive. NINJA WARS is messy, excessive, and occasionally ridiculous, but there's personality in every bad decision. When Sanada is fighting his way through another seemingly impossible opponent and the movie decides normal ninja abilities simply aren't strange enough anymore, it's difficult not to admire the commitment.

Maybe that's the best way to approach it. Don't come looking for a disciplined historical action film, and definitely don't expect the political plot to remain neatly organized in your head. Come for Hiroyuki Sanada, stay for the Devil Monks, and accept that somewhere along the way NINJA WARS is going to stop making complete sense. For this movie, that may actually be part of the fun.

Bonus Materials:
NEW Audio Commentary by Jonathan Clements
NEW A Japanese Ninja: author Matt Alt on NINJA WARS
NEW The Way of the Ninja: author and academic Daisuke Miyao on the ninja in Japanese Cinema
Theatrical Trailers
VHS version (in standard definition)

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[photo courtesy of TOY ROBOT VIDEO, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]

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