Talk:Ninjas in popular culture

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I removed the following from the Ninja article. Someone can put it in here if it's useful. Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 09:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC) Ninja appear in both Japanese and Western fiction. Depictions range from realistic to the fantastically exaggerated.


 * The hit franchise Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) originally was intended to satirize the characterizations of ninja in the Western comics, primarily drawing on the fictionalized representations created by Frank Miller in the Marvel Universe comics.


 * Ninja anime franchise Naruto is an international hit of the 2000s.


 * Many sources, including books, television, movies, and websites portray ninja in non-factual ways, often for humor or entertainment.


 * More popular western fictional ninja have appeared in the popular 1980's ninja-oriented films of Japanese actor and martial artist Sho Kosugi, the American Ninja series, and the TMNT franchise, among others.


 * Ninja frequently appear in videogames, where they have gained as strong a following among gamers as they have among movie-goers.

To Batman Ninja Fan
Look, if you can find a line in Batman Begins, or any of the Batman comics that retconned his backstory, that identifies Batman's sensai or dojo as ninja, show it here. Otherwise, you're just making a western assumption that any stealthy individual in black with sophisticated hand to hand combat abilities is a ninja. Don't say Batman's a Ninja because you feel he is, show your readers that he's a Ninja by providing evidence. Come on.

Cleaned up until the Television
I'll probablyget the rest later. --HanzoHattori 08:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Also did the TV and most of video games. Someone give me a cookie or medal or something. --HanzoHattori 10:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Unsorted
In Mega Man 3, the Robot Master named Shadow Man is a ninja. His EXE counterpart in the Battle Network series is one, as well.

In Mega Man X2, the Maverick boss known as Magna Centipede is a ninja.


 * Ape Escape 3:Both players can turn into the miracle ninja where they use swords, run on walls, walk tight-ropes, and glide through the air. All of which are ninja tactics.
 * Brawl Brothers: In the game Kazan is a ninja.
 * Double Dragon: The game series has ninja enemies and in Double Dragon III Yagyu Ranzou is a ninja.
 * Kirby series : There are several ninja enemies all known as Bio Sparks that appear in Kirby Super Star for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Kirby can inhale them to copy their Ninja ability. Since Kirby can use his ability to create helpers from his copy abilities in that game, he can create a Bio Spark helper from his Ninja ability. The Ninja ability also returns in Kirby: Squeak Squad for the Nintendo DS, though it is unknown what enemies will possess it. However, as one of the game's official pictures shows, one of the members of the Squeak Squad, a yellow mouse with a scarf and red sunglasses, throws some shurikens, which could make him a ninja.
 * Gekido: Features ninjas as enemies.
 * Killer Instinct
 * Oni (video game): The later levels feature Syndicate Ninjas as enemies, and their leader Mukade is the boss of level 11.
 * Power Rangers: Several Power Rangers videogames have involved ninjas such as the SNES version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, which has a ninja as a sub-boss.
 * Sengoku Ace
 * Sonic Wings
 * Spyro: Year of the Dragon : In the 'Fireworks Factory' level, many of the enemies are ninjas.
 * Streets of Rage: The game series has had ninja enemies.
 * Super Chinese: A videogame series involving ninjas.
 * Super Mario Bros.: Several game have a species of ninja enemies called Ninjis and Paper Mario has a group parodying the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
 * The Tick: The Tick fights ninja enemies.
 * X-Men: The Official Game : Features ninjas as enemies.

Separate article on the videogames?
Also someone merge the article, damit. --HanzoHattori 19:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Plural of 'ninja' is used inconsistently
Either is fine to me, though my præference goes to respecting its status as a direct loan from a language which has no plural form, or more correctly no singular form and/or treating all nouns as mass nouns, but using 'ninja' and 'ninjas' throughout each-other looks some-what unprofessional for some-thing aspiring to be of encyclopædic value.Rajakhr (talk) 14:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I 'was bold' and replaced all instances of 'ninjas' with 'ninja'. Obviously, this creates issues where proper titles are involved.  Someone can take that up. Paul Haymon (talk) 20:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, Mr. Failman, but the titles are often "ninjas" and so just you fucked up the interlinks. (repaired nao.) --Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 08:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I realized that, which is why I said "Obviously, this creates issues where proper titles are involved. Someone can take that up."  I think my edit did more good than harm. Paul Haymon (talk) 21:28, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Inverse Ninja Law
An article on ninjas that doesn't include their most precious law?! Unheard of!

Well, when I'm quite through being ridiculous, may I ask why the Inverse Ninja Law redirects to this page, but yet no mention of it is made? I'm presuming that it used to be a part of the article, but no longer. Either the redirects should be deleted or the Law put into the article. I vote for putting it in the article, because it *is* a well-known Law of Ninjas, at least online and in many anime fandoms. --Alinnisawest,Dalek Empress ( extermination requests here ) 15:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Ninja video games article
I tried to move all the vg stuff (like 1/3 of this article?) there, and then someone came along and deleted it just like that roughly 1 minute later. --Mjr Edit (talk) 14:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The Last Samurai
I'm sure the guys who try to assassinate the leader of the Samurai are Ninjas m w (talk) 15:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)Phthinosuchusisanancestor

Already mentioned. --83.13.135.170 (talk) 09:18, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

It was quite hard to see, but never mind, topic (The Last Samurai) closed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Phthinosuchusisanancestor (talk • contribs) 22:24, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The Great Sasuke should probably be added to the wrestling list. He debuted as Ninja Sasuke and still wrestles in a ninja outfit including mask. He's also probably the most sucessful and famous wrestler to ever use a ninja gimmick.

This stuff was history, not pop culture
Several paramilitary, police and militia groups around the world use the names or nicknames of "Ninja" or "Ninjas":
 * The Santomean special police forces (of São Tomé and Príncipe) are a paramilitary police force officially referred to as the Emergency Police, but popularly known as “Ninjas”.
 * Rebels in the Pool Region of the Republic of the Congo also called themselves "Ninja".
 * Red Berets, a Serb paramilitary group of Dragan Vasiljković based in Knin, Croatia, called themselves "Kninjas".
 * Some death-squad-type armed groups active under Indonesian rule in East Timor called themselves "Ninja". The name seems to have been borrowed from the movies rather than being directly influenced by the Japanese model. The "ninja" gangs were also active elsewhere in Indonesia.
 * During the Algerian Civil War, the government's feared commando units were known as "Ninjas" due to the black hoods they wore. --194.145.185.229 (talk) 12:20, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
 * But the fact that they were nicknamed "ninjas" is entirely due to their pop-cultural presence. If you feel there is a better place to put this information, then do so. But don't arbitrarily strip articles of sourced, factual, useful information.  Serendi pod ous  10:35, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The plural of ninja is ninjas. Deal with it.
For the actual ninja article it's fine to use "ninja" as the plural, assuming that it's grammatically correct. But for the article on their place in pop culture, we're dealing with an altogether different phenomenon, the "ninja" in the popular, and largely Western imagination. Ask a thousand people in London or New York what the plural is and they will all answer "ninjas", unless they're on their way out of a Japanimation wall scroll/sex doll shop, or their parents' basement. A note explaining that the proper plural in Japanese is "ninja", but for functional use in this article, it will be ninjas. I realize that the sort of users likely to be on this article are the type who will be long on their perceived mastery of Japanese culture and short on real world social skills, but I assure you that the plural of the Japanese loanword in the English language is "ninjas". Always has been, always will be. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ninja http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ninja PenitentWhaler (talk) 20:34, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I realize that was a bit harsh, but so be it. I tried to compromise by changing instances of "plural ninja" to "the ninja", where it made sense and didn't sound clunky or repetitive. I also added that the correct Japanese plural is ninja in the lead, though again I stress that to an English speaking reader dealing with the character type in pop culture, it is ninjas. Moreover, efforts at keeping the native language's conventions on pluralization are far from universally accepted, and often cause confusion and malapropisms from those trying to sound culturally aware, e.g. saying "opossa" instead of "opossums" (not a Latin word), and the strange assumptions non-Latin speakers make that "-is" is a second declension singular Latin noun ending and so "penis" is "peni". In other words, with loanwords in English the usual choice is almost always to just tack an "-s" on the end of singular. Given that English is so overwhelmingly made up of loanwords, it's the only option that makes sense. Lastly, in the Japanese wiki on the article about knights, cowboys, bushrangers, etc, is the English plural so faithfully adhered to? Shalom. PenitentWhaler (talk) 20:47, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Ninja manga and anime list needs trimming
Please help trim down the ninja manga and anime list. I've regrouped the entries into: Some shows in the second group can move to the first as long as it has a decent description.
 * 1. Major titles that center around ninjas and the ninja lifestyle: Naruto, Basilisk
 * 2. Major characters that are in a mostly non-ninja world: Negima, Bleach, Tsubasa Chronicle
 * 3. Minor characters: only list particularly NOTABLE episodic performances involving ninja characters. Delete the rest.

Also someone needs to clean out the references to the outside wikias and redirect some to secondary media sources or Wiki character descriptions.AngusWOOF (talk) 16:27, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Supporting roles

 * A-N: Ah! Itoshi no Banchousama (Hirayama Hayaka's ninja bodyguard), Bastard!! (Ninja Master Gara), Blade of the Immortal (Master Sōri and his female students Meguro and Tanpopo), Blade of the Phantom Master, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (OVER's Ninja Assassin Corp and The Ultimate Five Assassins), Code Geass (Sayoko Shinozaki), Cutey Honey, Dinosaur King (episode "Ninja Nightmare"), Dragon Ball (anthropomorphic ninja dog Shu and the six Murasaki brothers), Gin Tama (Sarutobi Ayame and the Shinobi 5: Hattori Zenzou, Gou, Shuwa, Wakikaoru, Matsuo), Hero Tales, Hunter x Hunter (Hanzo and Machi), Hyper Police (Kasumi), Kamen no Maid Guy (ninja maids Shizuku and Tsurara), King Arthur, Kinnikuman (The Ninja), Kirby: Right Back at Ya! (Kirby, Benikage and Yamikage in the episode "Visiting Ninja, Benikage!", better known in the USA as "Ninja Binge"), Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (Seraphim), Lone Wolf and Cub (Kozure Ōkami) (various characters), Machine Robo: Battle Hackers, Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto (Rakugan), Magical Princess Minky Momo (episode "Ninja Arrived! Momo is Ninja"), Mega Man Star Force (the Tribe-On transformation Green Ninja), Metal Fighter Miku (episode "Pretty Four vs The Lady Ninjas"), Miami Guns, My-HiME/My-Otome (Akira Okuzaki)
 * O-Z: Oh My Goddess! (Marller's ninja trio), Planetes (the self-described Space Ninja ), Pokémon series and Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu (Aya, Koga / Kyō and Janine / Anzu), PQ Angels, Ranma 1/2 (chiefly Konatsu, Sasuke Sarugakure, and Shirokuro), Saber Marionette, Sailor Moon (the villain of the week Ninjana / Oniwabandana ), Sakura Wars (the ninja stagehands), Samurai Champloo (episodes "Bogus Booty" and "Baseball Blues" both deal with characters who are ninja or former ninja), Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School, Sonic X (the E-91 Lady Ninja and Espio the Chameleon), Sorcerer Hunters, Sword for Truth (Shuranosuke Zanmaken: Shikamamon no Otoko), The King of Braves GaoGaiGar (Yūsha Ō GaoGaiGā) (Volfogg), Those Who Hunt Elves, Tower of Etruria (Palmyra), Ultraman (Alien Baltan), Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito, Yakitate! Japan (episode "Nin Nin Nin!! My Way of Ninja!"), Yoshimune (Kunoichi), YuYu Hakusho (Team Shadow Channelers).

I think you don't quite understand
It's not just the "episodic performances". For example, Blade of the Immortal Meguro and Tanpopo are some of most important characters (without them, both Manji and Rin would be dead, and it's very, very hard to kill Manji dead) - they're just not lead characters (of whom there are only two: Manji and Rin). Also some of it is just films (with no episodes), for example Sword for Truth. And to try to select "particularly NOTABLE episodic performances involving ninja characters" sounds extremely arbitrary. But you can propose removals from the list if you have a particular problem with something there. --Niemti (talk) 21:28, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Whatever is "the ninja lifestyle"? Original research. For example, whatever is your problem with Kage Gari characters, or Mai Shiranui? --Niemti (talk) 21:38, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, neither Kage Gari or the Fatal fury films from my examples are not even "shows". --Niemti (talk) 21:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

But if you still want to refimprove, you're more than welcome. Also many characters can be linked to their sections in the various lists of characters. --Niemti (talk) 22:32, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm trying to clear out the fluff where there are episodes or chapters where the ninja is not significant to the show. As you described with Blade of the Immortal, those two are essential even if they are not main, so they can be notable.


 * Where did I say there was a specific problem with Kage Gari? If it's in the wrong section, move it.


 * The reason I added the word lifestyle is because someone claimed Naruto was not technically a ninja by historical definition but a fantasy show with ninja-like elements. If you have a better wording for that, go for it. AngusWOOF (talk) 22:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * There's not even one "historical definition" really. But Naruto characters are actually absolutely clearly defined as shinobi/ninja. --Niemti (talk) 23:08, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Please don't make a table for minor characters. If you really want, make it for the ninja-themed works (as in: it being the main theme, like in Naruto from the example just above). Such a table might include the title, the year, the type (manga/anime/film), the genre(s), and a short description - if you want. --Niemti (talk) 23:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * ✅ Changed to ninja-themed. AngusWOOF (talk) 00:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Also another thing that might be potentially lacking in this article is the year of release for just about everything major. --Niemti (talk) 23:20, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Sure, I can come up with a table. Do you want the year of first release of the series in the media or first mention of ninja in the season/storyline? AngusWOOF (talk) 16:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If you can propose a format, that'd be great. There's List of ninja video games which lists the release year in the descriptions. It would mainly be useful for sorting.AngusWOOF (talk) 16:43, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

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Typo in the article
"Ninja" (like "samurai") is both singular and plural, and anyway it's about the concept. --SNAAAAKE!! (talk) 17:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

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