When the original Ninja Scroll movie was released in the US it caused a sensation among anime fans.  This action packed film quickly becoming a fan favorite, but it still took a decade to turn it into a TV series.  The series was a hit too.  This thirteen episode series is one of the better, and bloodier, samurai shows around.  Released over three DVDs a couple of years ago, this series is now collected in one boxed set with an extra, previously unreleased, disc of extras.  This is one set that actually does live up to it's name: Ninja Scroll The Series Ultimate Collection.

Shigure is a young lady who has never been out to the village where she was raised.  When she meets a wandering ninja for hire, Jubei Kibagami, she bemoans the fact that she's seen so little of the world.  As fate would have it, she soon gets her wish for travel as a giant monster attacks her town and kills everyone in it.  The villagers spend all their energy on making sure that Shigure survives and she is the only one to escape the slaughter.

As the battle ends, Jubei promises a dying warrior to give a sacred Dragon Stone to Shigure.  This is the key to finding the Treasure of the Lost Kingdom, and several various clans want it.  Not only that, but unbeknownst to her, Shigure is really the Light Maiden, and a lot of these clans want her dead too.

Soon after leaving her village, Shigure encounters a couple of people that become her traveling companions: Dakuan an old monk and a young would-be thief, Tsubute.  Jubei catches up with them and tries to give the Dragon Stone to her, but she thinks that it will be more safe in his hands.

Unfortunately she's only half right.  Jubei gets attacked by a vicious monster which manages to split the Dragon Stone in half.  Jubei manages to retain half of the stone, but the other is lost to him and falls into the hands of a rival clan.  The rest of the story has Jubei trying to recover the missing half of the stone while the Kimon Clan sends a legion of monsters to capture Jubei's section. Shigure tries to stay alive and discover if she really is the Light Maiden, and what that means.

This is a really enjoyable series.  It's only 13 episodes long, which means that there isn't a lot of padding and filler shows.  There is also a lot more of a plot and characterization than most fighting shows are able to incorporate.  All around a quality work.

I really liked the character of Jubei.  He's a loner sword for hire right out of an American western movie.  He has a strong moral code, though he's a hired assassin, and a great sense of humor.  The lines he gives at the ends of battles adds a light tone to the show that is a nice counterpoint to all of the violence.

Make no mistake, the show is very violent too.  There are arms and heads severed, blood splattered, and a mountain of bodies.  In one scene a young girl gets her throat slit, and though she's not really an innocent young girl, it still is a shocking scene.  I am not a huge fan of endless blood and gore, but I thought they did a good job in this series.  Unlike Go Nagai's shows, the violence doesn't go too much over the top, though it is fairly graphic.

If I had to pick an aspect of this show to single out as my favorite, it would have to be the wide variety of unusual monsters that Jubei and Shigure end up facing.  These odd creature are very creepy and also fairly creative.  There is a man who can pluck out someone's eye and replay what they have seen, giant who can turn his battle hammers into wheels and morphs into a tank, and an overweight girl who can enlarge herself to the size of a house.  My favorite villain though was Rengoku, the four armed woman who frequently operated on herself and could graft extra arms and legs onto her body as she saw fit.  Pretty eerie.

The animation in the series is very good, especially for a TV show.  The many action scenes have smooth movement and they don't cut too many corners.  The show is rendered with a good amount of detail too. Many fighting anime shows try to get away with zooming in on someone's face or panning across a scene to give the illusion of action, but Ninja Scroll uses these techniques only minimally, making the show look much better than a lot of its peers.
 
The story, while nothing astounding, was pretty good.  There was a nice story arc with the story wrapping up nicely at the end.  There were a couple of small continuity errors, but nothing that I couldn't suspend my disbelief over.  When all was said and done, this was a very enjoyable series.

This four disc set comes in a fold out book enclosed in a slipcase.  It's a really nice package with colorful shots of Jubei in action on the panes without DVDs.  There is also a twelve page booklet with disc contents and episode synopses for each of the shows.  There is also a premium version of this set that comes in a metal tin container and includes a small action figure of Jubei.

This show was originally sold as three separate discs, and this collection seems to be the original released repackaged with an additional disc of bonus material.  I don't have the original releases, but the extras are the same including repeated trailers and they repeated episodes on the fourth disc so that they could include commentary tracks rather than put the tracks on the discs where the episodes originally appears.  Because of this I think it is safe to assume that these are repackaged with an extra disc.

Audio:

This set comes with the original stereo Japanese soundtrack, a stereo English dub, and a 5.1 dub track too.  I viewed the series alternating between the Japanese and 5.1 English tracks.  I liked the Japanese track a little more, though the English dub was very good.  The 5.1 track had more range and a wider sound stage of course, along with a little more kick during the battle scenes, but the Japanese track just sounded a little more appropriate.  The 5.1 track also mixed the background music a little too high in relation to the dialog in several scenes, but this was only a minor flaw.  None of the tracks had any distortion, drop outs, or other audio defects.  Overall a very nice sounding set of discs.

Video:

The full frame video image looks very good.  The colors are very full, especially the reds.  Detail is fine, and the lines are very sharp.  There isn't any banding between color transitions.  Aliasing is a very minor problem in a couple of scenes but otherwise there aren't any digital defects.  A nice solid transfer.

Extras:

This collection is crammed full of bonus material.  In addition to the fourth disc that is devoted to extras, each of the episode discs also have a good selection of cool extras.

Disc One:  The first disc has a feature where you can compare the storyboards to the finished product.  There are four scenes where you can do this.  The default is to show the storyboard with the finished segment in a small window, but you can use the angle feature on your remote to toggle just the storyboard or just the finished animation.  I was surprised who rough the storyboards were.

There are a pair of interviews with the composers behind the soundtrack, Kitaro and Peter McEvilley, each of which runs around eight minutes.  There is also an interesting clip on Creating the Cover Art.  They film the artist creating the artwork, and speed the film up so the you can see the entire process in under three minutes.  Finally there is also an art gallery.

Disc Two:  This disc has four more storyboard comparisons, interviews with series director Tatsuo Sato and character designer Takahiro Yoshimatsu, another cool "Creating the Cover Art" segment, and an art gallery.

Disc Three:  There are five more storyboard comparisons on this disc, another Creating the Cover Art segment, and an art gallery.  In addition this disc has a textless opening and closing, and a 19-minute behind the scenes featurette.  This is a nice bit that looks behind the scenes of the English dub.  They cover the recording of the dub, and what the actors thought about the main characters in the show.

Each of these discs also has trailers for the series, the soundtrack, and other Urban Vision DVDs.

Disc Four has a good amount of fun things too.  First there is a trivia game where you are asked a series of questions about the show.  If you score high enough, character designer Takahiro Yoshimatsu congratulates you in English.

There are commentaries to two episodes, the second episode, Departure, and the last episode Farewell Jubei.  Each of these episodes have two commentaries, one by director Jack Fletcher, and a second separate commentary with voice actors Dave Rasner (Jubei) and Daisy Torme (Shigure).

There are text profile of all the major villains, as well as video clips of the Top Ten Battles from the series.

If you have a computer equipped with a DVD-Rom drive, and who doesn't nowadays, you can pop this disc in and access some Ninja Scroll Wallpapers, MSN Messenger Icons, a screen saver and a WinAmp skin.

Final Thoughts:

This is a very good series.  It is very violent and there is a lot of blood and severed arms flying about, but it wasn't as over-the-top as most of Go Nagai's shows.  The animation was very good for a TV show, and the story kept my interest over the entire series.  Since this show is only 13 episodes long, there wasn't a lot of padding and filler episodes, something I usually dislike.  If you have the original releases, I don't think the bonus disc would warrant an upgrade, but if you haven't purchased the show yet, this is the version to get.  Highly Recommended.