Customer Reviews
Great Stuff 
2008-09-30
Great movie! Along the same line as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But, I think this is much better. Would have like'd to see more fight seens, but oh well. I'd definitely recommend this to all. Get the Blu-Ray, it's worth the extra $$$.
Over-anticipated 
2008-09-19
Not much too say...I'll just break it down.
Story - 6/10
Action - 6/10
Great Blue-Ray title 2008-09-01
Great movie! It was exeactly what I was hoping for, a great movie that shows off the beauty of Blue-Ray. So if you are looking for an action film to show off your fancy equipment this is a great title. The characters felt like they were from Samurai Showdown video game.
Lovers Fight, but the Love Never Dies 2008-07-15
The Good Things
*Excellent action, special effects, and fight scenes. Very fantastic and imaginative.
*Excellent photography and cinematography. Good production design (customes, make-up, props).
*Good story. Has some drama and a big love story, but is not overly melodramatic. If you've seen "Basilisk," this is basically the same plot.
*A great cast of imaginative and well-acted characters (was also pleseantly surprised to see the "Ninja Scroll"'s Kangero in there!).
The Bad Things
*Ummm....
Definately one of my top favorite ninja/samurai movies of all time! I was expecting a long drawn-out melodrama, but was pleseantly surprised with the film's action scenes and photography. Highly reccomended to anybody looking for a good Asian fantasy epic.
DVD and Blu-ray have great picture and sound quality, and include English dubbing and subtitles. Both versions include a number of featurettes. If you see an all-region disc (region 9, I think), it may have good quality, but will only have English subtitles and no special features.
Decent Martial Arts movie 
2008-07-05
In all this movie was worth watching once or twice. I'm not that big of a Kung-Fu type movies, but I don't mind watching some senseless violence every once in a while. The computer animation was mediocre to good depending on the brightness of the background at any given time ( on bright you could really notice how fake it looked). The story line as a whole was a little iffy, but I suppose it's tough to make a believable ninjas with superpowers movie. The fight scenes were well choreographed, and I do like how they weren't afraid to kill off some characters unlike many American films.
Lurking emo, missing action 2008-06-25
Shinobi centers on the drama resulting from the war between two ninja clans in the early part of the Tokugawa era. In the film Nakama Yukie portrays Oboro the granddaughter of Ogen (Lily) the respected Iga clan matriarch while Odagiri Jo plays Gennosuke the son of Danjo Koga (Minoru Terada) the powerful Koga clan leader. While living deep within the mountains the two ninja clans have honed their skills to superhuman levels. Unfortunately the clans do not get along and are forbidden by imperial decree from sharing their techniques with each other. Viewing the two ninja clans as a threat to his scheme for total domination the nefarious Nankobo Tenkai (Ishibashi Renji) plots to intensify the rivalry between the two clans. Nakobo creates a contest in which the clans are forced to choose five of their best warriors to participate. The battle however isn't just a friendly contest - it's a duel to the death!Format: SHINOBI Genre: ANIMATION/ADULT SWIM Rating: R UPC: 704400070983 Manufacturer No: 1-4210-0629-4
Shinobi - Heart Under Blade 2008-06-24
Smooth, dynamic and visually stunning scenery and special effects. Story line is a bit predictable but if you look for first class action and the mood for a samurai film, this is what u r looking for. Encoding for video and audio are first class rate. A reference for Blu-Ray high definition video. Film transfer is astonishingly better than many U.S.films esp.on dark scenes.
Live action Anime Ninja romance mash up 2008-06-21
Take the story of Romeo and Juliet, mix in elements of The X-Men and Ninja fantasy and you get 'Shinobi - Heart Under Blade'. Two ninja clans, the Koga and the Iga are long time enemies who have formed a truce. The heirs to the leadership of both clans fall in love, but since this movie is similar to Romeo and Juliet you can guess that a tragic fate awaits them. The shogun, who sees both clans as a threat devises a plot to get rid of them by pitting both clans against each other. What follows is a rather enchanting story that is marred by the occasional shoddy CGI effects and some truly questionable acting.
Don't get me wrong, 'Shinobi' is a great film with some truly awesome cinematography and some great action scenes; it truly feels like a live action Anime. Sadly though, dialogue delivery feels rather forced at times, and rarely authentic and some of the charaters in the film exhibit rather cheesy qualities. Couple that with the most predictable of story lines and you get a decent film that could have been something amazing. The majority of the characters seem almost like cardboard cut outs; the script makes no motions to flesh out their back stories or motivations. Though the intentions of both clans are never really explored, the clans are polarized with one seemingly 'good' and the other seemingly 'evil', though it is never really told why this is. I could totally be missing the mark, but these were my observations.
It may sound like I didn't enjoy the film, but as you can see by the star rating I gave I did enjoy it a lot. Despite all its flaws 'Shinobi' is an entertaining film with some stunning visuals. One of the things that hurts this film the most is that it tries to be both a romance and an action film, and sadly the romance portion gets somewhat lost in the fray. The romance between the two clan heirs is never fully developed and hardly gets any screen time. The battle scenes are pretty clever and entertaining. All of the characters have some form of special power, and there are duels aplenty to enjoy.
This Blu Ray features a pretty gorgeous picture, albeit some spikes in grain and the occasional soft, two-dimensional looking frame. 'Shinobi' doesn't have that 'pop' that is found in the best of HD titles, but it won't disappoint and is certainly a step up from the Standard DVD version. Colors can be vivid (especially in the forest scenes), however it is very inconsistent. Black levels are pretty bad as well, with crush overcoming most of the night scenes along with a drop in contrast. The special effects suffer greatly under the HD spotlight; there were numerous effects that looked too fake (I'm guessing this is due to the enhanced clarity of the picture).
The audio quality is pretty impressive, offering up the most minute of audio details in stunning clarity. The battle scenes especially benefit from this; 'Shinobi' takes on a very Anime-like soundtrack that truly compliments the film.
This Blu Ray edition ports over all of the standard DVD special features, making of featurettes etc. I was somewhat disappointed that FUNimation didn't transfer the features into HD, but this seems to be a common trend for Blu Ray titles.
Overall I was pretty impressed with this film, despite the few arguments I presented earlier. While 'Shinobi' isn't the best of Asian dramas, its certainly a great ninja flick with many Anime like qualities.
Movie Quality - 4/5
Picture Quality - 3.5/5
Audio Quality - 4/5
Special Features - 3/5
Great Movie, Awesome Visuals! 2008-06-21
Shinobi is a visually stunning movie in all it's Blu Ray glory. A must own for kung fu enthusiasts.
A visual treat but lack of substance.... 
2008-06-18
This is a great movie....but if you want more of a story, go buy Basilisk instead. The movie is supposed to revolve around the battle between the Iga and the Kouga, but it's also supposed to be mainly around the two lovers Oboro and Gennosuke. You barely see them together, and more time is spent on very brief but visually stunning battle sequences between the Iga and Kouga Ninjas. Isn't the point of a tragic romance to actually SHOW the romance a bit more? There's also lack of character development too, but considering how long you see some of them on the screen, it probably wasn't worth the director's time anyway. It's almost like the director chose the characters he wanted to showcase and threw the rest under a rug. Visually, this movie is stunning! The locations for Manjidani and Tsubagakure are completely different but very beautiful and show how much both ninja villages vary. Manjidani is a mountainous area that is more arid, whilst Manjidani is near a river and is surrounded by greenery. The special effects are AMAZING and you can tell that a majority of the director's budget was spent here instead of making more of a story. Overall, it's worth it to see this movie at least once. But make sure you watch Basilisk first.
