Someone Give This a Shot
Why isn’t there a manga about contemporary ninja that use guns? It would make perfect sense that samurai may retain a traditional reliance on swordsmanship, but ninja strive for efficiency and success, and therefore would logically adopt the most modern and efficient weapons. It’s true that guns are typically loud, which would be the antithesis of a ninja’s trademark strategy, but ninja guns are quiet! Just image a manga, or possibly even an anime or live action film filled with ninja pulling off crazy gun tricks, impossible shots, last second saves with hidden weapons, wild reloading tricks, and using fantastic weapons like guns that shoot ice bullets which leave no evidence, exploding bullets, bullets that drill through walls, homing bullets, plastic guns that aren’t detected by metal detectors, and so forth. You could also have ninja that specialize in the use of particular types of firearms like sniper ninja and two-handed automatic fire ninja. Perhaps a story revolving around a small clan of gun ninja opposing a large mafia that contracts professional hitmen to fight the ninja would allow for plenty of action and a high body count. Just imagine a small team of “gun ninja” facing off against a gang of 12 ultimate hitmen, finally fighting their way to a climactic battle with their ultimate assassin boss “Duke 13″ (obviously a Golgo 13 homage). We’ve seen gun crazy live action films like Hard Boiled and Desperado, and live action films with amazing gun tricks like God of Gamblers and Pom Pom & Hot Hot, but we’ve yet to see anything that combines these characteristics. I know that gunplay isn’t typically especially popular among Japanese manga enthusiasts, but action oriented titles such as City Hunter, Gunsmith Cats, Shikabanehime, and even Soul Eater establish the fact that gunplay manga isn’t entirely unknown or unpopular among Japanese artists and fans.
If a title like this exists and I’m just not aware of it, I’d be grateful if someone would enlighten me.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
The Nabari no Ou anime introduces a ninja who has no qualms about using a gun (even to the extent of sneering at one of the main characters who questions his honour) in the third episode, although I’m pretty sure he’s a side character considering the size of the cast. He may or may not be in the manga, but I don’t see why they’d introduce a gun-wielding antagonist purely for the sake of the anime.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
the anime samurai gun uses guns
May 12th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Why Americans like ninja so much?
May 12th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Err, Japanese readers has left a pile of responses to the entry in the Japanese translation blog.
ttp://ask-john.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/05/askjohn_4ea5.html#comments
May 25th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
hmmm…that does sound pretty cool. Why wouldnt they use guns? Maybe they could make their own guns that would be super quiet…or invisible.