Karakuri Ninja Girl Box Set

By Chris Beveridge     June 15, 2002
Release Date: May 24, 2002



What They Say
Contains both volumes! Ninja they may be, but they're still human after all. They wish for ordinary lives in the city. Dream of a beautiful life together.

When the two shadows of Fawn Bell (Trisha Uptown) and Moon Shadow leave the Ninja Country, the chase is on! If they're captured, they will be subjected to an extremely erotic punishment. Will they ever really learned their lesson? Doubtful. The thrill of being "watched" drives them day and night, anywhere, anytime.

Too bad the ninja clan head, Madam Devil Grace, has finally had enough of these this lovey-dovey lust ridden duo. They're about to be expelled, but it could mean that Fawn Bell and Moon Shadow will finally be able to fulfill their dream of starting the sweet life... only another escaped ninja name Morning Mist (Alexa Rae) is about to intrude into their fantasy...

The Review!
Any show that can use the line “I’ll now penetrate you with my mental energy” is worth a look.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this disc in its original language of Japanese. The show is pretty much vocal-driven, with plenty of talking and other vocalizations, both of which come across nice and clear. There's a fair amount of ambient effects with things like the rain and thunder coming across quite well. The music is nice if a bit subtle throughout, but the show in general provides a nice solid soundtrack.

Video:
The transfer for this release is mostly a solid one that looks great. Colors are spot on, though they’re not overly vivid as some more recent digital productions, there’s no bleeding or cross coloration going on. Aliasing is very minimal as well. The only real problem we noted was in some of the night blues and layered black areas was some macroblocking and breakup. It’s very quick, but still noticeable.

Packaging:
Each of the keepcases is nicely presented once you get past the standard inclusion of the Totally Uncensored and the adults-only warning. Each features some nice character artwork on the front cover, though things get obscured by the addition of the voice actresses pictures. The back covers give good summaries of things as well as laying out all the technical information and what's included. The only thing not listed is the running times on each disc. The box itself uses the cover art from the second volume on the front while the back is a combination of the backs of each of the keepcases. This set contains no inserts.

Menu:
NuTech's menu's continue to look good and work great with a nice mix of the shows animation and music forming a layered look. This time around the thunder and lightning from the show is used here to give a slightly eerie feel to the menus. Access times are nice and fast and everything is laid out nicely.

Extras:
Two sets of the voice actresses video photo galleries are included here (and being a Kobe Tai fan, I can't complain) while the actual anime-related extra is a video image gallery with stills from the show.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Karakuri is one of those shows from the fun folks at Pink Pineapple that takes the hentai genre and just plays around with it, providing a great number of smiles due to the humor and situations. The story for these two OVA’s revolves around Fawn Bell and Moon Shadow. These two lovers are trying to escape from Ninja Country so they can lead a normal life of a poor but happy couple getting by.

Their attempt at escape is foiled though, and the two are brought before the woman in charge. She berates them and then publicly shames them but having them fool around with each other in front of everyone. This unfortunately has the reverse effect as they both really get turned on by being in front of everyone. They then proceed to chase everything in site, eventually getting themselves expelled from Ninja Country with word never to return.

So the two are now living in bliss in the real world, with Fawn Bell performing the role of a good wife to be by dealing with the household chores and responsibilities while Moon Shadow has found building construction to really by his forte with his ninja skills. The two are extremely happy and fool around a lot. Life could not be better.

That lasts until Morning Mist, an attractive redheaded ninja girl from Ninja Country, arrives to bring Fawn Bell back. The two were lovers some time ago, and she’s incensed about Fawn leaving and with a man now less. Fawn has some amusing protestations about it, talking about being confused, trying different things and so forth. So Morning Mist decides that she’ll remind Fawn’s body about what love really is…

These two episodes are very amusing. It’s done very much tongue in cheek, and parodies a couple of other shows. When Moon Shadow goes to protect Fawn, he pulls off a very accurate rendition of Sailor Moon with the whole defending innocence speech. Of course, he does it completely naked, but damn he’s got the moves down. The animation also is used for the humor, with it being not terribly explicit. Any images of the male member is replaced in various ways, such as the brighter than bright version or just it being invisible. Often, Moon Shadow just has a big black circle with the worlds “Censored” written in kanji on it. The show isn’t trying to be stimulating, but rather just fun with the characters. There’s a number of little sight gags like that throughout.

This is probably the most fun I’ve had with a hentai show since the initial batch from NuTech with Koihime and Angels in the Court. The light fluffy shows are generally very amusing and have a real wit about them, something that usually gets passed over by a lot of people. This is worth checking out, especially for the… ninja action.

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles,Photo Gallery,Voice Actress Galleries

Review Equipment
Toshiba TW40X81 40" HDTV, Skyworth 1050P Progressive Scan codefree DVD player, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Sony speakers.