Ninja Cadets

By Ben Roitblat     February 16, 2002
Release Date: January 25, 2000



The Review!
True, this is their first release, and overall I am pleased. The video was excellent throughout the whole thing, at least as far as my TV would show.

The audio sounded good on my TV as well, and sounded alright when I played it briefly on the home theatre in the living room.

The only error I could find was the same error when Sakura and Pochi are talking and there are briefly no subtitles, but that's not really a big gripe. The subtitles used are much larger than other companies', so I assume it's up to the viewer whether these large subtitles are legible or annoying. I could care less.

The menu is what I would most like to comment upon. The menu itself is simple and functional, but what really gets to me is the little childlike voiceover that accompanies every selection. When I get to the menu, I simply mute my TV, so hopefully this part of my review will discourage Anime Works from putting English ques for every menu selection on their other shows like Rayearth. It feels like I am watching children's programming on Nickelodeon or something when I hear the little child's voice say "Let's see how our adventure begins." If you want an English voiceover, get the Rock or Chris Jericho to do it.

As for the show itself, the animation is ok for an OAV series. The story is pretty mediocre. Like the main review said, this show was only 2 episodes and there was never a TV series after it (at least that I know of) and I didn't care enough about the show to look to see if there is any manga. I've been in the habit of using cdnow store credit I earn to randomly buy anime DVDs without ever seeing the shows, and most short (1

or 2 OAV) stories that I've gotten recently have been pretty average, so I guess I wouldn't criticize this show for its story. If you have money or cdnow store credit from freeride.com to burn and want to get some random

stuff until the really good shows like Trigun and Rurouni Kenshin come out, then sure this show is ok. But be sure to mute your TV during the menus unless you want to hear a little voice every time you do something.

No offense to the actors and actresses involved, I didn't watch the dub.

Review Equipment
Sony Trinitron 27" TV, Pioneer 606 code free DVD player, monster S-Video and audio cables.