Trivia / Ninjala

• All-Star Cast: The Japanese cast has a number of high-profile voice actors voicing the characters. This includes Takahiro Sakurai as the voice of Burton, Akari Kitou as Berecca, and Aoi Yūki as Lucy.
• Art Evolution: There's been a noticeably improvement in the anime's art and animation in the later episodes. Special attention goes to Episode 16, where the Space Ninja fight is notable more well animated than previous fights.
• Banned in China: The game is not available in Belgium or the Netherlands. This is because the Gumball Machine is considered a loot box due to the ability to spend purchasable currency on it, and both countries have deemed loot boxes a form of virtual gambling and thus illegal.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • The 2D Cartoon anime webtoon was a small series of shorts that showed the backstories for some of the main cast. With the release of the 2022 anime, the shorts have been effectively rendered completely obsolete, as the anime covers these events in much greater detail or even rewrites them completely (as was the case for Ron and Jane specifically).
  • Looks like this is becoming the case with the in-game story mode as well as of Leonard's introduction into the anime. The fact that the game's story mode hasn't received in update past Chapter 2 in over a year seems to support this.
• Content Leak: Ninjala's had a few from datamines and the like.
  • An interesting case with some weapons: there was a leak of promotional art that was discovered in a datamine depicting Jane wielding the Extreme Motor, another of Lucy wielding the Scrap Saber, and yet another of Emma with the Pop-Eye. These were all discovered before the game even launched by datamining the game's beta test, and even the weapons' names (including their second variants) leaked with them as well. To show just how crazy this is, the Pop-Eye and Scrap Saber released in Season 3 and 4 respectively, and the Extreme Motor released in Season 6, nearly an entire year after these leaks were found! Needless to say, they were planning on these weapons for quite a long time.
  • In another datamine during the first season, icons of various in-game outfits were found, dating as far ahead as Season 3. Of note however are a number of reskins for the main characters' outfits, none of which would be released years later through the Gumball Machines that take Tokens, introduced in Season 5. As of this writing, they still haven't released them all.
  • The game's had a long history of having its collaborations being leaked early:
    • Dataminers found files revealing that a Sonic the Hedgehog collaboration was planned a short while before it was officially announced.
    • Dataminers also found costumes from the Monster Hunter: Rise collab several weeks before the announcement.
    • News of the Demon Slayer collab was leaked online just over a week before the official announcement.
    • A mainstream news page again revealed an upcoming collaboration one day before the official announcement, this time the Hatsune Miku collab. Hilariously, the official Twitter account actually acknowledged this, and quote-retweeted the article in question on their official Twitter, teasing fans that the next Dev Diary would reveal more information.
    • Once again, a mainstream news page revealed the Rurouni Kenshin collab one day before the official reveal.
    • A Japanese anime magazine revealed the Jujutsu Kaisen collaboration 11 days before Season 9 was to begin.
  • A datamine revealed more team icons that were to do used. There were a total of six icons discovered, but only four have been put in the game as of writing.
• Demand Overload:
  • The first Exclusive Ninja Club demo constantly had communication errors for all players, leading to GungHo extending the demo period from one hour to two following a brief period of maintenance. After the demo continued not to work, GungHo apologized for not being able to handle the amount of players.
  • When the full game released, it suffered from communication issues again due to so many players jumping on board in less than 24 hours, leading GungHo to give everyone 100 free Jala and 10 usages of the Flame Gum skin for the IPPON Gum Katana both as compensation and as thanks for the game's overwhelming popularity.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The anime's episodes are only aired once on TV Tokyo and uploaded on the official YouTube channel for a limited time before they're removed by the time the next one comes out. This inevitably forces people to go to other, unofficial sources to catch up on the episodes they missed, and there's currently no word on when (or even if) the anime will get a permanent release.
• Milestone Celebration: Season 6 marked Ninjala's 1st Anniversary, and they went all out to celebrate. The start of the season saw massive sales on the Story Mode chapters and 1000 free Jala was given to players who logged in for a limited time. On June 24th, 2021, the actual date of the anniversary, GungHo and the developers celebrated with a special livestream (with cake!), a new decorated base that will last until late August, and several announcements. A special tournament for all players to participate in was also held in mid-July, with a special emote as a reward for placing high enough.
• No Dub for You: Inverted for the game. Despite the game being made in Japan and the webtoon and anime having a full Japanese cast, the game only features audio in English, with no Japanese dub existing for it (or any other language for that matter). The game is translated to these languages however, but the voices are always in English.
• No Export for You: Similarly to Splatoon 2, there are special cosmetics, including otufits and weapon skins, can only be obtained via limited codes from various promotions, such as from the Japanese manga magazine CoroCoro Comics. However, these promotions are only available in Japan, making obtaining these items difficult for those overseas. Interestingly subverted because unlike Splatoon 2, the codes work in any version of the game regardless of location^note the reason the codes don't work with Splatoon 2 overseas is that the game itself is region-locked, and the codes only work with the Japanese version of the game; the hard part is actually getting your hands on the codes themselves (especially from CoroCoro, which has never been localized overseas). It used to be a bit of a tedious process to get the items once you had it^Explanation The codes used to only work on the Japanese eShop. To get the item, you need to enter the code into the eShop from a Japanese account on your Switch, then open the game in your main account. The items would be sent to your inbox., but now you can simply enter the code from the game itself via "Ninjala Code" in the Options menu, making it far easier to get your items once you get the codes.
• Release Date Change: Ninjala was originally unveiled at E3 2018 and was set for a Spring 2019 launch window. It was announced in May of that year that the game was delayed to Spring 2020 in order to polish the game more before release, eventually being set to release on May 27, 2020. It was then further delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and finally released just under a month later on June 24, 2020, with a second beta taking place to make up for the delayed release.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: From Season 3 and onward, "Ninja Re Bang Bang" has a chance of playing in any online match if you or another player has it set as their BGM. YouTube and streaming services will identify the song in their copyright identification systems and will block any attempt to monetize the video or stream. Same goes for "Gum Gum Girl", which was added in the second Kyary Pamyu Pamyu collaboration during the next season. Season 7 is set to have a Hatsune Miku collab, which includes various Vocaloid songs that can also be caught by the identification systems.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ninjala had a different logo◊ for much of its development until it was changed in 2020. The original logo can still be found in the final game as a neon sign in the hub.
  • The prototype demo shown off at E3 2018 and TGS 2018 was very different from the final product:
    • There are various Japanese lantern-like collectables across the stage in the demo. There were likely predecessors to the S-Energy orbs found in the final game. It seems the lanterns' only purpose was giving points however, as S-Energy didn't appear to exist yet at the time.
    • The Drone Destroyer (then called "Drone Master") bonus at the end of the match was originally going to be worth 1000 points just like IPPON Master. In the final game, it's only worth 500 points.
    • Van, and presumably other characters as well, had a very different voice in the original demo. It was possibly just a placeholder.
    • Players were originally going to be able to run not just on walls, but on ceilings as well. This may have been cut due to issues with motion sickness.
    • While the layout remained similar, the Eagle City stage looked much bigger in the demo than the final version.
    • Gum-Binding an opponent would cause them to stick to the ground or wall in a pile of gum. In the final game, characters are instead encased right where they are in a big ball of gum.
    • Charged attacks were originally implemented. It's possible that hitting your opponent with a charged attack was an IPPON requirement before it was cut.
    • In the demo, weapons would break after a certain amount of uses. In the final game, they only break when an opponent uses a Break Attack while the player is guarding.
  • In the same datamine that discovered the Sonic collaboration, icons for items themed to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were also discovered, including several stickers and a skin for the IPPON Katana, implying that a collaboration with the Olympic Games was planned at some point. Unfortunately, nothing ever came of this, almost certainly because the Olympics were cancelled that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Games were rescheduled to July 2021, but with the Demon Slayer collab planned for that time, it's safe to assume the collaboration was cancelled for good.
  • Concept art shows an adult Berecca with different hairstyles alongside the big pompadour they settled on.
  • There's also concept art of a weapon resembling a load of fireworks, but it's not clear whether it's a main weapon or a Ninjutsu attack.

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