After escaping his clan and going into hiding in rural America to start a family, former ninja Joe Higan is ambushed by assassins who exact bloody retribution on him and his family for their betrayal. After the attack, Joe returns to being known as Ninja Kamui to avenge his family, and he sets his sights on taking down the very clan that made him.
Ninja Kamui is an original anime series made by E&H Production, directed by Sunghoo Park (Jujutsu Kaisen), produced by Joseph Chou, and animated by SOLA Digital. It began airing on February 11, 2024. This series serves as a first for Toonami, who chose to air the Japanese subtitled track of the same episode to finish up the block at night.
A tie-in prequel game titled Ninja Kamui: Shinobi Origins is set to release later for the Nintendo Switch, with a different ninja named Tsukumo as the main character.
Ninja Kamui contains the following:
- Actor Allusion: Kenjiro Tsuda (Higan) previously voiced Sam Bridges, whose wife and son were killed by outside forces, and being antagonized by a character voiced by Kazuhiro Yamaji (as Yamaji, who voiced Cliff in the aforementioned game).
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Kyle's birthday is the same day his family is caught and attacked by the ninja clan, which ends with him and his mother dead.
- Big Bad: Yamaji; the leader of the ninja clan who ordered the assassination on Joe and his family.
- Cassandra Truth: Proving that MegaCorp AUZA has ninjas as their offensive force proves to be a tall order to prove even with photographic evidence because their ninja are outfitted in outlandish gear and it doesn't help the police force has ties to AUZA.
- Cyber Ninja: Several of the Ninja Clan members have cybernetic Powered Armor, courtesy of AUZA.
- Code of Honour: The ninja clan is incredibly strict on its ways that it drills into its members to keep their secrets tight at all costs or else they may get exposed to the world. Their code is so strict that they heavily discourage its members from seeing each other as allies or more, which is what Joe ended up breaking when he fell for Mari and they deserted the clan to start a family.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Both Joe and Mari used to belong to the ninja clan but cut ties with them when they fell in love with each other, which was against the ninja code of not becoming emotionally attached to their allies.
- Darkest Hour: Episode 5: Joe's infiltration attempt goes south when he's overwhelmed by Lil and the rest of the guards that not even his secret ninja art can save him, and Mike ends up gravely injured during a car chase defending Jason. Both of them manage to barely get out thanks to one of the ninjas turning on her allies by taking Joe away, and Jason helps Mike out of their wrecked car, but again, both are gravely injured and unable to act much. Furthermore, Mike is unable to contact Emma, after finding out that she may have a connection with AUZA.
- Death of a Child: Joe's son Kyle is killed by his former clan when they raid his house.
- Disney Death:
- Joe was seemingly killed and ends up at the morgue but wakes up there. His wife and kid weren't so lucky though.
- Aska/Emma looks on the verge of death and bleeding at Lil's hands on Episode 6, but then the next episode, she shows up looking completely fine before Joe fights Lil in the Kamui. She had even activated a recording within the Kamui in case she was dying.
- Down on the Farm: Joe takes refuge in rural America after fleeing his ninja clan. It doesn't last too long.
- Fan Disservice: Seeing Joe's naked ass would be nice, if not for the fact that he's suffering from Stress Vomit after losing his family.
- Gas Mask Mooks: The ninjas all wear masks with three glowing red eyes, but are otherwise nondescript. Only higher ranking ninjas in the clan show who they are.
- Heroic BSoD: Seeing his wife and son dead at the morgue while he miraculously managed to survive causes Joe to snap.
- Made of Plasticine: Body parts are sliced off quite easily. Joe even dispatches a crowd of ninjas at the same time by simultaneously cutting off their heads.
- Mama Bear: Offscreen, Mari was just as good as Joe in combat as shown with the several dead ninja bodies in their room, but she got killed in the end.
- Master of Disguise: Joe and his family used technology to change their physical appearances to hide better from the ninja clan he and his wife defected from, but it only delayed their eventual reunion.
- McNinja: Played for drama, and actually underpins the story's conflict. The ninja clan faced a schism following a change in leadership, with Big Bad Yamaji choosing to invite foreigners and sell the clan's services internationally, rather than follow the tradition of being Japan's protectors. By the present, the clan is nothing more than a ninja-themed international syndicate, which is hunting down defectors who have chosen to go into hiding and follow the clan's original creeds.
- MegaCorp: AUZA is a very high-tech company with its own town and appears to have its own city. It also seems to have ties to Joe's former ninja clan and a hold on American politics.
- Megaton Punch: In episode 2, a frustrated Joe, angered that he cannot find any leads on the ninja clans' current whereabouts, stops at a highway bar for some drinks. When two Dirty Cops come in to harass the owner for "protection money", one of them decides to pick on Joe as well, noting a stream of recent motorcycle thefts and suspecting his bike of being one. When Joe easily dispatches him and makes to leave, his partner tries to hit Joe with a baton from behind, only for Joe to dodge and, in slow motion, unleash a missed punch that nonetheless moves and hits so hard that the wind pressure knocks the guy off his feet and slams him into the wall. Actually connecting would have turned his head into chunky salsa.
- Multiarmed And Dangerous: After having his conversation with FBI agent Mike Moriss interrupted by what appears to be a single assassin disguised as a delivery boy. During the high-pitched fight, it seems like the assassin somehow grows two extra pairs of arms to increase his attack on Joe, but after Joe knocks him into a wall, it's revealed that there was an identically-dressed assassin hiding inside the former's delivery backpack. To deal with the twin assault, Joe summons two pairs of shadow arms out of his back to genuinely multi-wield.
- Mysterious Waif: Emma turns out to have a connection with AUZA when her name pops up in a file in their database through Jason's hacking. It turns out she's a rogue ninja clan member who was mentored by Mari beyond just being ninjas.
- No Body Left Behind: The news reports of the decapitated fallen ninja who similarly left the clan mention only their bodies left at the scene, despite the one from the beginning being able to kill several of his attackers. When the clan attacks Joe's house, he and his wife kill several of them, but the police only find Joe and his family's bodies left at the scene afterwards. During the hospital attack, despite Mike witnessing several bodies from being nearby Joe's rampage, when he heads to the roof to rescue fellow FBI agent Emma Samanda, there's not a corpse to be seen, despite the surroundings being covered in red. It helps with the official cover-up in the aftermath, as there's no physical evidence of the amount of bodies Joe cut through and the man himself vanished.
- No One Could Survive That!: The nurse who notices that Joe woke up in the hospital is genuinely shocked that he's still alive after being stabbed through the heart. Emma and Mike wonder if he's even still human. The Back-Alley Doctor who patches him up in Episode 2, who seems to have knowledge of Joe's past and various ninja skills, is similarly stumped when he sees the injury, confirming that he really should have died from it no matter what technique he used. Even Joe candidly admit he's got no idea why he's still alive and the Sole Survivor of his family. By all accounts, Joe seems to have genuinely come Back from the Dead.
- One-Man Army: Joe, being a former ninja, is able to fight expertly and mow down multiple enemies at once.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: There's a lot of blood in this series. In the first episode alone, every time a body part is severed, the nearby surroundings are dowsed in red. This contrasts with the ninja clan's ability to somehow make the corpses of their fallen vanish, as when Mike recovers Emma from the hospital rooftop, there's not a body to be seen, despite the entire space being painted with red from Joe's rampage.
- Resignations Not Accepted: Leaving the ninja clan alive is not an option. Joe just wanted to live his life, but the clan doesn't let anyone leave alive.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Joe just wanted to live a peaceful life with his family, but his past caught up to him and murdered his family. He vows to kill every last one of the ninjas.
- To the Pain: Following the hospital fight, Joe manages to capture the leader of the ninja strike force who personally killed his wife and son in front of him. He suspends him from the ceiling and begins stabbing him with blades, to which the leader, through the pain, taunts him, that he should know a ninja will never break under torture. Joe agrees. He then proceeds to spend the next few days he needs to recover from the fight stabbing the leader and taking out his anger on him, before finally finishing him off by dousing him in gasoline and setting him ablaze — but not before promising him that he'll get no mercy or relief on the other side, merely an endless torment at the hands of Oni in hell:Ninja Leader: Is this all you got? Remember, a ninja never cracks.
Joe: Yes, I know. - Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: This appears to be an element with Joe's conflict with the ninja clan. The ones who attack him are a high-tech faceless mooks clad in body armor with with cutting-edge weapons, especially their leader who wield a collapsable BFS. In contrast to them, Joe has practically no technology, but seems to know mystical ninja skills, being able to "breathe" some sort of smokey black substance that forms into humanoid figures, which can distract the opponent, lower visibility, or even "merge" with Joe to physically hold weapons alongside his own two arms. After Episode 6, though, Joe is given the Kamui body armor to stand a fighting chance against the top brass.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Upon waking up, the stress of seeing his family get killed causes Joe to vomit.
- We Used to Be Friends: Well, "friends" may be too hard, but Joe and Mari were comrades with Zai before their desertion.
- Would Hurt a Child: It appears Joe's former ninja clan doesn't care about age when it comes with killing their targets, as shown with Kyle.
