Kunoichi heaven
Moe! Ninja Girls is a visual novel, created by the NTT Solmare Corporation, which also created the Shall We Date? series. It is available on iOS, iPadOS, and Android (via the Google Play store), and PC (via Steam). The first installment was released on December 20, 2016, with the finale of its first Volume (consisting of 30 Seasons) released on December 6, 2020. The second Volume, The College Years (TYC), had its first installment released on August 22, 2021 via the same application; due to unexpected issues, it ended with its fourth Season in March 2022.Kazuki Araya is a new student at Mizaki School. After being greeted by two girls, Akari and Enju, Kazuki admits to them that what his goal for the school year is to have a completely ordinary life. While it doesn't sound like a major goal, the truth is, Kazuki is a ronin ninja who left his village due to being tired of the ninja life. But his past is something he can't just walk away from...especially when his new friends want to start a Ninja Seeking Club!
In 2020, a spinoff titled Moe! Ninja Girls RPG was released. This one takes place in a slight Alternate Universe, in which Kazuki never became a ronin, but instead attends school as part of his duties. Its final season released on March 25, 2021.
See also Senran Kagura, another fanservicey ninja girl series with Clothing Damage.
Moe! Ninja Girls contains examples of:
- Accidental Pervert: Kazuki. That said, they don't seem to mind it when the moments happen.
- Actionized Sequel: Moe! Ninja Girls RPG tones down the Visual Novel aspects in favor of adding battle sequences, and Kazuki ends up getting into more fights in RPG than in the original in the beginning.
- Affectionate Parody: Of ninja, harem, and coming-of-age high school anime. That said, it does have its serious and darker moments.
- Allegedly Free Game: There are a variety of different outfits for the girls in the game, which are earned through limited events and Gatcha pulls. The materials required for these can be earned in-game, or purchased in bulk. Payments are also required for fast story progression, mandatory Ninja Tool checkpoints, outfit storage space...
- Alternate Universe Fic: Some of the bonus stories unlocked from limited events are these, such as the "Full Erotical Alchemist" event taking place in a setting where the main characters are alchemists instead of ninjas.
- Anachronic Order: Some of the season endings actually take place during the season's events rather than following them, cutting back to a scene that had been skipped over earlier. For example, the Normal Ending of Season 9 takes place right before the Arc Villain Grand Hentai's introduction, leading to Dramatic Irony when Kazuki is accused of something the player knows the Grand Hentai was responsible for.
- Ancient Conspiracy: The Yatagarasu, who have multiple plots spread out behind the scenes to influence the ninja world even to the present day. The Ninja Seeking Club more often than not end up getting caught up in their schemes.
- And the Adventure Continues: The College Years Season 4, before any of the Epilogues, ends with the True Ninja Seeking Club preparing to go on their next Obnubi-assigned mission. The Extra Epilogue (Harem) ends with Toya noting that dealing with Mephistopheles won't be the last divine being Kazuki and his family deal with in the future, before wishing all of the players farewell.
- Author Avatar: Producer K appears in “Good Things Come in Threes” (2019) and “4th Anniversary” (2020).
- Battle Harem: Kazuki is a male ninja in a school club, surrounded by beautiful female classmates: all of whom are battle capable ninjas and are attracted to him one way or another. Do the math.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: A few liberties are taken when notable historic ninja are namedropped. For example, according to his descendant Lily in the "Book of Fuma" arc, Fuuma Kotaro was part-beast due to his clan intermingling with the Iboro tribe.
- Book Ends: The very first Season of the original story had Sweet Endings for Akari and Enju. The fourth Season of The College Years, which will be the end of the series until further notice, also focuses on Akari and Enju.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: It happens on occasion, mainly for comedy. For example, both Futaba in the "A Day in the Life" sub-story and Beretta in the "International Ninja Clash" sub-story complain about not being shown wearing event-appropriate attire due to their status as side-characters.
- Chekhov's Gun: Elements from earlier seasons occasionally influence later ones, such as Yamabuki borrowing the Kamuy in Season 3 leading to her being able to make fake copies of it in Season 5.
- Clothing Damage:
- Happens occasionally in Story Mode, but it can happen in Ninja Fight during a Burst after a perfect round against an opponent.
- In RPG, if your unit takes too much damage in a fight, their clothes begin to tear apart. Their stats will take a drop unless the outfit is mended.
- Crash-Into Hello: The first meeting with Akari and Enju involves Akari's bike going out of control, and Enju and Kazuki trying (and failing) to stop it.
- Cutting Off the Branches: After Season 30's Multiple Endings, The College Years explicitly continues from the Happy Ending variant
. - "Everyone Dies" Ending: The Bad Ending of Season 30 has 8 of the heroines wield the full power of the Izumo and Kamuy in order to stop a rampaging Yamata-no-Orochi and save Kazuki, killing 7 of them in the process. Kazuki is left in a comatose state while the survivor spends what is left of her life tending to him, and when she dies Kazuki follows not long after.
- Fed to the Beast: At the end of the Book of Nine-Tails, the Secretary betrays the Former Owner and feeds him to the Nine-Tailed Fox.
- First-Person Perspective: The majority of the story is set from Kazuki's perspective, emphasized by his portrait not appearing in dialogues (at least until Season 26). However, some Spin-Off Events and Sweet Endings briefly swap to a different first-person narrator, usually a member of the Ninja Seeking Club that's being focused on.
- Freemium Timer: The Visual Novel has two variants:
- Tickets are required to progress the narrative. A blue Free Ticket is gained every two hoursnote , but only if the player has less than five. Pink Story Tickets can be gained via in-app currency or through special events, and are kept in reserve, mainly because some special events give better rewards for reading multiple chapters in a limited time frame.
- Hearts are required for Ninja Fights, which is how you earn the currencies required to pass checkpoints (one of which, "Soul", can't be bypassed with a real-cash purchase). One Heart is automatically gained and allocated for Ninja Fights every five minutes, but there's a cap at 80note , and you must spend 20 to initiate a fight. Players can also buy Hearts with currency or earn them in events, and these Hearts are kept in reserve, allowing a player to save them for a hard checkpoint or a Fight Master event.
- Grand Finale:
- For the original Visual Novel, Season 30 is the final chapter of the Ninja Seeking Club's adventures. As such, rather than focusing on 2 heroines this time around, the routes determine Kazuki's ultimate fate.
- For the RPG spin-off, Season 7 is the finale, in which Toya Kunitachi is revealed to be the mastermind of all prior events, and also reveals his true identity as Kuni-no-Tokotachi.
- For The College Years, Season 4 features the defeat of Fausta and all of the legendary ninja they resurrected, the end of Itsuno's revenge subplot, and the appearance of actual deities, including the (brief) return of Amatsu-Mikaboshi.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Every kunoichi in the game wears an absurdly Stripperiffic outfit when on the job. Ricka's in particular makes her look more like a figure skater crossed with a go-go dancer.
- Hotter and Sexier: In The College Years, due to the Time Skip putting Kazuki and all of his love interests at young adult age instead of mere high schoolers, many of the new Sweet Endings depict hotter material than in the last volume, including implied intercourse.
- A House Divided: The College Years Season 4 Extra Epilogue (Harem) reveals there's conflict between Kazuki and his wives' children because their mothers have to act as human seals to prevent Kazuki's divine power from running rampant again. While some of the children are more understanding of the situation and still love their father, the others hate what's happening to their mothers and despises their father for this. It's so bad that the children who want to get rid of Kazuki teamed up with Fausta to have her take Kazuki away. Enju is so furious with what they did that she slapped her own daughter, Shumei, for betraying their huge family and those children immediately stand down after seeing how mad and disappointed their mothers are.
- How We Got Here: The Prologue is the first official meeting of the Ninja Seeking Club, while Season 1 is all about how it was formed.
- Karaoke Box: One of these establishments is visited frequently throughout the visual novel to unwind and relax, such as towards the end of the "New Obnubi vs. MEA" Spin-Off story.
- Last Episode, New Character:
- Season 30 of the visual novel, the end of the first volume, introduced at least ten new characters and was also the first canon appearance of some that had debuted in RPG and Spin-Offs, such as Oka, Ran, and Yurisuke. Many of them, especially the female descendants of various ninja clans, would gain importance when the story was continued in The College Years.
- Season 4 of The College Years, the current end of the second volume, introduced Kaede Seki and Makie Kakuzu from the Seki ninja clan, various new potential wives for Kazuki, and was also the first canon appearance of Toya Kunitachi, Yasuna Abenobashi, Munekai Tojo and Hibiki Iwamuro from RPG (as well as the Siren from the "International Ninja Clash!" spin-off, but only in one of the endings).
- Later-Installment Weirdness: In the final seasons (2020 onwards), Kazuki has a sprite in the story.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: While raiding the Yatagarasu base in Season 27, the Ninja Seeking Club get caught in a gas trap, and Kazuki "awakens" back at Mizaki school. However, it has numerous flaws, such as Hotaru from Ochatomizu school taking Akari's place, and Ricka stating that fried noodle hotdogs are inferior to curry bread.
- Marry Them All: In The College Years Season 4 Normal Ending Epilogue. the Extra Epilogue (Harem), the Sweet Ending (Enju) Epilogue and the Sweet Ending (Akari) Epilogue, Kazuki's fate, at least in Hanna's timeline, is to end up with thirty wives in a polygamous marriage. This list includes the entire Ninja Seeking Club, all of his marriage candidates (including those that originally stepped down), Iroha Yabu, Itsuno Owari, Venus Otomegawa, Setsuna Tojo, and YTG8. Unfortunately, the resulting children hate this set-up, because their mothers collectively decided to act as human seals to prevent Kazuki's divine power from running rampant again, since they all love him too much to just kill him. This results in a fight between the children who wants to get rid of their father and the children who are more understanding of the situation and wants to protect their father.
- Ms. Fanservice: Pretty much any female character, except Cy.
- Multiple Endings: Each story arc of the game can end in three different ways. Each ending has a different prize for unlocking it and a special one for unlocking all 3.
- Sweet Endings A and B focus on the highlight girls of the story when fully romanced, and each of their endings is a result of them getting comfortable with Kazuki.
- The Normal Ending is something akin to the Harem ending route, which focuses on the other heroines and their antics following the plot.
- The “Spin-Off” stories have the Moe and DokiDoki endings, which allows the player to choose how they want the Side Story to end. Much like the main story, the Spin-Off stories give out prizes for unlocking all the endings.
- Season 30 forgoes the Sweet Endings and instead focus on a True Ending, a Happy Ending, or the Bad Ending to determine Kazuki's fate.
- Public Domain Artifact: The Book of Tengge involves the Yata no Kagami, one of the Imperial Regalia of Japan. TCY Season 4 then has Yoshito refer to it, the Kamuy, and the Izumo as the "three sacred treasures", revealing that the latter two are expies of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi and Yasakani no Magatama, respectively.
- No Romantic Resolution: Season 30 ultimately does not end with Kazuki romancing anyone, though while he shows hints of budding romance towards one of the girls in the True Ending, it is up to the players' interpretation to determine which one (and then read the respective Epilogue).
- On the Next: Every chapter ends with two or three of the main heroines comically remarking on recent events and giving a teaser for the next chapter.
- Play Every Day: In addition to having Freemium Timers, the Visual Novel has a permanent Gacha with in-game currency as prizes, which can be played for free once a day. There are also rewards for playing multiple days in a row, with additional bonuses for the ten days surrounding an in-game character's birthday.
- Relationship Values: Each Season focuses on two specific girls, and at multiple points, the player has a choice of dialogue that will influence their relationship with them. If a certain threshold is reached with one girl by the end of a Season, an epilogue with them becomes available.
- Supervillain Lair: The Yatagarasu's secret headquarters is a castle surrounded by red lotus flowers, in a realm that can only be reached with divine power (and the reason why, revealed in The College Years, is that they'd actually taken over the castle of the goddess Izanami, located in Yomi, the Land of the Dead).
- Stripperiffic: All the girls' ninja outfits. The camel toe on Ricka's is absurd, while Myu dresses like a traditional Japanese prostitute. Given the costume-collecting gameplay mechanics, it's very nearly the entire point of the game.
- Superdickery: Some Seasons begin with a preview of a scene taken out of context. In Season 24, this scene is of Enju and Akari possessed by the Yatagarasu and trying to kill Kazuki...but Chapter 8 of that season reveals it's an illusion meant to train Kazuki to avoid getting distracted by his emotions in battle, and the actual Ninja Seeking Squad is completely fine.
- Technicolor Ninjas: All of the ninja garbs are very colourful.
- Time Skip: At the end of the first volume's last season, Kazuki and the others are preparing to graduate from high school. The second volume, as indicated by its subtitle The College Years, starts with the cast being accepted into college. Additionally, the Epilogue side-stories released between the two volumes depict what Kazuki's adult life would be if he married one of the main nine love interests. And then there's the Normal Epilogue and Extra Epilogue (Harem) of The College Years, which take place in Hanna's era, after Kazuki's had multiple children and they've all reached maturity.
- The Unmasqued World: Due to the massive amount of destruction and necessary team-up of various clans to fix things that occurs in Season 30 of the original story, the world is aware that ninjitsu and modern-day ninjas are real by the time The College Years starts, though most details remain classified due to government assistance.
- Visual Development: While most of the cast uses the same portraits in both the original volume and TCY, the main nine love interests were updated to reflect how they're growing up, mainly by having longer, differently-styled (and in Hotaru's case, partially-dyed) hair.
- Worthless Treasure Twist: Season 3.5 centers around the Ninja Seeking Club setting up and performing a Romeo and Juliet-inspired play in order to win a competition at the Ninja Village tourist trap. In the end, they win, and receive the grand prize of a single rubber band, with a note fraudulently claiming that ancient ninjas were the true inventors of the first rubber band; learning this causes the entire club to burst out laughing, and one of Kazuki's multiple-choice responses is "Our real prize is each other".
