10 Of The Greatest Pop Culture Ninjas

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

I was flipping through the channels recently hoping to find some kind of fighting on TV. A kung fu movie, MMA, something, anything with two men beating each other senseless. When I came up empty-handed I decided to press the movies-on-demand button on the remote. I usually try to avoid this as the last time I did it I looked up and it was three in the morning, I had drank an entire bottle of Jack Daniels and watched House of 1000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects back-to-back.

I found a little movie I had never seen called Enter The Ninja. This movie was all kinds of awesome in that it’s so fucking horrible and poorly acted in that white-actor-who-can’t-really-fight-as-ninja sort of way that it instantly became a favorite. It also got me thinking about ninjas and how fucking cool they are. I wanted to be a ninja so bad when I was a kid. Ok, I still do, but back then I would save all my money and order tree-climbing claws, throwing stars, nunchaku, even a grappling hook from the back pages of Black Belt Magazine. I would spend hours playing with that shit out in the woods. Of course this was all before I discovered pornography. After that I was out in the woods playing with other things for minutes.

But I digress…Now I know that saying the 10 Greatest Pop Culture Ninjas is a bit presumptious, probably been done before and sure to encite rage but you know what…I don’t give a fuck.

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that I left off a number 6. While this may appear as a horrible oversight made by hasitly hitting publish without thoroughly proofreading, I actually used my ninja skills to leave that out so you could fill in YOUR favorite ninja to make the list complete. Sneaky, I know, but stealth is the way of the ninja, you see.

1. Enter The Ninja
Trailer

Best Death Ever

Take the jump for more ninja action

2. Storm Shadow

Storm Shadow was the coolest motherfucking GI Joe toy of all time. If there was one thing that could end a childhood friendship it would be at the moment of divying-up the Joes and there was only one Storm Shadow. Everybody wanted Storm Shadow and fuck Snake Eyes. If I couldn’t have Storm Shadow I didn’t want to play. My Lady Jaye figure wouldn’t fuck anybody else either. You know what I’m talking about…when you’d have their kung-fu grip wrapped around each other and your parents would walk in and you’d pray that they didn’t see that you had them wrapped up in the humping position while Cobra Commander and Destro watched.

3. Ninja Gaiden

I’ll be honest, I haven’t played any of the newer Ninja Gaiden games at all, but I spent enough time playing the original that it should be more than enough to make up for it. As a matter of fact, I am going to get up as soon as I finish this and see if it’s available for download on the Wii. While I’m on the subject, I also want Rolling Thunder and Blaster Master. Is that too much to ask?

 4. Ask A Ninja

Picking a favorite here is just impossible. It’s like trying to pick your favorite kid. You know you have one but you can’t admit it openly, or even to yourself, for fear of making all the other kids jealous. And you certainly don’t want to upset a ninja.

5. American Ninja

I could never really understand why the Japanese have such a problem with sharing the secrets of Ninjitsu with Westerners. I mean, let’s be fair, we shared McDonald’s and Wal-Mart with them. Is it so much to ask to be trained in the way of the warrior as their ancestors were? Thanks for the bukkake fetish videos, Japan, but we’d prefer Ninja skills.

7. Frank “Bloodsport” Dux

Wikipedia says:

Frank Dux (pronounced “dukes”) is the founder of the amalgamated martial art Dux Ryu Ninjutsu, claiming to be the first American-born form of Ninjutsu. He is perhaps best known as the protagonist portrayed by Jean-Claude Van Damme in the biopic Bloodsport. Dux’ style is philosophically based upon the acronym FASST, standing for “Focus, Action, Skill, Strategy, and Tactics.” Dux is also an author, actor, playwright and fight choreographer. He has been accused of making false and exaggerated claims of elite U.S. military and CIA service to embellish his credentials and market himself.

I don’t really care about Frank Dux, and I know that I generally meant the actual masked ninjas when I started working on this, but the truth is…whether or not he was a credible ninja, he is responsible giving the world Bloodsport and I’ll use any excuse to post the clip of the Dim-Mak.

“You don’t look like, Tanaka.”

“No shit, motherfucker, I’m white.”

8. Revenge of the Ninja

Part of me wants to say I never saw this movie, but it looks really familiar at the same time. That could either be because all Asian people look the same or because I  have consumed way too much alcohol in my lifetime to be able to remember specific things from anything more than a couple of years back. Either way, this movie stars Sho Kasugi who was the bad guy in Enter The Ninja, which was the movie that inspired this diarrhea of ninja nostalgia if you’ll recall.

9. Ninja Scroll

Other than Akira, this is easily my favorite Anime movie. I’m sure there are better, but I’m no aficionado  (dork) so from my somewhat limited experience this is awesome.

10. Batman

Batman is the best at everything as far as I’m concerned (Yes, even way before The Dark Knight)

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