The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide – Ninja vs. Gokudo

What is this?

Since before the dawn of memory, one thing has defined human history: the war between ninja and yakuza. This coarse and manly manga follows two members of these warring tribes who fill the gutters of modern Tokyo with blood to determine which elemental force will reign supreme.

Ninja vs. Gokudo is based on the manga series by Shinsuke Kondō. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

How was the first episode?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

The entire time I was watching Ninja vs. Gokudo, my brain kept insisting that the art was “Initial D by way of Heat Guy J.” It’s something about the noses and how they don’t fit in with the rest of the faces, as well as the generally stiff character design and animation. It’s not a visually appealing show by any measure, and the dominant shades of brown in the palette, combined with thick black outlines on only part of the faces (usually the nose), certainly don’t help. But even the violence isn’t particularly fluid or exciting. In an effort to demonstrate how incredibly fast a ninja Shinoha is, we see a streak of light or a noise meant to represent the sound barrier being broken, followed by the aftermath. Sure, a few bloody teeth are floating through the air, but even arterial spray is limited to a laughably brief burst with little remainder. I don’t even like violence in my viewing, and this was disappointing.

That may be the best word for this episode. It’s somehow both predictable and silly, taking as its premise the idea that ninjas and gokudō (yakuza in this case) have been at odds for centuries, with their fight carried over into the present day. Now, gokudō continue to do bad guy things, while ninja support the police from the shadows, typically by doing their jobs for them before the cops ever arrive at the crime scene or even know a crime is happening. It feels like a child’s game, the kind that’s awesome when you’re ten and running around pretending to be sneaky and jumping on each other. It translates less well to a series for older viewers that appears to take itself at least semi-seriously.

Fortunately, it does know that it’s pretty ridiculous. Shinoha bonds with Kiwami, a gokudō, over their shared love of a Precure knockoff, and Shinoha’s inability to smile or laugh as a trauma response is largely played for laughs in a decent way. (Mechanical Marie did the same joke better, though.) Shinoha and Kiwami are unaware that they’re on opposing sides despite spelling it out when they introduce themselves, and there’s a decent chance that their budding friendship will end the feud between the two groups with the power of love and/or friendship. To pull that off, though, the show will need to do a better job of presenting itself, and that goes for the English simuldub as well, which in this episode manages to mispronounce Edo, anime, and the suffix kun. (Eddo, animi, and kunn, if you’re curious.) It’s not a promising start.

Lucas DeRuyter
Rating:

After only a single episode, Ninja vs. Gokudo is already my frontrunner for the worst anime of the fall season and probably the year overall! I cannot think of a single compliment to give this anime, and, quite simply, it’s a drab idea executed poorly. I would never suggest that a piece of art should not exist, but if you’re reading this, I promise you that your time would be better spent watching anything besides Ninja vs. Gokudo.

For starters, Ninja vs. Gokudo is tonally incomprehensible. It’s trying to be cool and host a collection of badass characters, but the action in the show comes across as more silly than impressive. When the soon-to-be head of the ninja clan, Shinoha Tanaka, stops a Gokudo-organized kidnapping of the governor of Tokyo, he beheads each assailant, with many of them espousing several lines of dialogue as disembodied heads floating in mid-air. The weird purple with yellow trim bodysuit that Shinoha wears while he’s doing ninja stuff is also so garish and goofy that it’s hard to take anything else on screen seriously.

Speaking of appearances, all of this anime looks bad! In that aforementioned fight scene, color palettes shifted to heighten the intensity of the moment a la JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. However, the encounter didn’t really have a crescendo like most of the fights in JoJo’s and the timing of the color palette change didn’t feel appropriate to what was happening on screen, making the whole affair feel amateurish. It’s like the folks at Studio DEEN behind this anime didn’t understand what made these visual tricks work in other, better media. Furthermore, characters barely emote, let alone move, in this anime, and the character designs are uninspired, making the Ninja vs. Gokudo feel cheap and bland.

The script isn’t saving this anime either, as most characters dump information about their world and personal backstory rather than give a viewer any reason to care about them. There’s a scene where Shinoha notes to his grandfather that the elderly relative is the second strongest person in their clan, which isn’t something he would ever need to remind his grandfather of, making this conversation feel unnatural and only relevant to the audience. If I had to be charitable, I’d say that it’s a bit fun that Shinoha and the secret boss of the Gokudo clan, Kiwami Kimura, instantly bond over their mutual love of an in-universe Precure clone, but I do not trust this show’s writing to meaningfully build upon their meet-cute.

Last but certainly not least is the laughably poor localization and English dub performances. The script translation is hyper literal and often makes little sense, such as when Shinoha’s grandfather makes puns that are nonsensical outside of the original Japanese. The English actors are also given minimal direction outside of trying to make the clunky script match lip flaps, which often results in awkward pauses in the middle of sentences. Some characters also have unusual accents and inflection choices, resulting in what sounds like a nearly phonetic dubbing by non-English speakers.

With titles like GQuuuuuuX, New Panty and Stocking, and CITY The Animation airing on Amazon Prime, I thought the streaming platform was rapidly becoming the new home for prestige anime. Ninja vs. Gokudo completely undermines this idea, and I can’t believe Amazon paid any amount of money to have this anime on their platform, let alone dub it into several different languages. I hope to never watch or think about this anime again, except for the bare minimum amount of time and effort required to pitch it for upcoming “Worst Of” lists.

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