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Ninjai
Official poster
Created byThe Ninjai Gang
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes12[2]
Original release
ReleaseJune 4, 2001 (2001-06-04)[1]

Ninjai: The Little Ninja is a Flash cartoon.[3] The cartoon has not been available online since April 2015.

On August 25th, 2024, some of the flash animations have been reformatted on YouTube, however the YouTube upload was later taken down.[citation needed] This splash media was on Atomfilms.com on its original release. This cartoon also spawned “Karma Kula”, a similar parallel of heroes whose journey begins in a live action sequence also produced by Ninjai Gang.[citation needed]

Overview

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The cartoon is a creation of The Ninjai Gang.[4] Ninjai is a web-based animation that centers around the life of Ninjai, a young samurai/ninja who is traveling the world looking for meaning and purpose. Along the way, his path is crossed by rogues or people who help him. Ninjai's best friend is 'Little Bird', a cute and brave sidekick with whom Ninjai often converses.[5]

History

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Ninjai first appeared on June 4, 2001 as a trailer created using Adobe Flash,[1][4] and had a trademark filed for its title on June 14, 2001.[6] The animation series drew a strong following with its unique style and storyline at the time, and ended up producing a total of 12 episodes thereafter,[2] each a few minutes in length.[citation needed]

Despite being made by martial artists who did animation only as a hobby,[4] the quality of the animation grew steadily as the episodes progressed, with more time between each episode as a result. After the release of episode 12, production came to a pause, with the promise of further episodes on the way. Some time later[when?], news broke that the group was abandoning the short-form animations and aiming for a feature-length production with a complete studio. In early 2015, the group posted to their social media channels on Facebook and Twitter with media kits and wallpapers, and asked their followers to recommend blogs to advertise Ninjai in exchange for inside scoops on the series' production.[7] On March 5, 2015, a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign was announced and possible reward ideas were shared for the following 5 months,[8] but the campaign was never officially launched on Kickstarter.

Despite this, the Ninjai website remained functional through at least August 2019,[9] and at New York Comic Con in 2021, The Ninjai Gang had a booth set up to showcase a trailer and give away merchandise, advertising that the full-length feature production was still in the works,[10] with an initial release date of January 2022. However, as of January 2023, IMDb states that it is in post-production with an outdated release date of 2022.[11]

As of early January 2023, the Ninjai.com website had been accessible but showing only a message that it was "under maintenance" for a significant amount of time, with The Ninjai Gang not responding to inquiries. Later that month, the Ninjai.com domain ceased to resolve to a website, and became completely unavailable, though the domain is still registered until at least April 2025.[12] The social media channels and existence of Ninjai.com on the Wayback Machine have been removed. The trade names and licenses have mostly expired, though a license for NINJAI GANG, LLC is listed as "Active", having been registered on November 10, 2004 with a partner term date of December 31 1,000,000 AD.[6][13]

The Science of Identity Foundation's founder Chris Butler (a.k.a. Srila Prabupad), halted all ties to the group and seized production.[citation needed]

Sunset Studios (another form of The Ninjai Gang) picked up the trademark for Ninjai and is currently listed as the owner party, but sometime thereafter seems to have dropped the series and the trademark is now abandoned.[6]

Characters

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  • Ninjai: The titular protagonist of the series is a boy of unstated age with an unnatural skill as a warrior. Not much is known about his identity; he seems to suffer from a form of amnesia and is on a quest to find out about himself, addressing questions such as "Who am I?" and "What is my purpose in life?"[4]
  • "Little Bird": A small, grey and brown canary bird that Ninjai befriends. It is a loyal friend, who cares about Ninjai, staying with him even in the Swamp of Ghosts.
  • Dotoshi of the Blue Lotus clan: A mysterious man that Ninjai meets during his travels, aiding him by helping him cross a river. His, or his clan's, purposes are unknown, and he has not re-appeared.
  • The mad inventor: An eccentric who swears in most of his sentences. Ninjai helps him out of an unseen contraption that managed to snag him with a rope, leaving him hanging by his feet from a tree.
  • Maha: An old man that Ninjai is seeking. He is believed to have gone to the Keoki mountains, leaving the village of Yamuri behind. He is not yet seen, by name, in the series.
  • Takagawa of the Red Dragon clan: An evil, broadsword-wielding man. He is a sadistic, mentally unstable villain in the series who takes pleasure in others' pain.
  • Sakuri of the Red Dragon clan: Apparently Takagawa's right-hand man. Though he speaks little, he displays loyalty towards his master Takagawa and apparently enjoys the evil works about. He has a mystical tattoo of a snake that can move off of his arm and into a stringed weapon to allow it to fly, hone onto and attack targets. The serpent that forms from the union of weapon and tattoo is killed in chapter 12 by Ninjai, causing grief to Sakuri. It is unknown if there is, or will be, long-term effects of this form of severance.

References

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  1. ^ a b "Ninjai Teaser Trailer". Newgrounds. 1 June 2001. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
  2. ^ a b "Ninjai: The Little Ninja". Ninjai. Archived from the original on 9 April 2011.
  3. ^ Eastman, Susan Tyler; Ferguson, Douglas A.; Klein, Robert A. (2006). Media promotion and marketing for broadcasting, cable, and the Internet. Focal Press. pp. 239–. ISBN 978-0-240-80762-1. Retrieved 29 June 2011.
  4. ^ a b c d "Little Ninja is a Big Hit on the Web". Black Belt. April 2002. p. 66. Retrieved 29 June 2011.
  5. ^ Smith, Krispijn (4 May 2006). "Filmpjes als snacks: Atom onafhankelijk platform". NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 15 July 2012. Retrieved 29 June 2011.
  6. ^ a b c "NINJAI THE LITTLE NINJA Trademark of Sunset Studios - Serial Number 76272124 - Alter". alter.com. Retrieved 5 September 2022.
  7. ^ "Ninjai: The Little Ninja - Home". Facebook. Archived from the original on 9 May 2017. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  8. ^ "Ninjai: The Little Ninja - Home". Facebook. Archived from the original on 14 August 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  9. ^ "Ninjai: The Little Ninja". Ninjai. Archived from the original on 29 August 2019.
  10. ^ "New York Comic Con - Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  11. ^ "Ninjai: The Little Ninja (2022)". IMDb. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  12. ^ "Whois ninjai.com". Whois. Archived from the original on 24 January 2023. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  13. ^ "Business Registration Division - Search for Business Entity & Documents". Hawaii State Department of Commerce & Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
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