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Sasuke the little ninja

Sasuke the little ninja
Sasuke the little ninja
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Sampei Shirato, Junzo Tashiro TBS
Original title: Sasuke
Characters:
Sasuke, Hattori Hanzo, Narrator, Onihime, Village Old Man, Sasuke's Mother, Jinnai Shiranui, Daisuke Oozaru, Tokugawa Ieyasu
Author: Sampei Shirato, Junzo Tashiro
Regia: Kiyoshi Onishi
Production: TCJ Tele-Cartoon Japan
Country: Japan
Year: 3 September 1968
Broadcast in Italy: February 1982
Gender: Action / Adventure
Episodes: 29
Duration: 24 minutes
Recommended age: Children from 6 to 12 years old

"Sasuke, the little ninja" is a cartoon broadcast for the first time in Italy in 1981 and revived thirty years later on Neko Tv. The series consists of 29 episodes, each lasting about twenty-four minutes and linked together, produced by TBS in 1968.

The abbreviation in the Italian translation is sung by the famous group of the Knights of the King.

The cartoon tells the story of Sasuke, a child who belongs to the Sarutobi clan fighting with the one headed by the Tokugawa Shogun. We are in seventeenth-century Japan and the Tokugawa Shogun wins his battle and sentences his surviving rivals to death. In a frightening manhunt, Sasuke's father is injured and, to save his life, he pretends to be a wanderer. The mother is not so lucky that, instead, she is killed by Tokugawa's supporters, the Hattori. Sasuke thus finds himself having to escape to save his life as well and in this escape he joins his father who, under the guise of the wanderer martial arts master, will initiate him into the ninja art without revealing his true identity.

In the long journey that the child will undertake, however, the Hattori will not be the only enemy. As an initiation path, in fact, Sasuke and his father will encounter a thousand obstacles and strange characters, at times dangerous and at other times willing to help them escape.

In the last few episodes, Sasuke will discover the true identity of his ninja master and will be able to accept the new relationship of his father with a widow he met along the journey.

Sasuke the little ninja
Sasuke the little ninja
ï ¿½
Sampei Shirato, Junzo Tashiro TBS

The atmosphere of each episode is quite dark, the colors used always seem to tend towards gray and black out of respect for the fairly dramatic plot of the series. And so the lines seem almost made with ink and this technique - so adult if you like, even if we find quite childish faces and details in the characters - give a special pathos to the whole story.

But let's see together what happens in the first three episodes.

The first episode opens with the memories of Sasuke when he was still living with his mother and in these flashbacks all the melancholy sweetness of a child deprived of maternal affection who had to become an adult too quickly is expressed. It is he who tells what happened and what were the events that led him to that long journey.

While Sasuke and his mother live moments of daily domestic life, a traveler (who is none other than Sasuke's father) knocks on their door asking for hospitality because he is injured. At this point the mother goes to get water to disinfect the traveler's wound, but is attacked by a gang of Hattori who mortally wound her, so that she cannot warn her husband of the imminent danger. The child will not even be able to give the last farewell to the dying mother, because their hut is attacked by the ninjas and the father / wayfarer forces him to escape. Sasuke thus begins his escape with the beggar who confesses to him, however, that he is a ninja master. Having to return to his Lord to regroup the surviving army, the master abandons the child who, from now on, will have to fend for himself.

Sasuke the little ninja
Sasuke the little ninja
ï ¿½
Sampei Shirato, Junzo Tashiro TBS

Even the second episode, entitled "The doll", is built with flashbacks that begin to show what future is shaping up for the young Sasuke. Kaede chases the little ninja by hurling his terrible cats at him and during the escape Sasuke loses the spheres containing the magic dust, which allows him to vanish. In order to escape, the child hides inside a cave where Kaede, considering him trapped, incites the cats to push him towards the bottom of the cave. But Sasuke, smarter, manages to stun them with the smoke of a fire and takes refuge even further inside. Now locked inside and with no possibility of escape due to a boulder blocking the exit, Sasuke is threatened by Kaede to deliver the doll he has with him. Desperate because there is no way out. Sasuke remembers his master's words about the bravery of a real ninja and pulls himself together to find an escape solution. Thus he meets an old woman who has lived there for over thirty years who shows him the different possibilities that exist to survive inside the cave. At this point, from a conversation with the old woman, Sasuke deduces that inside the cave there is nitric acid which, combined with cotton, allows to create gunpowder that will make them come out of the cave. Both the terrible cats and - at least so it seems - Kaede die from the blast. The old woman would like to rage on Kaede's body because she has learned that she is the culprit of killing Sasuke's mother but the child, respecting a civic ethic rooted in him, is opposed. However Kaede is not dead and, seeing the child escape, she tries to kill him with a ninja dagger, but the old woman is faster than her and kills her.

Sasuke returns to his home, now abandoned. Touching a comb he recalls the good times when he was pampered and cared for by his mom, But the dangers are not over for the little ninja. Hattori Hanzo, the leader of the Tokugawa ninja, sees him circling among the monkeys and is so impressed by his grace that he wants to capture him so that he can steal his secrets. He then tries to hit him with his shuriken, that is the typical ninja stars, but the clever Sasuke puts in place a stratagem to save himself. But Hanzo does not give up and begins to chase him and once again the child makes him lose his tracks to reappear naked on horseback. At this point the voiceover, for the umpteenth time, explains how certain tricks of the little ninja are scientifically possible.

Sasuke the little ninja
Sasuke the little ninja
ï ¿½
Sampei Shirato, Junzo Tashiro TBS

Night falls, Sasuke falls asleep and a brown bear targets him to make his dinner. But the boar who had helped him in his escape from Hanzo, runs to his aid and engages in a fight with the bear. Initially it seems to have the worst until the bear is pierced by a catana that appears to come from the boar itself. In reality, the latter is none other than Sasuke's father who always watches over the child. Upon awakening, Sasuke realizes that he has been saved by his father who has now fled again in battle, while the narrator tells us that the ninjas cannot have feelings.

In the third episode, however, we talk about the battle of Osaka in 1615 in which the troops of the Shogun Togugawa and the Toyotomi rebels face each other. The outcome is obvious because Togugawa's men are outnumbered and also have firearms. Despite this, the ninjas fight with fury and courage even knowing they are going to meet the inevitable defeat.

During the battle Osaru, Sasuke's father, is shot dead by enemies and seems to collapse on the ground. However, when enemies approach the corpse, a self-ignition ensues and the body mysteriously disappears.

The Shogun orders all Toyotomi supporters to be identified and offers a bounty to the peasants to hand them over to his authority and proceed with the execution. The heads of the rebels, once cut, will be displayed as a warning to discourage further war actions. Sasuke, seeing the severed heads, is relieved not to find his father's. Osaru, on the other hand, is chased by a group of ninjas who manage to kill one at a time thanks to his skill as a soldier until the final battle in which he apparently seems to die, but in reality he manages to defeat this enemy too.

Meanwhile, Sasuke has to chase after a monkey who stole his doll and runs away until he collides with Kaede, who actually managed to escape the deadly ambush of the old woman of the cave. But why is this doll so important? Because it is a lethal weapon of great power. In fact, the monkey was sent by Sasuke's father, who intervenes once again to save his son by using the lethal weapon on Kaeda and her soldiers.

Sasuke and his father resume their journey, but suddenly the man has an illness due to the poison contained in the arrow that had hit him earlier. Falling to the ground and realizing he is being chased, he pushes his son off a ravine to protect him and, taken prisoner, at least hopes for the child's safety. But Sasuke is also in danger because Hattori Hanzo, suspicious of the extreme ease with which the man was captured, realizes that in reality he did it to protect Sasuke. So he sets out in pursuit of the child and thinks he's killing him with fire. But Sasuke - with a special technique later explained by the narrator - manages to save himself.

He then decides to pretend to be a fox to get close to the enemy soldiers and have them within range so that he can hit them with the poisoned needles of a blowpipe, causing them to fall into a deep sleep. The plan has a lucky outcome and Sasuke manages to save his father and, although the latter still suffers from the after-effects of the poisoning, the two set out trying to escape once again from the soldiers of the Shogun who are on their trail.

"Sasuke, the little ninja" remains a different cartoon from the others. Even in the childish features of the drawings, made by the master of the genre Sampei Shirato, the plot is very realistic and faithful to historical truthfulness. In a purely male world dominated by the law of the strongest who is always devoid of mercy, the series forgets that it is a product intended mainly for a young audience and puts on the screen images that are often also gory, where blood abounds and the master Shirato grants scientific explanations (absolutely true) to the various ninja tricks that, gradually, he teaches his son.

Also, unlike cartoons that usually have a complete and unquestioning ending, in "Sasuke, the little ninja" the happy ending is only partial. It is true that there will be a rapprochement between father and son, but it is also true that before reaching the twenty-ninth episode there are many deaths that the two protagonists leave behind.

It is just a pity that the cartoon, which is almost faithfully inspired by the relative manga, has as an interruption a somewhat abrupt end, I would say almost hasty, which excludes many events that instead have their fulfillment in the comic.

Sasuke the little ninja copyright Sampei Shirato, Junzo Tashiro, TBS and the right holders. they are used here for cognitive and informative purposes.

 

Sasuke the little ninja theme song - song lyrics and guitar chords


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