Crunchyroll Expo 2019 featured the world premiere of cyberpunk ninja anime film BLACKFOX, as well as a ten-minute sneak preview of associated live-action prequel BLACKFOX: Age of the Ninja. The former is a compelling mix of action, intrigue, and pathos. While the latter looks to be a delightfully campy romp through the same material in a tangential medium and genre.
BLACKFOX centers on the Isurugi family, a storied, black fox-themed ninja clan now reduced to grandpa Hyoei, dad Allen, and daughter Rikka. The central conflict shown in the first act is Rikka torn between her grandfather’s ninjutsu and her father’s robotics and artificial intelligence engineering. It doesn’t take a genius of Allen Isurugi’s level to figure out that by the third act, we have Rikka combining the lessons of the two generations before her into a super badass cyberpunk ninja.
And that’s the first point to hit about BLACKFOX: it’s a very cool movie. Ninjas are cool and this movie makes good use of its cool ninjas right from the get-go when we see a young Rikka playing at ninjutsu training with her grandfather. It only gets cooler from there when the film throws in psychic powers and tank-sized killer robots.
But while BLACKFOX had the opportunity to be a trashy action movie where cyborg ninjas fight corporate death machines, Studio 3Hz of Flip Flappers and Gun Gale Online fame took the time to write a screenplay that builds up the characters and really makes you care about them.
Working with a small core cast of the three Isurugis, psychic experiment Mia, her ambitious scientist father Lauren, and the three sentient robot animals Allen created to look after Rikka, there is ample room to work out the relationships between the five humans. I found myself very invested in the Isurugi family by the time the second act rolled around.
There is a supporting cast that’s a lot weaker. The robot animals, in particular, are rather shallow for how much screen time they get. I’ve already forgotten their names. And Rikka has a roommate named Melissa who, while an adorable and endearing anime archetype, has a major plot turn in the fourth act that is terribly rushed and completely unearned. It feels like some important Melissa scenes got left on the cutting room floor, and that’s a shame because she very much connected with the audience in my theater.
I’m sure I’ll have plenty more chances to see Melissa, though, because it’s very clear that there is a serious investment into the creation of a BLACKFOX franchise well beyond this film. At the end of its runtime, I’m left with many questions and a lot more story runway for either a second film or an anime series. With the setup of the final frame of the movie, I did feel like I’d just watched a very long trailer for an upcoming show.
That is before I watched the actual very long trailer for an upcoming film. Crunchyroll treated the premiere audience to a ten minute sneak peek of BLACKFOX: Age of the Ninja, which appears to tell the same story as the animated BLACKFOX film, but in a live-action, period martial arts drama format. With the context of having just watched the anime, I was very entertained by the campy reinterpretation. Even though period martial arts dramas are not usually to my taste. I’m not sure I would sit through the feature-length presentation, but the ten-minute cut was just right.
At this point, I’m invested in this new cyberpunk ninja IP and I’m ready for more. It has just the right combination of cool, compelling, and creative.
