Rakudai Ninja Rantarou (aka RKRN or Nintama) has been a great point of fascination for me in the last
couple of years. Originally ran as a gag manga in the late 80s by Amako Soubee and then adapted into
a long-running anime since the 90s (featuring art and animation direction by the legendary Fujimori Masaya)
Nintama Rantarou has for many years now held the title of the longest running anime series on NHK. Not to
mention, just straight up the #2 anime with the most amount of episodes aired ever, only bested in numbers
by Sazae-san (a short-form web series featuring the minute day to day existence of a housewife.)
(Also, to be fair, Nintama Rantarou's gargantuous number is also thanks to the fact each episode is only 7 minutes long, with Season 2 out of 31 and counting starting the tradition.)
The fact that Nintama Rantarou has been running this long, with this many episodes, had entered the public conciousness of every Japanese citizen in part thanks to the osmosis-like nature of NHK, and me, an ignorant Western Otaku who had never even HEARD of it in passing fascinated me to no end.
I am entirely unsure of how I exactly came to be aware of it's existence. My friend mentioned it on X the everything app (formerly known as Twitter) and I thought the designs were exceptionally charming. My archeology-like-curiousity was piqued when I purused the many totally-legal anime streaming sites I frequent for a sample of the show, only to find absolutely nothing archived. This tends to happen with older anime, so I went to the site that meows, since perhaps maybe the insane number of episodes lended it more to being a series I should be torrenting in the first place anyways. Well. All that awaited me were multiple single duplicate listings of the 2011 animated movie.
I was baffled. Was this lost media...? How could such a famous piece of childrens media simply not exist anywhere...? Surely some sick freak had archived it somewhere...and the ghostly existence of what once existed of an english speaking fandom implied something existed out there for a wandering fujo to chew on...
Many deep dive tumblr searches later, I discovered there was a single unlisted youtube channel that had been painstakingly archiving every instance of Nintama Rantarou, including fansubbed episodes and stage plays. I have hit the jackpot. And began my journey of getting way too invested in inaccesible obscure childrens media.
That being said, the manga is COMPLETELY unfindable online. Like 5 chapters have been uploaded to
Mangadex, but when it comes to finding raws of the actual manga it's straight up impossible.
The differences between the manga and anime are fairly noticeable, to the extent the fandom can by lightly divided
by people who prefer the original manga work to it's anime adaptation.
While the anime has a very light hearted tone, the manga and light novel takes the blood and violence up a notch, with
a focus on the educational aspect.
Amako-sensei particularly wanted to write a manga about Japan in the late Muromachi period and how they existed.
She wrote about actual techniques ninja used, with a focus on day-to-day civilian life, as most ninja back then
lived as peasants. She wrote about these topics which such feverish attention to detail and realism, I found
myself feeling extremely grateful I had stumbled upon her work. My favorite elements of history had always been how
people simply existed, and I felt I had gleamed a more detailed understanding of Muromachi-Sengoku Jidai
than most overviews of Japanese history written by a westerner.
I hope to one day have the financial freedom to upload all the physical books I have and scantalate them...it is a single fujos dream...
Now. To be perfectly honest with you. As much as one can respect the craftsmenship of Nintama Rantarou. I'm going to get to the meat of it. This is a show aimed towards housewives. The audience of every stage play is filled with middle-aged women. All of the merchandise is explicitly focused on the 6th Years despite their reputation as side characters in the main cast. It's awesome. The boys in this show are awesome. They got one for everybody.
This is my wife. He's my favorite. He is a 6th year. He's the president of the Accounting Club. He carries around a giant steel abacus with him everywhere, because he loves his job that much. He's extremely high strung and his workaholism has aged him beyond his years. He's one of the only students in his grade to have visible bags under his eyes. He has an incredibly short temper and is rude to anyone that gets in his way. If he was real I would not want anything to do with him. But thankfully he is a cartoon character. I have 133 screencaps of him in this folder. Considering the depths of my lust I think this is a pathetic number. I am quite fond of him.
My initial favorite character. I think he wins #1 in the popularity poll every year, and if he doesn't then he wins #2 because housewives that have had a crush on Doi Sensei since they were ten years old control this domain. He is handsome and kind. He comes from a temple and is implied to be Buddhist throughout the series, as noted by his name Zenpouji (zen, temple), his hobby of carving buddha statues and his monk garb. He has chronically bad luck, which is the basis of every gag and tragedy that befalls him. I find this tragically beautiful...as he is a man loved by everyone, a man which carries the light of Buddha, who has devoted himself to saving others...and yet God has decided to torture him. How could you not be obsessed with him. He's wonderful. He's kind of like if Falin from Dungeon Meshi was a guy.
This is Kakashi from Naruto. Zatto is from Tasogaredoki Castle, as described in the official profile "an evil castle that loves
to start wars." Yeah man. His canonical introduction in the timeline was when his castle was caught warmongering to sap profit
from local villages, Ninjutsu Gakuen decided to stick their nose where it doesn't belong and crossed paths with him.
But it turns out he's secretly a really sweet guy that's great with kids. Even though he's also like a blood thirsty
psychopath. He's teased for "sitting like a woman". He is covered completely in bandages from when he saved Sonnamon's
father from a fire. Cause he's just such a good guy. He drinks zosui through a straw because he doesn't want to
pull his mask down. He's kind of perfect. Zatto Konnamon literally means "perfect job" in Japanese.
I love you Zatto Konnamon.
This is Hama. He shows up very late in the show, around Season 23. He's such a good character though it's a shame he
shows up so late... He's a descedent of the Matsuhodo Ninjas, and had been spending the last 14 years of his life
protecting the castle his ancestors left behind. Tasogaredokitakes advantage of his trust, and ends up destroying
the ruins for their own personal gain. These series of episodes leave me with a deep feeling of despair.
Left without a home, Hama joins Ninjutsu Gakuen, and transfers in as a 4th Year.
He loves bad jokes, laughing extemely loudly and uncontrollably at everything and is the only guy in the entire school
the local gun/cannon pervert trusts. He's excellent. I'm sad he's not in the 2011 movie...but we can continue to pray.