You can talk about all the dramatic shows you wish. You can watch “Blue Gender” or Shigurui: Death Frenzy” or “When They Cry”, but you need a break from all that gore and destruction. You have to have a silly show to mix things up and get that change of pace, which is why I would like to suggest “Ninja Nonsense”.

It is a mere 12 episodes, but it is filled with self-deprecating humor, ecchi, beautiful artwork, girls in bikinis, hopeless perverts, overheated fantasy sequences and general insanity.

It is about Shinobu, a female ninja-in-training (OK, the actual term would be kunoichi, but we know ninja immediately). She is skulking about the neighborhood, charged with an assignment by her sensei, Onsokumaru, which she must complete without fail.

We see her breaking into the house of Kaeda, Shinobu using her special skills to sneak inside, invisible to all…where she is immediately seen by Kaeda. Some stealth technique. And what is this task she must perform? She needs to go from house to house, eventually to gather up 30 pairs of panties. Huh?

The show covers the training (Training? This is training? Did you see the training in “Kenichi”? They turned that guy into tofu!) of Shinobu, who is the only female trainee in this dojo. The rest of the initiates all dress the same and are referred to as ‘Sasake’. How many are there? Well, it varies by need, but we are never quite certain. 20? 200? Enough to fill the Albert Hall?

The show breaks down the fourth wall and makes a lot of open asides, as we see the very naïve Shinobu, the more down-to-earth Kaede and the unrelentingly perverted Onsokumaru (best described as a tennis ball with wings) as they spend a year together in the Valley of the Ninjas.

Yes, there is a lot of fan service in this one, as we are made privy to all the drooling yuri fantasies that cross through the overheated fornix of Onsokumaru. Yes, Shinobu is a yummy morsel, but Kaede ain’t no slouch either (as revealed in the opening credits.)

And Onsokumaru have got to be the most perverted anime character ever. You can stack him up against Tomoki Sakurai from “Heaven’s Lost Property” or Kōta Tsuchiya (Muttsulini) from “Baka and Test” and you still come up short. And since he can change his physical form, he sometimes transforms into a buff bodybuilder, pumping his iron and his pecs. Or a galloping horse. Or a….what is that?

For Shinobu, she really doesn’t have what it takes to be a ninja. Even her younger sister is miles and miles better and is a scroll practitioner. But Shinobu has too kind of a heart and Onsokumaru is too rotten of a teacher to be of any real help (and the amount of trouble HE gets into is phenomenal).

The episodes are more or less independent of one another, except for the very first and the very last, so you can watch this in any given order and it all works. I found this show hilarious. Normally I am distrustful of fan service, as it does violate a personal caveat of mine, but this is used to exquisite ends, not merely to show them all nude (we’ll discuss the difference between naked and nude at a later date).

But with episode titles like “Onsokumaru Goes to Hell” and “Ninjas Enjoying a Cherry Blossom Party”, well, there is much silliness for everyone and it is a good laugh. So, let Naruto beat up his Sasake, I’ll stay with Shinobu and her Sasakes.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           8 (It is a good-looking show, certainly with all the perversity afoot)
Plot                  2 (Plot? What plot? Who cares?)
Pacing             8 (It certainly gets frantic in a good sense)
Effectiveness   9 (This really works)
Conclusion      9 (A real end to it all, and a good one at that)
Fan Service     6 (A similar show would “Mahoromatic”)
Overall            9

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Is that a monster carnivorous plant? Run away!