Last weekend in Chiba, Japan, Good Smile at the annual Wonder Festival unveiled much. The hobby company is known for its figurine replications of anime and video game characters. The ninja figures below are small, unlike real ninjas.
Though these figures were 3D printed through a partnership with MakerBot, our memories aren’t. Not yet anyway.
While the folklore of ninjahood is naturally richer in Japan than it is in the West, we’ve done a mighty good job appropriating this or that element for our entertainment needs. This one goes without saying. So I’ll say it this way:
Many of us born after, we’ll say “a certain time,” were first exposed to the mythos of The Ninja byway of pizza-loving, radioactive, turtle/humanoids. An odd and, in the end, disruptive historical view of an order that, without these modifications, might stand as respected as Samurai, or, as a better example for contrast’s sake, Freemasons.
In the west, the fascination with Samurai is well documented. Without Kurosawa we wouldn’t have Seven Samurai, A Fistful of Dollars (and its sequels), The Magnificent Seven, or, even, jumping ahead quite a bit, the racistly regrettable The Last Samurai. Fill in the blank. The examples are nearly countless.
The ninja, as far as I can tell, is even less respected. And the examples are as different as they are actually countless. Turtles aren’t the worst of it. Another massive influence on the collective consciousness of a particular age was (and continues to be) Mortal Kombat. And like the video-game franchise (turned film, comic book, figurine, et. al. franchises), the west’s take on what a ninja is may be nothing like what a ninja truly was.
We (the west) know that ninjas were/are covert, invisible, ruthless, and perhaps fit better in fables than in history books. American Ninja? While appropriation isn’t confined to the west, we’re awfully good at it. Take a well-established caricature, with clear historical and ethnic roots, and paint them white for a white audience.
Yeah, there were four of them. At least. All involved still receive residuals.
Of course, this is a 3D printing-focused publication, which you could figure by the site’s title, so to return to our premise; I await the 3D printing of a full-scale model of Michael Dudikoff’s head.
My time on the page is dwindling. I’d hoped to be more thorough, and all contrarians are welcome to bring to me their arguments and claims. But keep in mind, we, all of us, have access to Wikipedia. Plus, I’ve got a library card.
Source: MakerBot
