Manga Review: Ninja Papa by Yasuhito Yamamoto.
Nobuo Matsuri is a typical Japanese salaryman (office worker.) At thirty-two, he’s got a low-paying dead-end job at a second-rate food company, an incompetent boss who treats him like dirt, a heavily-mortgaged home and a nagging mother-in-law who never hesitates to point out all the many ways in which he’s a disappointment. But he also has a lovely wife, two adorable children, and happiness.
Also, Nobuo Matsuri has a dark secret. Up until age 21, he was a top assassin for the Nakuru ninja clan. When he fell in love with Aya, he left the clan, violating their rule forbidding meaningful contact with outsiders (and experiencing actual love.) As a result, Nakuru Clan ninja often attack Nobuo, and he must kill them to survive. More troublingly for this man of peace and reason, he often runs across people who cannot be reasoned or negotiated with and who threaten those he cares for with mortal danger. Then he must reluctantly use his ninja skills to kill those people.
This manga is very much a wish-fulfillment fantasy for salarymen. A ordinary working schlub who is meek, mild and bumbling at the office, but has great sex at home and kicks the ass of those who thoroughly deserve it. As such, it goes over the top sometimes. Nobuo’s manager is incompetent and cartoonishly sexist in a way that would get him fired at any real company, even in Japan. And it never occurs to the Nakuru clan assassins to just look Nobuo up in the phonebook–he hasn’t even changed his name!
But as an office worker, I can well identify with many of the situations Nobuo finds himself in.
This is an 18+ manga for bloody violence and sex scenes. It is not currently in print in the U.S.
Overall, a fun book, but not very deep, and has elements that may not appeal to many readers.
