Highlights
- Ninja Kamui’s minimal approach to backstory is refreshing, paving the way for deeper connections between characters.
- Higan and Mike’s shared trauma and guilt make them unexpectedly similar, highlighting their emotional journeys.
- The potential for Higan and Mike’s partnership to evolve lies in breaking down walls and developing their bond through action.
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Show Title |
Ninja Kamui |
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Director |
Sunghoo Park |
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Studio |
E&H Production |
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Episode Air Date |
2/24/2024 |
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Ninja Kamui, Episode 4, now streaming on Max.
Sometimes less is more, and when it comes to backstory, Ninja Kamui‘s brevity has been appreciated as it continues to barrel ahead rather than linger in the past. Conversely, the newest episode stood to hit harder with more left to the imagination as it explored the pasts of Higan and Mike, revealing what will hopefully result in a meaningful throughline connecting their trauma.
Last week, the villains took the spotlight as the lecherous Lil set his sights on Higan, and Yamaji grilled Joseph over his reckless use of the organization’s assets. Later, an ambush forces Higan into a fight with a mechanical puppet, and although he emerges victorious, he just ends up feeding his enemies more data on how to attack him the next time.
Higan and Mike Are More Alike than They Realize
The most interesting part of this episode is also the area where it stood to improve the most in the storytelling department. Up to this point, Mike has been a pretty stereotypical detective on the verge of retirement who can’t let go of a case, and his backstory following the opening theme isn’t going to change that perception. He tragically lost his daughter in a car accident, and when he ignored the calls from his wife to tell him this fact, he ended up losing her as well.
And the missed calls are just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The scars run deeper than that, the implication being that Mike was too absorbed in his work to spend time with his family, not that it made his daughter love him any less. But when that love dies, suddenly there’s only the mounting pile of grievances straining a marriage in which one half isn’t emotionally available during the most horrific thing to possibly happen to them.
When the Scene Forgets Subtlety
Phrased that way, it sounds quite poetic, but it’s only the most flavorful reading of a plot seen countless times before, and it’s more thought than was put into the dialog in the scene. Mike’s wife, Ariana, exposits a line of dialogue so unnaturally drenched in context that it saps what emotions could have flourished in the scene.
I thought I could handle the challenges of marrying and having a family with an FBI agent! But I was wrong!
The audience can already infer that the death of Mike’s daughter destroyed his marriage and that his emotional distance was a huge factor. All the things that can’t be inferred should add intrigue as to the depth of that rift, but instead, only a sliver of that tension is cut off and spelled out to the viewer, thus coming off as awkward. The saving grace is in how this begs a comparison between Mike and Higan, another father who lost everything.
How Ninja Kamui Might Confront Their Guilt
Both of these men have lost their families – albeit in vastly different ways, but their trauma and guilt are similarly linked to them not being there to save them. The audience never sees the deaths happening; only the aftermath or, in Higan’s case, the finishing blow. Make no mistake, Higan feels guilty too, something made clear by his nightmare in Episode 2. Any father – especially one as skilled as him – would feel some measure of guilt.
What’s fascinating is how these two men’s differing circumstances prove exactly why they aren’t to blame, and they just don’t know it. Mike was so invested in his work that it put distance between him and his loved ones, but it’s not as though his daughter’s death was a direct consequence of his work. It was a complete accident. On the flip side, Higan’s circumstances were almost the exact opposite.
When he and Mari left the organization and started a family, there was no job or responsibility separating them. Yet, despite Higan being there, they were still taken from him. The hardest truth about survivor’s guilt is that it attempts to bind logic to a tragedy that is more often than not wholly illogical. Whether Mike answered his wife’s calls or not, it wouldn’t have saved his daughter, and Higan’s inability to save Mari and Ren didn’t make him a failure. They’re both simply victims.
Where the Show Needs to Take This Plotline
Higan and Mike have just enough chemistry that, with the right steps taken, the pair of them could be quite the duo by the end of the series, but there’s work to be done. Having a duo so aesthetically and mechanically opposed as this doesn’t present a lot of opportunities to develop their bond through action, a place where this series is currently at its best.
Mike is as regular as they come, so instead, success lies in the writing, and good old-fashioned detective work to make him more than just “regular.” This episode even hinted that he has a suspicion about how to see through the ninja’s disguises, which could truly alter the playing field and make him feel like a real detective rather than just a suit and FBI badge.
Ninja Kamui is onto something interesting here, but it will take these two characters opening up to one another and breaking down the walls they’ve built around themselves to make it work. Without that, there’s not much substance or meaning behind this temporary allegiance of theirs. Most of all, it will hurt Mike as a character, who thus far has been nothing but an observer, reacting to the same captivating nonsense as the rest of us.
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