Masked Ninja Akakage - Episode 01

Nyaa | Mega

Masked Ninja Akakage is best known for his 1967 Tokusatsu , as well as his appearance as one of the Magnificent 10 in Yasuhiro Imagawa's Giant Robo OVA. The tokusatsu was based on a manga by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, however, where the manga was an orthodox ninja manga, the tokusatsu incorporated giant monsters and aliens. 

In 1966, Toei produced a film titled Watari the Ninja Boy, with plans to adapt Watari into a TV drama the following year. The film was successful, receiving a positive reception from movie-goers, but not from Sanpei Shirato, the manga author and creator of Watari. Because of Shirato's dislike for the movie, he revoked the right to further adapt Watari into a TV drama. Panicked, Toei contacted Mitsuteru Yokoyama and requested that he produce a ninja manga for them to adapt. Yokoyama finished serialization for Iga no Kagemaru and started a new serialization, Hida no Akakage (Later changed to Kamen no Ninja Akakage to be the same as the TV Drama).    

In 1987, Toei produced a 23-episode TV anime based on an updated version of the manga penned by Mitsuteru Yokoyama himself. This was one year into the run of Toei's Dragonball anime, and the success of Dragonball clearly influenced this rendition of Akakage. The series opens from the point-of-view of Kotaro (Aokage) a young boy living in the mountains with his grandpa who possesses impressive fighting skills thanks to his grandpa's training. Did I mention Kotaro is voiced by Masako Nozawa? 

Being a Toei production from 1987 not only did Dragonball influence the story, but the two also share tons of cast and crew members including Akakage's voice actor Toshio Furukawa who voiced Piccolo. There was also the narrator, Tessho Genda, who voiced Shuu, General White, and many other additional voices throughout the Dragonball anime. Also gotta give props to the soundtrack by Shinsuke Kikuchi, as he managed to create a score that sounds similar in tone to his work on Dragonball without sounding too derivative. 

There was a single episode fansubbed back in 2015 but that translation was less than spectacular. This is a brand new translation provided by Windii. We currently have the first 2 episodes subbed and plan to continue subbing this series to the end. A couple of changes you may have noticed if you watched the previous subs:

• Kinme Order is now translated as Goldeneye Cult. This is a more accurate translation. There is currently an unaffiliated group working to translate the Akakage manga and they are also using this translation.
• Akakage is never referred to as "Red Shadow" when Akakage is spoken as a name.