Welcome to ZenTV. Since the mid-nineties and the groundbreaking Stealth parties at the Blue Note in Hoxton Square, Ninja has been almost as well respected for its engagement with visuals as it has for its audio. The two came together on this massive retrospective of almost a decade of experimentation, innovation, humour and weirdness. Let’s get the spec out of the way first. The ZenTV DVD has twice the capacity of a normal DVD, containing as it does 35 promo videos from the label, a fifteen minute audiovisual mix and a 30 minutes audio mix from Hexstatic. And as if that wasn’t enough, the DVD has a menu system which means you can watch the videos either in the order we intended, randomly, or chronologically from the oldest to the newest or the newest to the oldest. You can also look up any specific act and check out their videos and album art. Or just leave a gallery of some of Ninja’s finest covers running in the corner of the room as a kind of ambient art installation dahlink… Mwah.
As the Shogun lays dying, seventeen Iga clan ninja are sent to infiltrate the impenetrable fortress where his youngest son is preparing to storm Edo Castle and name himself Shogun by force of arms. They are to either steal the documents that will eventually give him lawful claim to rulership, or they are to assassinate him. But even before they reach the castle walls, they find their every move countered by a ruthless ninja hunter in the employ of the would-be usurper (Konoe), who not only knows their every tactic but knows the exact make-up of their team thanks to his own spies within Edo Castle. As the Iga Ninja fall one by one, the mission's success or complete failure–where failure will result in a bloody war of succession–comes to hinge on a single young and inexperienced ninja (Kotaro).