Shinobi: Ninja Princess 3

Rekishi (History): When Ninja Master Jubei sees that Shianndrea is upset over the revelation of Kim and Ai’s romantic relationship, he tells her the story of her ancestor, Yamoto Toshigawa, the Princess Tokuhime and their fight against the all powerful Oni named Dagamon. Meanwhile, Hamasuke makes plans to win back his honor and become the hero he feels he should be.

As much as I love ninjas, I wasn’t quite sure how I felt going into this book.  I’ve been a little on the fence with how much I like it so far.  Overall, Shinobi: Ninja Princess has been a decent book given that it’s only a few issues in.  My only worry was the strong teen drama theme, but luckily issue 3 kept my interest going.

The bulk of this issue focuses on a story being told to Shianndrea about her powerful ancestor.  This serves to help her feel more confident with herself in light of the recent jealousy she is dealing with.  It also gives us as the reader a nice bit of history on her clan.  As with before, we also get another tidbit of events from when she was much younger.

With the story bouncing between the present and past, a wise choice was made to use two different art styles.  The watercolor style used for the bedtime tale was a good option for that portion of the story.  Although there really wasn’t a whole lot of action overall, the areas that did have it benefitted from the watercolor art.

I honestly appreciated the story moving away from the teen drama for a bit.  I understand that it will likely come back, but this issue was a good place to give us some history on Shi’s clan to break it up.  Now that we have an idea of her potential, I’d like to see where it goes from here and will say it’s still a good buy.

For more information on Shinobi: Ninja Princess or other Action Lab books, check out Action Lab.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.