[Meeting…] Hattori

Everyone has heard of Doraemon, the robot cat of the future created in 1969 by the artist duo Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko who generally signed their works as Fujiko Fujio.

Although these artists are usually known as a duo, actually they used to work individually dividing the collections between them, so that most of their series have been done alone, hence their works are often seen signed as Fujiko F Fujio (Hiroshi Fujimoto) or Fujiko Fujio A (Motoo Abiko) especially after the official separation of the duo in 1987.

This time I am going to talk about Hattori the ninja, a character created by this duo (Although in practice it is considered that he was created only by Motoo Abiko).

Nin-Nin

Hattori is an 11-year-old ninja who exceptionally masters the ninja techniques he learned in his village. Despite his young age and short height (140 centimeters), he has superhuman strength and agility and can do feats impossible for a common human.

Despite his extraordinary abilities, Hattori is not perfect, which is why he is not very skilled when it comes to establishing romantic relationships, he is extremely terrified of frogs, and he has the curious habit of ending his sentences with the expression “nin-nin.”

On his journey out of the ninja village he is accompanied by his little brother (Shinzo) and their pet (Shishimaru).

Shinzo is also a ninja, but he doesn't control the techniques with the efficiency of his older brother, so every time he tries to do one of his tricks, someone usually gets hurt. If that person is Shinzo himself, it is very possible that he will burst into tears uncontrollably.

Shishimaru is a gluttonous dog who prefers sleeping and eating to practicing ninja arts, so he is constantly out of shape.

Hattori and the Mitsuba family

Fortunately Hattori is kind and uses his abilities to do good, which will lead him to help people he sees in trouble without any hesitation. Partly because of that kindness, this ninja He will end up living in the Mitsuba family's house, where he will try to help the boy of the house. (Kenichi) to improve in almost all areas of his life (since he is lazy, insecure, bad at sports and not very smart).

So, one day in Hattori's life boils down to training until Kenichi arrives, telling him something he has done wrong or some negative experience that has happened to him because of others. Using his apparently unlimited arsenal of ninja techniques, Hattori will try to fix the problem one way or another.

Although I have already said that Kenichi is not a very skilled or alert boy, it is true that many of the misfortunes that happen to him are the fault of a classmate named Kemuzo Kemumaki.

Kemumaki likes the same girl as Kenichi (Yumeko Kawai) and because of this he usually teases her whenever he can to make a fool of him. If we take into account that Kemumaki is also a ninja, we will see that it will not be very difficult for him to be above Kenichi, which usually leads to the appearance of Hattori to balance the scales. The fact that both ninjas are from different villages only increases the rivalry.

The rivalry between Kemumaki and Hattori, as well as the fact of having to protect Kenichi from his traps (and from his own clumsiness) constitute the majority of Hattori's concerns, who will always have to bring out his creative side, solving any problem with some of his ninja techniques.

The skill of this character will make Tsubame (a ninja girl) fall in love with him and do everything possible to keep him happy. As I said, Hattori is quite shy and won't really know what to do with her to get her off his back.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Hattori is a very curious character, not for himself but for his enormous amount of ninja tricks (some more impossible than others) to solve Kenichi's problems. His duels with Kemumaki tend to be somewhat comical, but they are still interesting, even knowing that Hattori always wins. On one occasion, Kemumaki was considered the winner and the series revolved around him as if he were the protagonist (in the animated series they even played the opening with Kemumaki replacing Hattori) but this only happened in a single episode.

Perhaps Kemumaki himself is a more interesting character than Hattori, or even the antics and frustrated heroic attempts of Shinzo and Shishimaru are more funny, but ultimately everything revolves around Hattori and Kenichi's problems.

It is extremely obvious that This series is practically identical to Doraemon, replacing the inventions of the future with impossible ninja techniques and adding a rival ninja much more interesting than Suneo and Gigante.

In general it could be said that even the secondary characters are the same as those of Doraemon (including Kenichi's parents or Yumeko) but curiously Hattori the Ninja is prior to Doraemon in 5 years. Y no solo eso, sino que Doraemon fue creado por la otra parte del dúo Fujiko Fujio (Hiroshi Fujimoto), de manera que desconozco si se inspiró en Hattori o si ambos planearon hacer una nueva versión de esta serie que le tocaría hacer a Fujimoto y esta se convirtió en Doraemon.

Lejos de ignorar este hecho, hay algunos cameos cruzados entre ambas series. Por ejemplo, podemos ver aNobitaleyendo mangas de Hattori el Ninja o a Shishimaru viendo a Doraemon en la televisión.

La verdad es que si tengo que elegir entre Doraemon o Hattori, prefiero al último, me gustan más los ninjas que los gatos robots y prefiero a Kemumaki antes que a los tontos “amigos” de Nobita. Además vi la serie de Hattori the Ninja antes que la de  Doraemon, de manera que las historias del último nunca me parecieron tan innovadoras.

Pese a que su fama no sea tan grande como la del gato robot, Hattori tuvo una aceptación bastante importante, pues además del manga tuvo series de televisión, videojuegos e incluso película de imagen real.

Así pues, las recomendaciones de este personaje pasan por su colección de manga Ninja Hattori-Kun (que creo que no tienen edición española) y sobre todo las series de animación (existe una antigua de más de 600 episodios y una actual llamada Ninja Hattori Kun Returns) que son bastante más accesibles pues se han emitido en bastantes canales y recientemente Disney Channel obtuvo los permisos necesarios para emitirlas.

Si estáis interesados en la película de imagen real, su nombre es NIN×NIN Ninja Hattori-Kun The Movie. Al ser relativamente reciente (del 2004) quizás no sea demasiado difícil de encontrar. Lo que más me llama la atención es que Hattori sea un adulto y no un niño. Quizás tenga que ver con que la película parece tener un tono bastante más adulto que la serie.