Episode 5 – Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof

Compared to the previous episodes in this series, this one is most like the job hunting episode—not because it is social commentary, but because it is an episode with a singular joke at its center that is pushed and prodded in every single direction until slamming headlong into a wall of dark comedy depression.

Simply put, in this episode, a rival assassin kidnaps Satoko and replaces her with a robot. The joke is that, as Konoha sees Satoko as a convenient tool and nothing else, she is unable to distinguish the living human from the obvious robot replacement. Moreover, Konoha much prefers Roboko to the original Satoko—and this makes sense on a practical level. After all, while Satoko can cook, clean, and dispose of dead bodies, Roboko can do all that better and can fly to boot.

The interesting bit (and the core of the tragedy at the end of the episode) is that, in the month Konoha and Roboko live together, they get genuinely close. This is because while Roboko is based on Satoko, they are not the same. Satoko is a pushover—willing to do anything she is told but that’s where her usefulness ends. Roboko goes out of its way to improve itself. It learns to make better food of more varieties and works hard to be more useful during assassination missions. This extra interest in making Konoha happy in well-thought-out and practical ways is what eventually endears the robot to her.

Then comes the episode’s ending where Satoko turns the robot into leaves to prove she is the real ninja girl who should be by Konoha’s side. This is clearly devastating to Konoha. While Satoko and Konoha’s relationship has been going on longer, it has never progressed to any meaningful level like with Roboko. And in her shock, Konoha protects herself emotionally by falling back on her main defense mechanism: her extreme pragmatism. Sure, Satoko killed her one true friend in front of her, but with the robot gone, Konoha needs Satoko to dispose of bodies and do housework.

It’s ironic that after this episode, Konoha is likely capable of understanding the feelings of the Ninja Girls she’s been killing so flippantly—what they all meant to each other. The real tragedy is that she probably will never make this empathetic connection—so hard has she slammed the door on being emotionally vulnerable.

Then, on the other side of the story, we have the relationship between Marin and Satoko, All throughout their month together, Satoko is focused on getting back to Konoha—to reclaiming her place. The dark humor here is that Satoko doesn’t realize that the idealized friendship she’s been pursuing with Konoha she already has with Marin. Marin genuinely cares for Satoko. Not only do they work together but they share work around the house—even doing each other favors just to be nice. They even share hobbies (namely stalking Konoha).

While easily able to return to Konoha’s side at any time (I mean, the doors aren’t even locked), the ninja girl goes with the flow and treats herself as being kidnapped. She doesn’t really notice anything beyond what’s going on with Roboko and her own attempts to one-up the robot. At the core of her being, Satoko has decided that her place is with Konoha and no where else. She can’t even conceive that her life is infinitely better with Marin where she is valued not only for what she can do but as a person as well.

So in the end, things end in tragedy. But what’s crazy is that the form of said tragedy is actually nothing more than the return to the status quo. Both of our heroines’ lives are now objectively worse by being together. That’s the joke—and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Rating:

Random Thoughts

• Man, this episode is a major step up in the creative directing department. The credits list Midori Yoshizawa and Yumena Tokudome as the episode directors on this one and they did one hell of a job.

• Gotta love the “new” ending theme where Satoko has been completely replaced by Roboko.

• Ooof. That cat girl ninja was killed off mid-transformation. How dare Roboko ignore long-established tokusatsu rules like that!

• I’m genuinely happy that Marin wasn’t killed off unceremoniously as well. She bounces off the other characters quite well and gives us an additional look into the non-ninja side of the assassination world.

Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.