Way back in 2001, I had discovered a very cool Flash Animation Series called "Ninjai: The Little Ninja". In the previous year of June 2000, I had just graduated from college with a diploma in Multimedia Production & Design with a minor in Computer Sciences so this was totally in my wheelhouse. Flash was still under the ownership of Macromedia before Adobe bought them in 2005. Anyhow I digress.
Skip forward to 2023, and I've gotten my hands on the twelve original Flash SWF files for the Ninjai series as well as the 2022 movie Teaser Trailer. Why is this important? Well because since April 2015 the Ninjai series has been deleted and is constantly being wiped from the internet. Whomever currently owns Ninjai has invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") and has forcefully taken down every video instance. In January 2023 of this year, even the website vanished into thin air. If you do a Google search for "Ninjai" (or with any other internet search engine), you won't find any of the original video clips anymore. You'll find countless dead ends with graphics and descriptions but with no actual original videos. The YouTube and WordPress links are totally fake dead ends. I don't like how this artwork is being deleted and is becoming a Mandela Effect. I know it existed, and I know what I saw, and I refuse to let people think they are right that it is non-existant. It already happened with the original Trump - Oprah interview where he called Republicans idiots and that they'd vote for anyone. If I could only get my hands on that one too, that would be amazing!
It is July, 2023 and I'm going to perform an experiment and see if I can bring it back to the internet without it getting wiped out. I will get some help to upload the first episode, fully remastered in 4K and will have it posted somewhere as a test. In previous years and attempts, other people have tried and failed at posting Ninjai videos on Pastebin, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, Twitch, and Twitter etc. only to have their accounts or channels banned and the videos removed.
The biggest reason that these don't work out is because they are all Video Hosting companies or Social Networks with centralized location based servers. For true freedom, it needs to move to P2P or Peer to Peer networks such as torrents and magnet links. Good luck shutting down hundreds or thousands or millions of user's with their own computers that have the video file in decentralized locations. I have fond memories of Napster, Kazaa and LimeWire. Once an MP3 music file was out in the wild, it was free to everyone.
Download Ninjai - Chapter 01 (1080p streaming or 2160p download):
[https://bit.ly/ninjai-01]
All Ninjai Episodes in 1080p resolution available here:
[https://vimeo.com/user140471337]
Download Ninjai - 2022 Teaser Trailer (1080p 30fps streaming or 2160p 60fps download):
[https://bit.ly/ninjai-movie-4ktease]
IMDb Link [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14029892/]
Wikipedia Link and information below [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninjai]
Overview
The cartoon is a creation of The Ninjai Gang. Ninjai is a web-based animation that centers around the life of Ninjai, a young samurai/ninja who is traveling the world looking for meaning and purpose. Along the way, his path is crossed by rogues or people who help him. Ninjai's best friend is 'Little Bird', a cute and brave sidekick with whom Ninjai often converses.
History
Ninjai first appeared on June 4 2001 as a trailer created using Adobe Flash, and had a trademark filed for its title on June 14 2001. The animation series drew a strong following with its unique style and storyline at the time, and ended up producing a total of 12 episodes thereafter, each a few minutes in length.
Despite being made by martial artists who did animation only as a hobby, the quality of the animation grew steadily as the episodes progressed, with more time between each episode as a result. After the release of episode 12, production came to a pause, with the promise of further episodes on the way. Some time later, news broke that the group was abandoning the short-form animations and aiming for a feature-length production with a complete studio. In early 2015, the group posted to their social media channels on Facebook and Twitter with media kits and wallpapers, and asked their followers to recommend blogs to advertise Ninjai in exchange for inside scoops on the series' production. On March 5 2015, a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign was announced and possible reward ideas were shared for the following 5 months, but the campaign was never officially launched on Kickstarter.
Despite this, the Ninjai website remained functional through at least August 2019, and at New York Comic Con in 2021, The Ninjai Gang had a booth set up to showcase a trailer and give away merchandise, advertising that the full-length feature production was still in the works, with an initial release date of January 2022. However, as of January 2023, IMDb states that it is in post-production with an outdated release date of 2022.
As of early January 2023, the Ninjai.com website had been accessible but showing only a message that it was "under maintenance" for a significant amount of time, with The Ninjai Gang not responding to inquiries. Later that month, the Ninjai.com domain ceased to resolve to a website, and became completely unavailable, though the domain is still registered until at least April 2025. The social media channels and existence of Ninjai.com on the Wayback Machine have been removed. The trade names and licenses have mostly expired, though a license for NINJAI GANG, LLC is listed as "Active", having been registered on November 10 2004 with a partner term date of December 31 1,000,000 AD.
The Science of Identity Foundation's founder Chris Butler (a.k.a. Srila Prabupad), halted all ties to the group and seized production.
Sunset Studios (another form of The Ninjai Gang) picked up the
trademark for Ninjai and is currently listed as the owner party, but
sometime thereafter seems to have dropped the series and the trademark
is now abandoned.
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