It turns out I was quite right to trust my gut feelings
It actually starts out kind of interesting because Assassin starts the show clearly being an abusive dick to Ninja where she clearly sees Ninja as nothing more than a tool while Ninja is like a little puppy, wanting Assassin's attention
And while that was kind of hard to watch at times, that combined with the dark humor actually was pretty watchable. It gives off a solid impression.
However, it eventually degrades into your standard cookie cutter CGDCT with just a touch of Shaft thrown in the mix.
There are some weird-ass fucking fetish episodes in this show, the whole episode about Ninja developing giant breasts from having her chest massaged by Mad Scientist's fucking Doctor Octopus backpack or whatever was just weird, ditto for the one where Assassin turns into DaBaby
I will give this show credit for being more forthcoming and out in the open with its yuri. Not necessarily with Ninja and Assassin (although if this gets a season 2, maybe that'll eventually loop around) but there's a canonical lesbian couple and quite a few other characters outright have crushes on other women (speaking of which, there are like 0 male characters in this show)
It's not something I'm personally into but I'm glad to see that in the big 2025
One thing I was really disappointed by and I guess it fits the comedic tone but the action scenes look pretty good when they actually try and considering they've got an assassin ranking leaderboard a la No More Heroes, they could've easily turned up the gas and cooked quite the dish. However, the vast, VAST majority of the fights are just Girlypop Monster of the Week shows off her gimmick, gets killed by Assassin, then gets turned into leaves by Ninja so Ninja and Assassin can eat takoyaki or whatever.
I loved the dynamic between Assassin and Robo-Ninja, I thought that was funny, we love you, Roboko
It's not terrible or anything, it can be funny even later into the series, but it's certainly far from the best work Shaft has ever put out.
None of the characters are really all that well-developed or original, it has a tendency to lean on the Cute Girls more than it should, it actively shies away from showing off any cool action scenes for the most part, the dynamic kind of stops being interesting in the second half of the show and if you like the dynamic in the second half, you'll likely find the dynamic in the first half kind of hard to watch
