Volume 2 Page 110
Posted November 4, 2016 at 12:01 am

Panels 1-3: Amazingly enough, this scene may constitute the only appearance of the famed “ninja smoke pellet” in all 2000-odd pages of this shinobi-infested series. Per the supposed “34th Grandmaster of the Togakure Ryu” Masaaki Hatsumi, such a stunt would presumably fall under the ninjustsu subset skill of koyakujutsu (fire and explosives). Or would it be part of the skill set of intonjutsu (escape and evasion)? Or is this possibly a nontoxic variation of dokuenjutsu, which purportedly involved the “use of poisoned smoke to keep an enemy attacker at bay”? Well, I bring up all this “jutsu talk” to prepare you for the next page of Empowered, in which you’ll discover that Ninjette’s training involves a very unique and idiosyncratic—and bouncy!—jutsu technique.

Panel 3: Relish, if you will, the one-off sound FX “FSHOOMP,” which I believe is never used again in the series. That’s a bit of an oddity, as I normally reuse over and over again the sparse handful of sound FX that “read right” to the inscrutable algorithm in my head that determines onomatopoeic acceptability. 

Panels 4-6: Given the blinding speed with which Ninjette strips off her own costume (as timed out by her dialogue) in this sequence, perhaps the previous page’s notably fast off-panel doffing of Emp’s supersuit is not wholly unreasonable! (Then again, I should warn excessively serious and frowny-faced readers that the timing of this riff involves a deliberate degree of cartoony and—dare I say—unrealistic exaggeration for humor’s sake. Gasp!)

And yes, hensojutsu is indeed a supposedly—ahem—“real” part of Hatsumi’s Togakure-Ryu ninjutsu, to which Ninjette’s own skill sets are theoretically related.

-Adam Warren

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