The Lowly Ninjas - pic

[Jujitsusnail]

Long long ago I fell in love with oots, and especially loved the ninjas relatively right off the bat with Issue 3 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0003.html). Few people know, and fewer people care, that black is typically reserved for experts where as students will use white. Being a student myself, I began to imagine student ninjas in glorious oots fashion. After a while, I wanted a place to write the date of when I achieved each rank, to track my progress, and as such the following image was created from my free time:

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/ionicdreams/rp_preview.jpg
Full Size Image Here (http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/ionicdreams/ranks_publish.jpg)

Normally I never do this... I create my own stories, and art, and always end up grumbling when people have their own ideas of what my content should look like, and as such have a general rule that I dont imitate other peoples art/stories out of respect to the authors...and I dont really know why I even created this in this style, but for my daydreaming of the oots ninjas back at ninja school training. Of course these are human ninjas and not (i assume) goblin/green ninjas. I guess in my mind I just wrote it off as fan art since GITP never presented a ninja school in his story arc.

In real life, I'm not a ninja, but rather a jujitsuka, or student of jujitsu. These are fairly typical ranks for them, though many dojos vary in stripes or what not. I thought I would share this image incase any of the 3 readers who have any martial arts backround might like it. (I know that martial arts is fairly rare).

All of these characters are portraying something (as well as any stick figure could Id say) things from the jujitsu world.

Starting left to right:
First white belt is watching and wondering how to do this stuff,
Second white belt is being trained by the first blue belt how to deflect attacks,
Second blue belt is parrying an attack from first green belt while,
Second green belt is performing a sneak throw on first green belt,
Second brown belt is throwing the first brown belt by the collar,
Third brown belt is reflecting on what he/she has learned to proceed to black belt.

Anywho, feel free to hate it and just toss this aside. But who knows, one or two people might like it. Its been a long time since ive joined a forum board and figured I love oots, so why not?!

[Optimystik]

Your stick-figure-fu is strong :smallwink:

My Japanese is rusty (and nonexistent) but am I reading their names right? 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 from left to right.

[Haven]

Very nice!


I guess in my mind I just wrote it off as fan art since GITP never presented a ninja school in his story arc.

Actually, a ninja school is mentioned (and partially seen) in 509 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0509.html). I guess they graduate to wearing the colors of their lord.

[Jujitsusnail]

Your stick-figure-fu is strong :smallwink:

My Japanese is rusty (and nonexistent) but am I reading their names right? 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 from left to right.

yes, that is correct :) Roku being six, and kyu being student, the rank becomes Rokyu, or sixth rank student, down to first, Ikyu, which is Ichi kyu, ichi being the number one in japanese.


Very nice!



Actually, a ninja school is mentioned (and partially seen) in 509 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0509.html). I guess they graduate to wearing the colors of their lord.

heheh, good catch. I hadn't remembered about that panel.

[Glinthall]

yes, that is correct :) Roku being six, and kyu being student, the rank becomes Rokyu, or sixth rank student, down to first, Ikyu, which is Ichi kyu, ichi being the number one in japanese.

From my experience in kendo, the lowest and beginning rank is Jiukyu or tenth kyu. Practitioners of the martial arts work their way down from tenth to first kyu. First kyu is also first dan, or first degree black belt. From there, the kendoka works his/her way back up to tenth dan. Although the scale goes up to tenth dan, the rank is considered impossible to achieve and only a few experts have seventh dan or above.

Anyway, I think I'm getting carried away. I'm not even sure that my information is accurate. The dojos I've practiced in don't focus on ranks and this is just my limited understanding of the system. My current rank, however, is fifth kyu (gokyu) and it might be fun to use this to track the dates I earn my ranks. Nicely done.

[stumpoman]

Very nice!



Actually, a ninja school is mentioned (and partially seen) in 509 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0509.html). I guess they graduate to wearing the colors of their lord.

Also mentioned here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0312.html) as well. 3rd panel

[Jujitsusnail]

From my experience in kendo, the lowest and beginning rank is Jiukyu or tenth kyu. Practitioners of the martial arts work their way down from tenth to first kyu. First kyu is also first dan, or first degree black belt. From there, the kendoka works his/her way back up to tenth dan. Although the scale goes up to tenth dan, the rank is considered impossible to achieve and only a few experts have seventh dan or above.

Anyway, I think I'm getting carried away. I'm not even sure that my information is accurate. The dojos I've practiced in don't focus on ranks and this is just my limited understanding of the system. My current rank, however, is fifth kyu (gokyu) and it might be fun to use this to track the dates I earn my ranks. Nicely done.

Mostly right. Ranks 7-10 kyu are reserved for children, typically, and the theoretical that no one achieved is 11th degree, where it is said that the masters belt would then become white again to symbolize the full circle, and that this belt would be twice as wide as a rokyus white belt, to prevent confusion. There are actually 10 dans running about...

Your sensei should not be using any kyu rank for a blackbelt, as blackbelts are dans, shodan for first, nidan for second...so on. However it is often said that an ikyu is a black belt in training.

Hope this helps!