Dark Knight

[Bloodclaw]

I did, and he's still not using real historical ninjas. He's using the modern concept of the ninja that was exaggerated to create the video game ninjas that he's bashing. His concept of a ninja is only marginally more accurate than the ones the video game uses (dangling upside down and crawling around on rooftops is not something that a ninja would do all the time, much less break someone's neck).

His "real" ninjas are all running around in the "trademark" ninja garb in which there is not a lick of evidence that ninja actually wore. He also acts as if ninja were absolutely and totally obsessed with keeping their identities hidden by concealing their faces (seriously, he's massively hung up on this). A vast majority of the time a ninja would be running around looking like a peasant, blending into crowds because it's a helluva lot easier to get away when you look inconspicuous than when you're dressed "like a ninja" (even at night; hiding behind something or looking like an innocent bystander is *infinitely* more effective than trying to hide in shadows), not to mention that a vast majority of ninja work was just like modern day spycraft: gathering information, sabotage, and only *rarely* killing someone (even then, more likely to be accomplished with poison or some other indirect method). Blending into the background is also why the traditional ninja weapons were old farm tools or very small, easily hidden weapons (real shuriken are tiny and the "throwing star" never really used; shuriken were more like large throwing needles or kunai): the ninja would look like a peasant working in the field, harvesting crops rather than an obvious threat.

The "ninja outfit" that he goes on and one about is a construct of popular culture, not history. It was derived from kabuki theater where the stagehands who ran around behind the actors were dressed in black so that they blended in with the black backdrop. Since someone walking up behind an actor kind of signal an impending assassination/attack which ruins the surprise, the "assassin" would be dressed as a stagehand so that everyone ignored him and "kill" the actor with no one suspecting. Since assassinations are pretty popular in historical plays and a technique like that only works until everyone expects it, people started equating an actor dressed in the stagehand's outfit as the stereotypical "ninja", much like people think that spies are like James Bond. The different colored suits were simply reverse extrapolation of the black suit as people tried to account for straight black being bad camouflage (unless you're, you know, in a kabuki theater using a black backdrop).

That video has less to do with historical ninjas (as in "actually happened way back when") than it does with the modern day concept of a ninja extrapolated in reverse by people who love ninjas more than history. It's just like the modern view of the samurai, cowboy, or almost any other popular historical archetype (interesting note: the code of Bushido was actually invented by Japanese Imperialists as propaganda as a way to mythologize their heritage rather than realize that samurai were simply a caste of people with swords that were often little more than celebrated policemen). People are less interested in the bland reality than they are in exaggeration and "rule of cool". The guy obviously *likes* ninjas and has more than a bit of a weeaboo streak in him, but that's basically blinded him to any idea that the ninja might not be as cool as he thought they were.

Never mind he actually went to Japan and talked to the decedents of real ninjas. If you knew a little more about real ninjas you knew that they worked primarily in villages not their own, and had to blend into their environment and most importantly their community and stay that way as spies. If they were to do in-depth recon/sabatoge activity they would need to conceal their identity else their, sometimes life long, efforts would be lost and they would probably die.