i have been curious about this for a moment and i'm hoping someone can explain it: what is the deal with the UK and its cultural panic over ninjas?
Replies
Ninjas? Those guys are everywhere #Tick
aug 3, 2025, 1:21 am • 0 0 • view
Simple: Ninja's queue better than Brits 😁
aug 3, 2025, 2:30 pm • 0 0 • view
Point number one: they’re very sneaky
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 2 0 • view
Great question! Gen Xers like me know that they weren’t allowed to call the TMNT ninjas! They had to be called heroes.but Brits have a fear: nunchucks! They would get censored like porn
aug 2, 2025, 11:46 pm • 1 0 • view
Millions of peaches. Peaches for me.
aug 3, 2025, 12:14 am • 5 0 • view
Millions of peaches. Peaches for free.
aug 3, 2025, 4:26 am • 0 0 • view
Look out!
aug 3, 2025, 7:59 am • 0 0 • view
Thank you. Uk- panic- ninja Was not on my bingo card for today.
aug 2, 2025, 11:23 pm • 1 0 • view
Ninjas are always cool. That’s it. In a nutshell. You see all that cool, or worst you don’t, Ninja cool just sneaks up on you; that’s spooky. But still cool.
aug 2, 2025, 11:45 pm • 2 0 • view
It's basically the right moving from topic to topic, needing to cancel someone over something. tribunemag.co.uk/2021/04/when...
aug 3, 2025, 12:14 am • 11 0 • view
man i cant believe you said "moving from topic to topic" and now i have the picard song stuck in my head
aug 3, 2025, 1:55 pm • 3 0 • view
Many have noted the many similarities between Japan and the UK, so they're kind of on the same Jungian wavelength
aug 3, 2025, 12:19 am • 0 0 • view
Id like to think it has something to do with British confusion over long held grudges over the boxer rebellion and hk and the couple of times Jackie Chan played a ninja.
aug 4, 2025, 1:04 pm • 1 0 • view
I honestly thought your meant these ninjas… www.theguardian.com/food/2025/ju...
aug 3, 2025, 8:34 am • 3 0 • view
Probably racism
aug 3, 2025, 12:20 am • 1 0 • view
Oh I dunno, just, I guess, an elected member of parliament getting his head cut off when meeting constituents by a guy with a Japanese sword, lots of gangs using serrated knives, the idolise of knives in combat. Bit like guns in the US, guess they must be banned now
aug 3, 2025, 11:56 am • 1 0 • view
But ninjas, per se as a historical Japanese’s construct? No bother
aug 3, 2025, 11:57 am • 2 0 • view
Wearing weird sneaky costumes doing commando raids, assassinations, and espionage with the help of weird bespoke weapons and other tools and governed by a theoretically strict but practically non-existent code of conduct? Plus orientalism? Ninjas are the most English thing I could imagine.
aug 3, 2025, 12:37 am • 6 0 • view
I mean they were in a bond film
aug 4, 2025, 9:54 am • 0 0 • view
Is this also somehow related to their editing "head-butting" out of action movies?
aug 3, 2025, 12:37 am • 1 0 • view
Is it similar to US satanic panic?
aug 3, 2025, 12:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Much more similar to the US '40 feral hogs' bit but in reverse. It's a strange off the wall reason TO ban a thing instead of not
aug 3, 2025, 12:27 pm • 1 0 • view
Have you MET a ninja? Exactly. 🥷
aug 3, 2025, 1:38 am • 2 0 • view
I was in dark mode so the ninja in your comment blended in. Just like a true ninja I guess
aug 3, 2025, 3:28 am • 3 0 • view
Wow...all news to me as a US citizen.
aug 3, 2025, 1:16 am • 0 0 • view
Basically cuts to social welfare and police have led to a substantial increase in drug trafficking this has been facilitated by gangs that take advantage of vulnerable people, including youths the elderly and disabled. The youths serve as foot soldiers and because of strict UK gun laws instead.
aug 3, 2025, 10:15 am • 4 0 • view
Use knives and bladed instruments in turf wars. This is created a market for the wide array of very dangerous blade weapons, which are technically legal. There has been an increase in stabbings. Related to gang activity and organized crime.
aug 3, 2025, 10:15 am • 3 0 • view
Of course, as is always the case the right wing media has massively exaggerated the scope and scale of a problem claiming UK cities are now Warzone. Thus a high amount of attention on banning blade weapons to appeal to semi rural red wall voters.
aug 3, 2025, 10:15 am • 3 0 • view
Whereas solutions that could actually fix the problem, increased social services and funding for police remain elusive
aug 3, 2025, 10:15 am • 3 0 • view
As is often in the case, the long-term effects of austerity are being portrayed as a joke more than a pressing societal problem
aug 3, 2025, 10:17 am • 5 0 • view
👍👍 This whole thread.
aug 3, 2025, 11:13 am • 0 0 • view
Except you're way off the mark, because this isn't a recent ban.
aug 3, 2025, 5:12 pm • 0 0 • view
im confused there have been a series of bans against offensive weapons going back almost 10 years the most recent iteration enacted August 1 is part of this broad series of legislation. The bans seek to adress the 87% rise in knife crime since 2015 www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...
aug 3, 2025, 5:24 pm • 0 0 • view
This rise has been connected to the County Lines model of drug dealing. The rise in drugs dealing is part of a broader erosion of both enforcement and services which is a by product of austerity. www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/c...
aug 3, 2025, 5:24 pm • 0 0 • view
Esentially it has become easier for gags to recruit youth and for them to fall into violent patters while acessing blade weaponry which has led to violence over turf, status, or any other number of issues.
aug 3, 2025, 5:24 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah, but were talking about a ban that came in around the 80s/90s that led to things like TMNT being renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. It's not a recent thing.
aug 3, 2025, 5:28 pm • 1 0 • view
I believe Mr Bouie an American was asking about the August 1 ban
aug 3, 2025, 5:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Heh. And here I thought he was talking about the historic attitude towards it that seemed to reach it's zenith with the censoring of TMNT. My bad, bro. 🤝
aug 3, 2025, 5:33 pm • 1 0 • view
Ah Yes, I see the confusion. My apologies I was an Open Source Intel analyst part of my remit was violent crime in Europe. The censoring of TMNT no doubt follows a long British phobia of all things ninja related truly fascinating. 😂
aug 3, 2025, 5:36 pm • 1 0 • view
Our Prime Minister is an easily-led buffoon, the end.
aug 3, 2025, 10:16 am • 7 0 • view
Shockingly it’s older than that since there was a ‘panic’ over the Ninja Turtles cartoon in the UK from the BBC. Hence the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. But if you told me the posh of the U.K. are morally opposed to ninjas, I would buy it.
aug 3, 2025, 10:36 am • 1 0 • view
I was told by a british clergyperson that someone with a katana killed people at a school?
aug 3, 2025, 4:16 am • 0 0 • view
their what now 🥷
aug 3, 2025, 1:20 am • 0 0 • view
I think it’s because it’s hard to tell if their gender matches what they were assigned at birth while wearing a shinobi shozoku
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 61 0 • view
I don't know if this was a joke post or a serious question, but the actual answer is that most guns are banned which resulted in an uptick of knife violence and there's been increasing amounts of blade bans Right now, its samurai swords, last year was machetes, before that rambo (bowie) knives etc
aug 3, 2025, 12:36 am • 9 0 • view
This is going back to the 90s, when TMNT had to be renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, and a couple of episodes banned because you couldn't have Ninjas on British kids' TV.
aug 3, 2025, 12:19 pm • 0 0 • view
Here, it was because of this one guy. bsky.app/profile/paul...
aug 3, 2025, 12:20 pm • 0 0 • view
The UK is just strangely susceptible to some kinds of moral panics. I’d say it was a guilty conscience, but I don’t think we screwed with Japan that much, so hard to say
aug 3, 2025, 12:05 am • 0 0 • view
I mean, swords are already illegal, they were just made double illegal for reasons?
aug 3, 2025, 12:07 am • 0 0 • view
There isn’t one. Sorry to be boring, but basically, in the 1980s and 90s, one weird dude censored the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles (since released many many times under the correct name in the UK) and now we are having one of our intermittent “this knife with a fancy name is getting banned” laws.
aug 2, 2025, 11:45 pm • 212 4 • view
Every couple of year some kind of knife is used in a high profile set of stabbings and it gets banned. It is IMV pointless but is wholly orthogonal to “a weird dude in the 1980s and early 90s censored a cartoon”.
aug 2, 2025, 11:46 pm • 80 0 • view
The kids having knives thing isn’t very funny when what happens seasonally in my area is kids getting jacked at knifepoint on their way home by slightly older kids that they don’t know for their electronics when they go back to school after Christmas, headphones, new phone etc
aug 2, 2025, 11:57 pm • 2 0 • view
It’s not funny, but knives are a vital tool as well as a weapon, and successive British governments are basically just banning “knives whose brands have got bad PR”.
aug 2, 2025, 11:59 pm • 43 0 • view
I stumbled across a UK prepper page once where the dude was pointing out that X tactical knife was banned or controlled (I forget which) but Y kitchen knife was practically the same and completely legal. Taking “cheffing” to heart, I guess
aug 3, 2025, 8:47 am • 0 0 • view
Coming back to this apropos of nothing, I get really “I’m an Englishman with rights dammit” about being allowed to carry a knife to be a useful and handy member of society
aug 21, 2025, 9:44 pm • 1 0 • view
I used to have to go to courts a lot and completely forgot I had a multi tool with a knife in my bag and they never even spotted it, then when I remembered I wondered whether I would still have enough of an I am harmless aura (KNIFE IN MY BAG I HAVE A KNIFE IN MY BAG) to do it and took it out
aug 21, 2025, 9:54 pm • 1 0 • view
I don’t know who you are but anyone carrying a multitool is living at least one part of their life right
aug 21, 2025, 10:02 pm • 0 0 • view
Stephen is right about the types of knives ban though
aug 21, 2025, 10:03 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah “zombie” knives have imo been more prosecuted than ninja weapons over the last decade
aug 3, 2025, 9:07 am • 1 0 • view
It never fails to amaze me that the logic behind this is that perpetrators will get up the day after the ban starts and think "oh no, I cannot now commit the crime of violent robbery because the specific knife I was planning to use is now illegal"
aug 3, 2025, 8:38 am • 9 0 • view
You have more chance of being mended by a doctor from a kitchen knife wound than a ridiculous ‘ninja knife’ which is designed to wreck the victim. Banning is, amazingly, effective. Grants police way more powers, gets weapons off the streets
aug 3, 2025, 12:00 pm • 0 0 • view
No, the logic is that if you catch someone with one of those knives, you can arrest them and take it from them even if you don’t have any other evidence, & you can search their surroundings The problem is it’s like filtering swears in a game chat, where people just use a different knife
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 am • 0 0 • view
I guess the idea is to make deadly weapons less available, but as your average kitchen knife can easily be used to kill someone it is rather performative
aug 3, 2025, 9:50 am • 1 0 • view
Hence the recent discussions re round ended knives. But, if you are looking at crime, these are knives already "out there" so bans do nothing significant without major stop and search activity which itself is problematic, mostly around profiling.
aug 3, 2025, 10:11 am • 0 0 • view
If a knife is any use at all in the kitchen it’s potentially a lethal weapon, rounded edges or not.
aug 3, 2025, 10:31 am • 0 0 • view
*ends* even
aug 3, 2025, 10:31 am • 0 0 • view
They aren’t using a chef knife from their kitchen it is some horrific stuff
aug 2, 2025, 11:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Zombie knives, ninja swords, the other two knives that have been banned in my career are no more deadly than a chef’s knife. It’s just branding!
aug 3, 2025, 12:00 am • 21 1 • view
Surely in recent times it's also a product of banning guns, quite extensively (and rightly), so people who do want to commit deadly violence, shift to knives? Which is less deadly, but also means the moral panic when tragedy happens, is around knife crime.
aug 3, 2025, 12:06 am • 3 0 • view
Nah, the ban on nunchuks, throwing stars and most axes predates the last big ban on handguns, I don’t think it is a shift at all. It’s part of the same thing that we just are v relaxed about bans, for good (guns) and for ill (IMO pointless bans on types of knives).
aug 3, 2025, 12:20 am • 13 0 • view
Oh you are definitely right about that in terms of loving bans and some daft stuff around niche panics. But compared to the US it's that gun violence is relatively rare - even before the UK bans - so the outrage and "ban this" attitude doesn't disappear - it shifts to knife crime and on.
aug 3, 2025, 12:30 am • 2 0 • view
I lived in a rural area and people had shotguns and rifles it was normal One of my friends has a rifle and my London son is fascinated because it is like a secret and she never gets it out, and he is too young to join her gun club to do target practice
aug 3, 2025, 12:36 am • 1 0 • view
We could save a lot of legislative effort if we just passed the "Kids think it's cool? BANNED Act" which I think is in the Restore Britain manifesto
aug 3, 2025, 12:51 am • 15 1 • view
Yeah. Ultimately the pathology you have to understand is “we love banning things” not “why did we ban [insert whatever here]”.
aug 3, 2025, 12:57 am • 22 0 • view
'Free, illegal, or mandatory' is our 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité'.
aug 3, 2025, 1:05 am • 6 0 • view
Oh yeah, and I told my son about the murder weapon (potential) in old fashioned sash windows that no one thinks about nowadays Lots of younger kids are taking knives from the knife block in the kitchen too and it is just really sad
aug 3, 2025, 12:05 am • 2 0 • view
TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES
aug 2, 2025, 11:47 pm • 8 0 • view
Yes, as I say, the product of ONE guy’s obsession. It’s the UK equivalent of Ike Perlmutter’s belief that “women leads don’t sell”: not revealing about a wider truth of the country, just means that the Black Widow movie came out at an odd moment.
aug 2, 2025, 11:51 pm • 24 0 • view
I am glad for your explanation as I’ve always wondered about tht
aug 2, 2025, 11:52 pm • 2 0 • view
No problem. British governments love banning random branded knives. The last one we banned was “zombie knives”, an even more meaningless category.
aug 2, 2025, 11:54 pm • 14 0 • view
the british ban on "curved blades" is also brilliant in its own special way
aug 3, 2025, 10:00 am • 1 0 • view
ZOMBIE KNIVES LMAO
aug 2, 2025, 11:54 pm • 4 0 • view
You’ll love the press release and statement on the gov.uk website.
aug 3, 2025, 12:04 am • 10 1 • view
Ok I’m fucking obsessed This is so funny I should print that on a t shirt
aug 3, 2025, 12:05 am • 1 0 • view
There's also a fantastic addendum in that they offered a £10 amnesty fee per knife. Obviously they did not cap it, and a wholesaler gave 35,000 to police..
aug 3, 2025, 12:07 am • 19 0 • view
Lmao
aug 3, 2025, 12:08 am • 2 0 • view
That reminds me of the people who build cheap guns out of metal pipe to hand over at gun buybacks for gift cards/cash.
aug 3, 2025, 12:14 am • 4 0 • view
Don't forget that the "zombie knife" ban also covers the "Rambo-style knife" [literally a promotional item for Rambo: First Blood]. www.gov.uk/government/p...
aug 3, 2025, 9:49 am • 2 0 • view
Looking at those pictures, I've changed my mind from thinking 'this is a silly feature of British public policy' to 'well, a relief to know if I get stabbed, it won't be with anything that looks quite as naff as THOSE'.
aug 3, 2025, 9:50 am • 8 0 • view
It would be so embarrassing They’re zombie knives because you come back frm the dead to refuse having been killed w one
aug 3, 2025, 11:00 am • 2 0 • view
"You call that a knife?" but with an Islington twang
aug 3, 2025, 9:52 am • 9 0 • view
It’s Rambo-style because it wasn’t fermented in the Rambo region of France
aug 3, 2025, 11:01 am • 0 0 • view
Wait, hang on, there's a second example... which is a different promotional item for Rambo: First Blood. ... how are there even two different promotional knives [that are illegal for possession etc in the UK unless you deliberately blunt them I guess?] for Rambo: First Blood?!
aug 3, 2025, 9:55 am • 1 0 • view
I like the Rambo attention to detail ngl
aug 3, 2025, 11:02 am • 2 0 • view
“You’ll have a nice time when we halve knife crime”
aug 3, 2025, 12:08 am • 1 0 • view
Omgggg
aug 3, 2025, 12:12 am • 0 0 • view
Very precariously balanced L there
aug 3, 2025, 1:02 am • 0 0 • view
I’m obsessed Gonna go and sharpen some zombie knives
aug 2, 2025, 11:55 pm • 0 0 • view
Labubu knives Zombubu knives
aug 2, 2025, 11:56 pm • 2 2 • view
I have an idea for a new troll ccount
aug 2, 2025, 11:58 pm • 1 0 • view
Worth stressing to the Americans that our local government is very underpowered and so national politics fills the vacuum in many unhealthy ways, including responding to local disorder by passing national regulations
aug 3, 2025, 12:00 am • 6 1 • view
Oh yes I used to live in London and remember the Asbo era beginning The intense centralization of government is bananas
aug 3, 2025, 12:01 am • 2 0 • view
One of my favourite GOV.UK pages. Just reading through going ‘and that also sounds cool, must watch The Raid again’ www.gov.uk/buying-carry...
aug 3, 2025, 12:01 am • 3 1 • view
Gonna go read this for my Labubu knives panic PENSIONERS FURIOUS AT WEAK REFORM GOVERNMENT’S TOLERANCE OF LABUBU KNIFE CRISIS
aug 3, 2025, 12:03 am • 0 0 • view
OK according to Wikipedia, these are “legally defined in the UK as having a cutting edge, a serrated edge and images or words (whether on the blade or handle) that suggest that it is to be used for the purpose of violence.” How do the words on the knife matter???
aug 2, 2025, 11:57 pm • 0 0 • view
Because if you are a chef then you probably don't have weird psycho nonsense written on your work knives
aug 3, 2025, 9:55 am • 3 0 • view
(to pedant your pedant, BW was way after Perlmutter had any say; rather, it was his control that stopped anything pre-Captain Marvel.)
aug 2, 2025, 11:53 pm • 6 0 • view
Fancier named weapons are more powerful. That's just basic RPG rules.
aug 3, 2025, 4:36 pm • 6 0 • view
gotta disagree with your police work here Stephen! In the 1980s the panic about 'ninja weapons' was much more wide-reaching than just the ban on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - there was a recurrent worry about everything from shuriken to nunchucks, and the TMNT ban was an *outcrop* of that.
aug 3, 2025, 12:11 am • 188 10 • view
my memory is that 20% of all kid-level discussion in elementary and middle school in the 80s was about which weapons were illegal and which cousin supposedly had one and who set off a pipe bomb in their backyard and whose kid lost a finger, etc.
aug 3, 2025, 12:13 am • 9 0 • view
The same act that banned nunchuks also banned a bunch of *axes* though. I think need to see most of the ninja panic as part of our wider “this brand of knife is getting some attention” thing.
aug 3, 2025, 12:16 am • 16 0 • view
I can't find a separate nunchuck ban, they appear to fall under 'kusari' here, and you'll notice that *almost all* of the weapons described are Asian - www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1988/2019
aug 3, 2025, 12:22 am • 15 0 • view
(also can't see any mention of axes here, though there's a separate little social panic going on about zombie knives)
aug 3, 2025, 12:24 am • 6 0 • view
Zombie knives got banned (again) last year!
aug 3, 2025, 12:24 am • 9 0 • view
I think it’s a misread of the 1988 Act to go “a majority of these are south east Asian”, what links them *all*, from the shuriken to the “stealth knife” is “these are all currently high profile”.
aug 3, 2025, 12:25 am • 7 0 • view
ok but why are they high-profile? they were high-profile because there was a social panic about them! there was not in fact a spate of *footclaw* crime in the UK!
aug 3, 2025, 12:27 am • 11 0 • view
Sure, but of the 280 stabbings in 2023-4, only four were with zombie knives, yet we banned those last year.
aug 3, 2025, 12:30 am • 5 0 • view
I don't think that goes against my point here? the unusual singling out of these weapons was a result of social panic, not of actual loopholes being closed or other concerns, and that social panic was driven by a media/parental loop about 'foreign' weapons.
aug 3, 2025, 12:33 am • 6 0 • view
James Ferman as head of the BBFC took against ninja films: www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...
aug 3, 2025, 3:17 am • 0 0 • view
Footclaws?
aug 3, 2025, 12:29 am • 2 0 • view
"the weapon sometimes known as a “footclaw”, being a bar of metal or other hard material from which a number of sharp spikes protrude, and worn strapped to the foot;"
aug 3, 2025, 12:30 am • 6 0 • view
Ah yes - the era of Old Conservative Men In Grey Suits Banning Everything … up to and including “…gatherings playing music characterised as repetitive bets…”
aug 3, 2025, 12:42 am • 1 0 • view
if you check headlines from the time, this was referred to as a "kung fu arms ban" and a ban on "barbaric weapons"
aug 3, 2025, 12:26 am • 8 0 • view
What is a zombie knife? Will it ruin my kitchen utensil diversity?
aug 3, 2025, 10:47 am • 0 0 • view
Did A Very Brady sequel not run in cinemas in the UK because it briefly showed a set of nunchucks?
aug 3, 2025, 12:19 am • 0 0 • view
now, in part this did go back to James Ferman, head of the BBFC, having a specific dislike of 'martial arts weapons' as a result of the crop of 1970s movies. But the recurrent social panics, while partially inspired by this, were extensive and widely held concerns by parents and media
aug 3, 2025, 12:14 am • 112 1 • view
Definitely remember earnest talk at my comp c1986-7 about shuriken, though on the Wirral we called them throwing stars obvs. Seem to remember someone having one. I once went to a party as a ninja, so maybe it was me.
aug 3, 2025, 12:19 am • 1 0 • view
if you check newspapers, every time any kind of mildly unusual weapon was used in a fight it became a story, *especially* by teenagers. in part this in turn goes back to 1950s and 60s concerns about teenagers importing *American* ideas in fights, instead of having good old fashioned punch-ups
aug 3, 2025, 12:15 am • 114 1 • view
Yes, I don’t disagree with this final bit - I just think needs to be seen as part of “UK panics over unusual weapons” rather than linked to “the censorship of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.
aug 3, 2025, 12:17 am • 12 0 • view
Ah, but the Ninja turtle thing is much, much funnier.
aug 3, 2025, 12:19 am • 9 0 • view
It is hilarious it must be said. An added piquancy is that the “Hero turtles” thing happened at the same time that the Animals of Farthing Wood, one of the bloodiest and most traumatic children’s cartoons of all time, was airing freely on the BBC.
aug 3, 2025, 12:21 am • 24 0 • view
I’m American and knew nothing about The Animals of Farthing Wood until now, and I just spent way too much time reading the Wikipedia episode synopses, and Jesus Christ
aug 3, 2025, 3:01 am • 6 0 • view
and this is to say nothing of mr blobby
aug 3, 2025, 1:13 am • 3 0 • view
now very importantly, the US was also going through a 'ninja craze' in the 1980s, which resulted in a bunch of fake martial art schools being invented in Japan and imported to the US to meet the demand. that drove the idea that 'ninja weapons' were *both* unusually dangerous and doubly foreign
aug 3, 2025, 12:18 am • 100 2 • view
this is how you end up with, by my count, 10 out of 14 of the weapons listed out in the 1988 offensive weapons act being 'ninja weapons' - www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1988/2019 (note that there's a short follow on about 'zombie knives' - again, film influence)
aug 3, 2025, 12:20 am • 95 5 • view
as a fairly close observer of both adults and kids at the time, I can confirm that the adults were *very* worried about depictions of violence across the board and *especially* the depictions in US cartoons, and that kids fucking loved ninja shit.
aug 3, 2025, 12:28 am • 95 2 • view
now this was also class-coded in a couple of ways. the first is that middle-class parents tended to be the ones doing the worrying, and part of that was implicitly directed against working-class parents who were seen as giving their kids access to dangerous weapons.
aug 3, 2025, 12:31 am • 74 2 • view
now on top of that you *also* had the import of these weapons into the UK coming through army and navy stores! if you check small ads for the mid-1980s you'll find new arrivals being advertised. it is vanishingly unlikely that these were used in any kind of actual crime (shuriken *attack*)
aug 3, 2025, 12:35 am • 71 1 • view
That is *very* interesting— very class-coded.
aug 3, 2025, 1:22 am • 0 0 • view
Well, I can only say that I was a 20-something at the time, and no-one I knew gave a shit about any of it. There was a certain amount of crap in the Express and Sun at the time. It was a given that the Express and Sun were comics anyway. See also: punk, a few years earlier.
aug 3, 2025, 12:41 am • 2 0 • view
you would have been neither a kid nor (I assume) a worried parent at the time though! (I mean, also, the Sun was hugely influential ...)
aug 3, 2025, 12:45 am • 8 0 • view
Fair point, but sorta shows the limits of all these moral panics. - the papers fuss about Kids If Today - The Kids ignore them - So do childless people - Having been a parent, I'd say parents aren't much bothered, you tend to spot your children haven't turned into monsters.
aug 3, 2025, 11:11 am • 0 0 • view
PS absolutely no-one ever called them “Hero Turtles”, they were always called “Ninja Turtles.” It wasn’t edgy to do so.
aug 3, 2025, 12:44 am • 2 0 • view
Ok I’m genuinely just learning that the Hero and Ninja Turtles were the same turtles. I always thought the Ninja version must be like a different more sophisticated one for older kids or something
aug 3, 2025, 3:59 am • 3 0 • view
A weird class coding, too: the boys who brought ninja shit to my school in the 80s invariably got it as gifts from dads working abroad in oil & gas or similar.
aug 3, 2025, 12:27 am • 5 0 • view
IIRC this coincided with a spike in riots in the 70s-80s, as well.
aug 3, 2025, 12:27 am • 2 0 • view
Are you saying they banned ninja weapons because everybody was Kungfu fighting?
aug 4, 2025, 8:10 pm • 1 0 • view
Good luck to anyone entering a fight with nunchuks or a shuriken. I did karate classes at the height of the 80s boom and the black belt instructors thought it was all quite funny.
aug 4, 2025, 8:08 pm • 1 0 • view
So true about the 80s I remember the nunchaku and stars with the concert t-shirts in the back of Spencer's Gifts "Kung Fu Merchandise Bruce Lee videos and t shirts played a workmanlike role at the store." eightiesbaby.net/2020/02/17/m...
aug 3, 2025, 12:49 am • 7 1 • view
A movie about an out of work auto worker in Japan inventing a martal art and moving to like San Diego to cash in on the Bruce Lee craze would be fun
aug 3, 2025, 2:24 pm • 4 0 • view
How do Americans fight differently than our British cousins? (Besides, of course, shooting each other)
aug 3, 2025, 1:01 am • 0 0 • view
I don't understand. Was he just like, particularly angry at martial arts weapons of all varietals? Pikes? Flails? Warhammers? Danish axes?
aug 3, 2025, 12:33 am • 0 0 • view
I’m envisioning you doing this before getting down to work on this thread: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwik...
aug 3, 2025, 12:49 am • 0 0 • view
There was incidentally also a US panic about nunchuks at the same time, with the hilarious result that police officers demanded to be armed with them too. (They do to be fair have the advantage that they work as restraints)
aug 3, 2025, 9:28 am • 7 0 • view
(as to the cause, I think honestly it's not much deeper than "These weapons seemed really dangerous in 80s fiction". Like how a few years earlier, there was a panic about and ban on subliminal advertising which was basically "This is really scary in sci-fi" regardless of if it's actually possible.)
aug 3, 2025, 9:34 am • 6 1 • view
Zik-Zak Corporation "blipverts" never caused *me* to explode!
aug 3, 2025, 9:39 am • 2 0 • view
I never knew that’s why it was “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles” in the UK! It was always confusing, eg Super Nintendo games were “Ninja”, the BBC programme was “Hero”turtles etc.
aug 3, 2025, 12:18 am • 3 1 • view
One weird dude maybe, but the context was a general public freaking-out about ‘video nasties’ and the BBFC not yet classifying them, as well as the causal availability of things like throwing stars and nunchucks.
aug 3, 2025, 12:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Meanwhile thanks to the Federalist Society we’ve had litigation on whether nunchaku (completely banned in New York State since 1974) are 2nd-amendment protected “arms” (apparently they are) scholar.google.com/scholar_case...
aug 3, 2025, 12:29 am • 1 0 • view
Ah I remember a big Ninja craze, following Bruce Lee, given rocket boosters by The Karate Kid. We all wanted to see Pray For Death with Sho Kosugi as it was apparently the most brutal Ninja film. Big overlap with the video nasty scare (Driller Killer was also on the want-to-see list)
aug 4, 2025, 8:05 pm • 0 0 • view
We watched all sorts of stuff, it was the Wild West, age verification was an older relative with a video rental card. Enter The Dragon (age 18) was a 10th birthday party treat, I seem to remember. We turned out fine 🤣
aug 4, 2025, 8:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah i think americans dont realize how often the british state just SUPER BANS things that already banned to show they are serious bc spending money on the issue is too much of a bother
aug 3, 2025, 9:07 am • 26 6 • view
Banning stuff is super popular with the Brits. There’s polling which shows Brits in favour of banning stuff that doesn’t exist.
aug 3, 2025, 11:51 am • 3 0 • view
Not ninjas per se, but ninja swords: banned as of 1 Aug. “As of August 1, it is illegal to own, sell, manufacture, or import these weapons. “The new government legislation follows the campaign by the family of 16-year-old Ronan Kanda, who was killed by a ninja sword in 2022.”
aug 3, 2025, 5:49 pm • 1 0 • view
They suspect, rightly, someone may still be seeking revenge for YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.
aug 2, 2025, 11:40 pm • 1 0 • view
We don't have so many guns to worry about.
aug 3, 2025, 7:09 am • 1 0 • view
they prefer the aristocratic samurai
aug 2, 2025, 11:30 pm • 2 0 • view
this brought up an old internet video from the depths of my memories "don't go ninjying nobody that don't need to be ninjaed"
aug 2, 2025, 11:30 pm • 1 0 • view
Two words: 4 baby turtles
aug 3, 2025, 2:09 am • 3 1 • view
I listen to Oliver Harper and Bad Movie Bible who lived through that and it's still a mystery to them.
aug 2, 2025, 11:47 pm • 0 0 • view
1. After watching Shogun, Protestant Brits fear a Shruiken tosss deus vult 2. Ninjas might refuse to use their invasive facial scanning that Bans the Blind from the internet 3. DJ Starm Charm fears they support Palestine, and Kier O'Daily isn't allowed eye contact without Netanyahu's permission.
aug 3, 2025, 12:08 am • 0 0 • view
Whatever it is, it's not new www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...
aug 3, 2025, 1:09 am • 1 0 • view
Disgruntled Ninja Silently Kills 12 Co-Workers - The Onion share.google/84iIgSOYQt1q...
aug 3, 2025, 12:15 am • 4 0 • view
Just my opinion because I’m not in the UK but I don’t think it’s ninjas they’re concerned about. The UK has a blade problem.
aug 2, 2025, 11:24 pm • 5 0 • view
The UK is a vampire, confimed
aug 2, 2025, 11:34 pm • 14 0 • view
*Billy Corgan voice*
aug 3, 2025, 2:52 pm • 0 0 • view
😎
aug 2, 2025, 11:46 pm • 5 0 • view
that scene was such a great punchline for that dude's whole journey
aug 4, 2025, 9:57 am • 0 0 • view
It's mostly a "knife crime" panic, because in the UK it's illegal to have guns unless you're (specialist) police or fox-hunters and such, the latter being primarily aristocracy and/or Tories so it's ok, after all they might need to defend themselves against fox-hunt protestors.
aug 2, 2025, 11:57 pm • 3 0 • view
UK doesn't even have a real blade problem. Even with guns available, the US has a higher per capita knife homicide rate.
aug 3, 2025, 1:27 am • 4 0 • view
UK has no problem with Blade. He was born in London.
aug 3, 2025, 5:30 pm • 0 0 • view
Is it related to the panic about Pokémon in the late 90s? Or was that just a late night Evangelical Fundamentalist thing that never made it to Britain? It was about a card game! I do not know when Pokémon made it to video games (and Game Boy) but it was originally a card game, hence Catch'em all!
aug 3, 2025, 12:57 am • 0 0 • view
https://youtu.be/WtR2m20C2YM?si=CgDXDDiCrJ_oVvXZ
aug 3, 2025, 12:34 am • 5 1 • view
Are they mutant turtles?
aug 2, 2025, 11:23 pm • 3 0 • view
Okay but I shit you not they localized it for the UK as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 21 0 • view
Michelangelo's nunchucks were in fact cut from the UK release of the 1990 movie.
aug 2, 2025, 11:26 pm • 15 0 • view
This is my favourite thing. As anyone who has ever trained with nunchucks knows, unless you've practiced a lot, the most likely person you are going to injure is yourself, and if you have e practiced a lot, you are aware a big heavy stick without a chain in the middle is a better bet.
aug 2, 2025, 11:43 pm • 10 0 • view
Not even the weirdest example of the UK getting mad over nunchucks:
aug 3, 2025, 12:02 am • 7 0 • view
The sequel just outright banned them from using the actual weapons to tone down the violence "and sell more toys to the kids" Leo never used his swords on anybody, Mikey had COMBAT COLDCUTS
aug 2, 2025, 11:33 pm • 9 0 • view
Ironic, since they FIRED Judith Hoag as April O'Neil for voicing similar concerns about the violence
aug 3, 2025, 12:44 am • 1 0 • view
They watched a lot of Naruto, but racistly
aug 2, 2025, 11:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Say what now?
aug 3, 2025, 9:52 am • 0 0 • view
Well I’m British and I’ve learned all sorts of things from the replies to this, so thanks for asking!
aug 3, 2025, 4:13 am • 3 0 • view
A ninja killed Queen Elizabeth II.
aug 3, 2025, 12:07 am • 0 0 • view
King Charles too. He just hasn't realized it yet since his assassination was so stealthy.
aug 3, 2025, 12:08 am • 2 0 • view
Good one, Ninjas! Obvs a comment on how Charles should retire rather than die in office. I tell you my family is still waiting for William and Kate to reign though Will married an Elizabeth who goes by Eli (ELL-ee) and their daughter Catherine is Cat. She has no cats yet either so a Princess is fine
aug 3, 2025, 12:40 am • 0 0 • view
If MI6 disappears my irrelevant ass in another country for making a joke about a ninja pulling an "Omae Wa Mou Shinderu" on King Charles, then I'm using that story during my court hearing to get into Heaven.
aug 3, 2025, 12:51 am • 1 0 • view
Have they brought back the Star Chamber? I am giving Starmer time--I am from the US, it would be nice to have a party that called itself Labour period--but the noises he seems to make on immigration clearly show he is not Canadian. And the US left is reactive about talk of restriction for reasons.
aug 3, 2025, 1:01 am • 0 0 • view
UK rappers are huge weebs, to the point that cosplay is visibly present in black UK culture. And then... okay remember a couple years ago when American internet lost its mind about clown sightings?
aug 2, 2025, 11:23 pm • 7 0 • view
haha what
aug 3, 2025, 12:05 am • 2 0 • view
It goes back to the 80s, even! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was literally renamed “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles”, and the show was heavily censored. Nunchuks were removed from the toys.
aug 2, 2025, 11:37 pm • 7 0 • view
There was a teen who was murdered with one after they bought a katana online.
aug 3, 2025, 9:36 pm • 0 0 • view
Number one, Ninjas are mammals; Number two, Ninjas fight all the time; and Number three, the purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 593 20 • view
I have to find my copy in the house. Need to have a good laugh
aug 3, 2025, 12:10 am • 1 0 • view
😆 "The statement is incorrect. Ninjas are not mammals, they are humans from feudal Japan who specialized in espionage and unconventional warfare." Gee. Thanks, Google AI.
aug 3, 2025, 1:17 am • 2 0 • view
God, 2003 was a long time ago. This is a Proustian meme moment for me
aug 2, 2025, 11:35 pm • 12 0 • view
I thought that was just true of Gabimaru and maybe the hero of Dororo (not Dororo who is the sidekick) and those two guys got Reasons like Gatsu (Berserk) had but more so. Being sneaky is what being Ninja is and kind of a tai-chi and parkour master as well. A more fit and rentable samurai.
aug 3, 2025, 12:44 am • 0 0 • view
Tom: I love you.
aug 2, 2025, 11:40 pm • 0 0 • view
The way my brain dug so deep for this in a split second…
aug 3, 2025, 2:12 am • 0 0 • view
I have a friend who uses, ninjas as a pronoun.
aug 3, 2025, 12:49 am • 0 0 • view
wow. vintage pull.
aug 3, 2025, 1:17 am • 1 0 • view
*Midi Big Pimpin instrumental kicks in*
aug 3, 2025, 12:21 am • 2 0 • view
If ninjas can be accused of anything, it’s loving TOO MUCH.
aug 6, 2025, 5:31 am • 0 0 • view
Was that why they had to be called the Hero Turtles, because ninjas legally can't be reptiles?
aug 3, 2025, 1:25 am • 4 0 • view
I was hoping someone would post this.
aug 2, 2025, 11:28 pm • 88 0 • view
We are all showing our age here lol
aug 2, 2025, 11:38 pm • 72 0 • view
This rang a bell but I couldn’t recall it so I googled. Another great example of AI just nailing it.
aug 3, 2025, 3:11 am • 134 9 • view
So AI doesn't know humans are classified as mammals? That's pretty basic biology.
aug 3, 2025, 2:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Sorry, is no one else bothered that the AI doesn’t think human beings are mammals?
aug 3, 2025, 6:05 am • 3 0 • view
The AI doesn't think. Google is extraordinarily irresponsible for replacing a knowledge acquisition tool with a prose-regurgitating simulacrum. Yes I'm bothered.
aug 3, 2025, 7:53 am • 13 0 • view
In some ways it feels like the primary fact of all. Human beings are mammals.
aug 3, 2025, 12:41 pm • 1 0 • view
I'm not doing it with you; I don't care about the Discovery Channel
aug 3, 2025, 2:53 pm • 1 0 • view
It is also believed by most historians its overstated how much ninjas were involved in assassinations; and it seems to get that in the do they fight all time question, but not in the description
aug 3, 2025, 10:37 am • 2 0 • view
aug 6, 2025, 5:19 am • 0 0 • view
My Walrus doctor specializes on cats & horses
aug 3, 2025, 10:38 am • 10 0 • view
goo goo gjoob?
aug 3, 2025, 12:18 pm • 9 0 • view
I am the walrus, and things aren’t looking good for your horses leg
aug 3, 2025, 12:19 pm • 11 0 • view
![Google AI overview: Is Eggman a mammal? Yes, Doctor Eggman is considered a mammal, specifically a human. While most mammals give birth to live young, a small group of mammals called monotremes, which includes the [...]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:alu3vyxamig6vrtgbdvcxpgw/bafkreihvf34lxshtvacrd7ae5m65lal6yns5unkmwt4rivzcfkwmmq4llq@jpeg)
DR OCTOPUS NOT CARE YOUR MAMMAL BASED BIASES
aug 6, 2025, 4:47 am • 3 0 • view
ahahaha perfect
aug 6, 2025, 7:14 am • 2 0 • view
if you read that two or three times you can catch a light buzz!
aug 3, 2025, 6:40 pm • 9 1 • view
Oh, they’re making it worse! And excluding the vast majority of doctors, who aren’t human medical OR veterinary. YAY, make it worse, Google! Make it clear how useless this crap is!
aug 6, 2025, 5:20 am • 2 0 • view
In Portuguese it says they are
aug 3, 2025, 6:04 pm • 3 0 • view
doctors can be ANY SPECIES OF MAMMAL???
aug 3, 2025, 9:51 am • 22 0 • view
I mean... Dr. Zoidberg clearly isn't a mammal
aug 3, 2025, 5:52 pm • 6 0 • view
So veterinarians are mammals, which means they can't be doctors, because doctors aren't mammals
aug 3, 2025, 5:17 pm • 5 0 • view
Humans aren't mammals?
aug 3, 2025, 8:04 am • 10 0 • view
No, humans are not mammals. Humans are human beings, which are mammals, but human beings are not all human* and therefore humans are not mammals. *error_06_please contact Elon Musk for details
aug 3, 2025, 2:07 pm • 1 0 • view
Thanks Michael, I needed a good giggle today. Have an awesome day!
aug 3, 2025, 2:20 pm • 1 0 • view
Thank you, 😊 You too
aug 3, 2025, 3:17 pm • 1 0 • view
we are back to adult human chicken aren't we
aug 3, 2025, 8:05 am • 9 0 • view
I’m old enough to remember ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ 🎶🎵🎤🎸🎸on TOTP…😬
aug 3, 2025, 8:16 am • 3 0 • view
I'm so glad so many people are getting their information from a system that very confidently and incorrectly asserts that human beings are not mammals.
aug 3, 2025, 5:01 am • 12 1 • view
Furry ninjas ftw
aug 3, 2025, 9:05 am • 0 0 • view
AI is an 80s kid TMNT fan.
aug 3, 2025, 11:13 am • 2 0 • view
This like just the kind of thing a ninja would want AI to say about them.
aug 3, 2025, 4:52 am • 89 2 • view
Ninjas obviously infiltrated Google and took over the AI
aug 3, 2025, 12:39 pm • 13 0 • view
Somebody had to say it.
aug 3, 2025, 1:01 pm • 4 0 • view
www.realultimatepower.net/ninja/ninja2...
aug 2, 2025, 11:37 pm • 64 1 • view
Ok that is a good'un. Worthy of a New Yorker casual or better yet McSweeney's Tendency. (That is what I will call the monologues like the one about the gourd, the near-incoherent, whimsical elaboration that almost but not quite seems a random word and idea association. Barthelme invented them in 60s
aug 3, 2025, 12:51 am • 0 0 • view
holy shit this is from the deep balrog area of the internet
aug 3, 2025, 1:31 am • 4 0 • view
I can't believe they've kept this website up the whole time. It's beautiful
aug 2, 2025, 11:53 pm • 30 0 • view
Nice one, Ninjas!
aug 3, 2025, 12:51 am • 1 0 • view
I will say this to students, because I enjoy seeing them be confused in a funny way, instead of the “oh no I’m bad at my job” way.
aug 3, 2025, 9:26 pm • 0 0 • view
sounds like republicans
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 2 0 • view
REAL ULTIMATE POWER!
aug 3, 2025, 1:05 am • 1 0 • view
damn gemi-not
aug 3, 2025, 12:34 am • 0 0 • view
What does the AI think the class or family mammalia includes? Not them but no reason to be illiterate about taxonomy! Anyway, an example of how LLM's play Madlibs and do not like Know Stuff. Even the good at Chess and Go ones!
aug 3, 2025, 12:53 am • 8 0 • view
Never trust an AI overview without fact checking it
aug 3, 2025, 12:38 am • 0 0 • view
You probably got confused because of magic the gathering
aug 3, 2025, 12:02 am • 27 2 • view
In real life Ninjas are Reptiles, as we all know.
aug 3, 2025, 12:06 am • 21 1 • view
But not Lounge Lizards! Way too relaxed and Ninjas do not karaoke.
aug 3, 2025, 12:54 am • 3 0 • view
I just got my pubes. And that's braggable.
aug 2, 2025, 11:45 pm • 0 0 • view
The short answer is, we don't have easy access to guns, so people seeking to harm others often use knives or replica samurai swords. "Ninja sword" is a marketing term describing a sword with a single edge, a sharpened point and a blade longer than a knife.
aug 3, 2025, 1:32 am • 9 1 • view
Samurai swords - defined as swords with a curved blade longer then 50cm/20in - were banned in 2008 with exceptions for cultural, sporting or historical uses and items. This law extends that ban to similar swords with a shorter blade - as short as 14in.
aug 3, 2025, 1:46 am • 3 1 • view
Damn. Sometimes the UK sounds dumb whimsical, but in this case it sounds fun whimsical.
aug 3, 2025, 3:30 am • 0 0 • view
First rule of ninja club; we don’t talk about ninja club.
aug 3, 2025, 6:20 pm • 0 0 • view
Because they mind the gap that ninjas create between their necks and torsos when they slice off their heads.
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 1 0 • view
NINJAS?! WHERE!?
aug 3, 2025, 11:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Brits only like things you can add a 'y' to: budgy, telly, etc. You can't add a y to ninja, can ya, mate. I mean, go with "ninjy" and they'll think you're takin' the piss
aug 3, 2025, 5:29 am • 4 0 • view
Unless you're in Scotland.
aug 3, 2025, 7:56 am • 1 0 • view
People can’t get guns so they run around with long knives, the media started calling them ninja swords for a reason I’m not sure about
aug 2, 2025, 11:31 pm • 1 0 • view
Well, cultural panics are all the rage now. If the UK wants to be like the cool kids, they need one of their own.
aug 2, 2025, 11:38 pm • 1 0 • view
Aren’t nunchucks and shuriken still illegal in many jurisdictions here in the States?
aug 2, 2025, 11:24 pm • 5 0 • view
yes
aug 3, 2025, 12:15 am • 1 0 • view
Why the fuck should they be illegal when every idiot with a pulse can carry a gun?
aug 3, 2025, 9:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Did I say they should be illegal?
aug 3, 2025, 10:47 pm • 0 0 • view
I have a feeling that I've missed something hilarious.
aug 3, 2025, 12:40 pm • 3 0 • view
Well sometimes British people turn into ninjas but not really and also it's problematic
aug 3, 2025, 12:30 am • 5 1 • view
They never had these heroes in their lives as kids 🇺🇸
aug 3, 2025, 5:29 am • 2 0 • view
We did.
aug 3, 2025, 7:09 am • 0 0 • view
The cartoons were shown, they were just titled “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles”.
aug 3, 2025, 7:51 am • 0 0 • view
Even then, Ninjas were not allowed.
aug 3, 2025, 7:55 am • 0 0 • view
There was some censorship of scenes with nunchucks, I think, and maybe some others. But broadly I don’t remember the cartoons being heavily cut—the plots, such as they were, still made sense.
aug 3, 2025, 7:59 am • 1 0 • view
bsky.app/profile/evan...
aug 2, 2025, 11:39 pm • 11 0 • view
Answer is self-evident: Ninjas fight ALL the time. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
aug 3, 2025, 12:33 am • 2 0 • view
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 16 0 • view
Lmao, they edited Raph's weapons out
aug 3, 2025, 5:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Say what you will about the Tories, but there was no trouble with ninjas when they was running things
aug 2, 2025, 11:34 pm • 2 0 • view
It’s like us with clowns.
aug 2, 2025, 11:23 pm • 35 1 • view
I’m sorry but that’s just sensible
aug 2, 2025, 11:39 pm • 13 0 • view
I'm glad America banned clowns
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 27 0 • view
Er……… have you checked the freakin’ White House????
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 61 0 • view
Starting to call it... the Loony Bin
aug 2, 2025, 11:33 pm • 0 0 • view
One more illegal act by Trump
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 1 0 • view
so true.
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 8 1 • view
What? No the clown thing just makes sense.
aug 2, 2025, 11:40 pm • 8 0 • view
No it doesn't, clowns are nice
aug 3, 2025, 1:58 am • 0 0 • view
Some are to be sure, but I’ve met some clowns who were definitely not nice.
aug 3, 2025, 2:49 am • 1 0 • view
Like our American fuckwit cousins, we too like to shank someone outside the go local cashpoint as they withdraw £40 for a 0.5g of shit coke. All jokes aside tho it's pretty knee jerk with the government, a few incidents that capture headlines and bam, no one can own LOTR replicas.
aug 3, 2025, 12:02 am • 1 0 • view
This goes back a few decades but pressure groups in the UK were of the opinion that 'ninja' had too much violence associated with it. They refused to see ninjas as having a high standard of training (which, yes, included fighting) and an even higher moral standard so they'd use that power wisely. 🙇
aug 2, 2025, 11:44 pm • 0 0 • view
From an outsiders perspective, the people pushing this and the way it is talked about sound so similar to the way assault riffles get talked about in the US. It feel to me line there is a part of western civilization that just needs everybody to be scared of something.
aug 3, 2025, 7:37 pm • 0 0 • view
Wait, what?
aug 2, 2025, 11:32 pm • 1 0 • view
The UK government and MSM hate anything good.
aug 3, 2025, 12:52 am • 1 0 • view
Is this like when they got rid of the Human torch in the Fantastic 4 cartoon and replaced him with that robot because they were scared kids were going to set themselves on fire?
aug 3, 2025, 12:43 am • 1 0 • view
They didn't have turtles protecting them like America did.
aug 2, 2025, 11:35 pm • 3 0 • view
Distraction from IRA.
aug 2, 2025, 11:24 pm • 1 0 • view
Starmer never managed to complete Revenge of Shinobi and he’s still mad about it.
aug 3, 2025, 9:49 am • 6 0 • view
We’ll probably find out in a future Assassin’s Creed game
aug 2, 2025, 11:57 pm • 0 0 • view
Not English but Kiwi but maybe close enough to explain. People display ninja swords in their homes because they look cool. They don’t display European swords - they’re not as popular. So if you wanted a sword to use as a pointy thing to hurt people with - then there’s a ninja one on your wall.
aug 2, 2025, 11:42 pm • 0 0 • view
Oh, there are ninjas EVERYWHERE just nobody can find them.
aug 3, 2025, 12:27 pm • 1 0 • view
Ninja air fryers and ice cream makers?
aug 2, 2025, 11:34 pm • 1 0 • view
Only a ninja can creep up on another ninja.. (song lyric)
aug 3, 2025, 1:35 pm • 1 0 • view
In a country without guns the ninja is king (a real problem for Charles)
aug 3, 2025, 12:11 am • 0 0 • view
nerfing Dex builds
aug 3, 2025, 1:48 am • 1 0 • view
Out government basically knee jerk ban different types of knives when it comes to their attention, like the nutterfly knife or anything longer than a 3inch blade. They also ban guns so thats been positive, one mass school killing and that was that !! Unlike America
aug 3, 2025, 12:37 am • 6 0 • view
They need to realize that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a katana is a good turtle with a katana
aug 2, 2025, 11:30 pm • 5 0 • view
There isn’t a widespread cultural panic about ninjas but about knife crime more brilliantly. The ninja thing comes from a political/ media elite completely cut off from the rest of the country. I guess they think it gives them an eye catching headline
aug 3, 2025, 7:24 am • 7 0 • view
If an Elizabeth Windsor: Ninja Hunter movie doesn't spawn out of this we don't deserve to be a species.
aug 3, 2025, 12:35 am • 1 0 • view
Some people just fundamentally believe that someone wants to hurt them. They think any piece of garbage caught on their car door latch mean they're going to be kidnapped and human-trafficked, or that someone's just waiting to buy a cheap katama to disembowel them with.
aug 2, 2025, 11:52 pm • 3 0 • view
they’re terrified that The Orient will seek revenge for the Opium Wars and such, and due to Racism they forgot that Japan and China are different places
aug 2, 2025, 11:55 pm • 1 0 • view
It’s a combination of: - administrations want to look tough on crime and the UK has basically zero gun crime and isn’t afraid to ban weapons, so the only thing left to do is start banning increasingly obscure categories of knives and swords - deeply weird overt racism
aug 3, 2025, 1:05 am • 10 0 • view
To be fair it's not just ninjas, we've had panics about samurai swords, "zombie knives", and I think one about crossbows as well.
aug 3, 2025, 12:01 am • 0 0 • view
A bunch of Jimmy Savilles?
aug 3, 2025, 12:03 am • 1 0 • view
Ninja Jimmy Saviles raised in a Teletubby cult. Terrifying.
aug 3, 2025, 12:56 am • 4 0 • view
Jesus, you ain’t kidding.
aug 3, 2025, 12:57 am • 0 0 • view
Is there a cultural panic over Ninjas? (responds the rest of the UK)
aug 3, 2025, 10:17 am • 2 0 • view
Can’t work out if you’re serious or not? But as it’s more difficult to get a gun here we have a problem with people stabbing each other, often young people - and I guess zombie knife and ninja sword sounds cool? I don’t think there’s a racial element to the ban. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
aug 2, 2025, 11:46 pm • 1 0 • view
Hence why the Ninja Turtles are called the Hero Turtles.
aug 3, 2025, 3:12 am • 1 0 • view
Dude killed a cop with a katana
aug 2, 2025, 11:23 pm • 6 0 • view
Ninjas getting blamed again for the misbehavior of errant samurai…
aug 2, 2025, 11:37 pm • 32 1 • view
The plural is ninja. That's how they hide their numbers.
aug 3, 2025, 1:24 am • 9 1 • view
Was it a cop? I thought it was a teenager victim.
aug 6, 2025, 5:23 am • 0 0 • view
I'm a BIT of an Anglophile (Douglas Adams, tea, you know) and have NEVER heard of this.
aug 2, 2025, 11:57 pm • 0 0 • view
First they came for the British Ninjas And I did not speak out Because I was too busy wondering wtf kind of drugs they're on over there, like seriously wtaf
aug 3, 2025, 1:37 am • 5 0 • view
OK, so I, for real, might write on this the ban on ninjas swords is a dumb knee-jerk bit of legislation - someone, tragically, got killed by one, so they decided to outlaw them. It was done via statutory instrument (executive order as an inexact parralel) so it didn't really get any oversight
aug 2, 2025, 11:36 pm • 229 11 • view
Oh. Is this like when we banned 'zombie knives'? It isn't legal to even carry a blade over 3" long anyway. So what, just can't have sharp ones in the house either now? 🤷♀️
aug 3, 2025, 12:28 am • 3 0 • view
When there's no more room in the cutlery drawer, zombie knives will walk the earth
aug 3, 2025, 12:56 am • 4 0 • view
The resulting legal definition is preposterously precise, they're literally outlawing a specific style of sword. Functionally identical items are unaffected bsky.app/profile/polp...
aug 2, 2025, 11:38 pm • 161 4 • view
Would it be OK if you simply referred to it as a "shinobi sword" instead? 🤷🏻
aug 3, 2025, 9:42 am • 2 0 • view
Tbf England probably has a lot of sword law & can’t ban anything from lakes or stones
sep 1, 2025, 8:00 am • 0 0 • view
For example, uniquely, the definition only applies to sharp weapons so you could sell a blunt one. It would then become illegal if you sharpened it. But then if you sharpened the 'spine' it would become legal again
aug 2, 2025, 11:40 pm • 127 2 • view
is there some bigotry against Asians here? Idk . . . maybe, like perhaps they would have been slower to bam a long sword, sabre or something more obviously European on the other hand, the definition excludes katanas, so you can larp as the Japanese feudal overlord, but not assassin)
aug 2, 2025, 11:43 pm • 99 0 • view
Hang on, Katanas and Tanto blades are fine but just not a Wakizashi???
aug 3, 2025, 12:37 am • 3 0 • view
I think what you ultimately have is: A government that wants to show "results" but has ruled out changing any of the structural things suffocating the country (tax rules, brexit, etc) AND increasingly isolated - they don't take feedback & push things through without legislative oversight
aug 2, 2025, 11:45 pm • 123 5 • view
So the family (& tbc I don't blame them) of someone killed by one asks for them to be banned & . . . sure, sound scary & a bit foreign, this'll show we're serious about crime + no scrutiny & you end up with one of the dumbest laws I've ever seen - it's functionally unenforceable
aug 2, 2025, 11:48 pm • 105 2 • view
it's a small case, but in many ways, it is symptomatic of how parliamentary democracy just isn't performing its 101 functions Bit long, sorry
aug 2, 2025, 11:49 pm • 90 1 • view
Feels like when bullied kids seize power in a coup
sep 1, 2025, 8:02 am • 0 0 • view
My god we walked there yesterday: we never saw any ninjas…but we wouldn’t would we? 👀😑🤷♂️
aug 3, 2025, 8:11 am • 16 0 • view
I thought this was a joke 🙄
aug 3, 2025, 10:05 am • 0 0 • view
They ... posted this. On purpose. Jesus.
aug 3, 2025, 9:54 am • 2 0 • view
I suppose if there were an English git organization such as the NRA, they would argue points such as: Ninja swords don't kill people, Ninjas do . . .
aug 3, 2025, 6:06 am • 1 0 • view
It takes a good ninja to stop a bad Ninja.
aug 3, 2025, 6:06 am • 2 0 • view
Definitely seems tinged with bigotry to me.
aug 3, 2025, 12:43 am • 0 0 • view
Wait how does it have three edges?
aug 2, 2025, 11:41 pm • 3 0 • view
To be fair, you run into problems any time you try to regulate these types of problems: e.g. what's "an assault rifle". You won't ever get a definition perfectly right, you will have absurd counter-examples cited by anti-regulation critics, but in my view imperfect regulation > no regulation.
aug 3, 2025, 9:00 am • 1 0 • view
tanto style point is a specific and enforceable descriptor that applies to all Japanese swords
aug 3, 2025, 12:31 am • 0 0 • view
Waiting on the ban on a fucking pencil.
aug 3, 2025, 2:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Some Johns Hopkins student hacked up a home intruder with a katana about 10 years ago, and Americans went, "Oh my God...nice."
aug 3, 2025, 3:30 am • 2 0 • view
The UK release of Ninja Scroll edited out the ninja stars
aug 2, 2025, 11:35 pm • 326 1 • view
Ninja scroll mentioned #traumatized
aug 3, 2025, 9:15 am • 0 0 • view
Having followed your account for years, I genuinely do not know whether this is a bit
aug 2, 2025, 11:36 pm • 169 0 • view
They didn't let Mikey have his nunchucks and they changed the title to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles so I don't think anything is beyond them
aug 3, 2025, 12:17 am • 20 0 • view
In Europe & Australia most of the games were made into Probotector to reduce violence against humans. But that might have been more Germany, which has had super stupid laws about video games
aug 3, 2025, 10:52 am • 1 0 • view
*most of the Contra games
aug 3, 2025, 6:28 pm • 1 0 • view
It’s true! www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?I...
aug 2, 2025, 11:42 pm • 13 0 • view
Amazingly it’s not for the original release back in the ‘90s.
aug 2, 2025, 11:38 pm • 70 0 • view
You can rip a guys arms out of their sockets and drink his blood but no ninja stars
aug 3, 2025, 1:45 am • 5 0 • view
Yes!! As late as 1998 they were doing stuff like that, in Tenchu: Stealth Assassins on PS1 the ninja stars were replaced by throwing knives in UK/NZ and in Soul Blade the nunchucks got turned into a 3-part staff
aug 3, 2025, 12:38 am • 13 0 • view
Oh my god
aug 3, 2025, 12:38 am • 2 0 • view
Teenage Mutant... Hero(?!).. Turtles
aug 2, 2025, 11:37 pm • 24 0 • view
they let me just buy a VHS of that when I was like 14
aug 3, 2025, 12:16 am • 4 0 • view
Do they just call it “Gaiden” over there?
aug 2, 2025, 11:38 pm • 12 0 • view
Could've been worse. Could have called them "jelly donuts."
aug 3, 2025, 2:19 am • 2 0 • view
I think it was sort of their version of the 80s satanic panic? While Americans were worried that our kids were playing too much D&D and summing demons, they were worried that their kids were a little TOO into assassinating people and walking on their hands.
aug 2, 2025, 11:39 pm • 1 0 • view
1970s racism. Bruce Lee movies got popular and the uptightest of Brits feared it would lead to young people attacking people in the streets with "nina stars". Some of the same people are still in office btw
aug 3, 2025, 2:00 pm • 1 0 • view
in the simplest rendering, without much in the way of gun crimes the same terrified suburban impulses have went for knife crimes instead, and ninja -> sword -> knife
aug 2, 2025, 11:24 pm • 16 0 • view
I have a cat named Ninja. And everyone should fear him.
aug 3, 2025, 3:26 am • 5 0 • view
There were a number of sword attacks so UK banned them. That's what normal countries do unlike Americans and guns.
aug 3, 2025, 6:39 am • 2 0 • view
Maybe they just need some realultimatepower.net?
aug 3, 2025, 5:05 am • 0 0 • view
Now do bat'leths, lol. uk.news.yahoo.com/giant-klingo...
aug 2, 2025, 11:54 pm • 21 0 • view
Yahoo are cowards for using the term "Klingon sword"
aug 2, 2025, 11:58 pm • 8 0 • view
Ahem, "p'takh"...
aug 3, 2025, 12:00 am • 8 0 • view
That is NOT a Bat'leth. For one, it's the wrong way round.
aug 3, 2025, 8:54 am • 1 0 • view
Haha! I missed that!
aug 3, 2025, 11:07 am • 0 0 • view
That falls quite short of scary
aug 3, 2025, 2:19 pm • 0 0 • view
It's the knife crime thing. See also "zombie knives."
aug 2, 2025, 11:49 pm • 0 0 • view
Against the ninja 🥷 🎶
aug 3, 2025, 2:52 am • 1 0 • view
We have a moral panic over ninjas????
aug 3, 2025, 8:19 am • 0 0 • view
As a young (lol) brit and also an an avid TMNT cartoon (2000s remake) fan I do not believe that we have ninja censorship in the UK.
aug 3, 2025, 8:22 am • 0 0 • view
The cartoon series was renamed to Hero Turtles rather than Ninja over here. Also a LOT of films got heavily edited by the BBFC to remove any ninja based content. Most of the panic might have been down to 1 person at the BBFC, actually!
aug 3, 2025, 9:01 am • 0 0 • view
aug 3, 2025, 9:53 am • 1 0 • view
I presume this was the 80s cartoon though? When I was a kid there was no such censorship.
aug 3, 2025, 10:19 am • 1 0 • view
80's to early 90's (which I think was the "ninjas in pop culture" peak!) At present, there's the new ban on "ninja swords" (I don't know owt about them though).
aug 3, 2025, 10:21 am • 0 0 • view
To my mind this ninja popculture phenomenon is also why every martial arts instructor I've ever had who was a boy in the 80s very early 90s had weirdly good taste in HK cinema.
aug 3, 2025, 10:24 am • 1 0 • view
Amazing HK cinema, which also led to crappy straight to video "put ninjas in this somehow" US films. Also the Spectrum game "BMX ninja" which features no martial arts or ninja-related items whatsoever....
aug 3, 2025, 12:28 pm • 1 0 • view
They were literally renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK in the 80’s/90’s though?
aug 3, 2025, 10:31 am • 0 0 • view
I was born in 1996. My peak cartoon watching years were like 2000-2009
aug 3, 2025, 10:32 am • 1 0 • view
Just saying, for whatever reason the “oh no ninjas are scary” thing seems to be a recurring thing in the UK. They also replace Michelangelo’s nunchucks with a grappling hook or something, btw 😆
aug 3, 2025, 10:40 am • 1 0 • view
It seems like a broad part of the Teenagers are scary + the eastern orient is scary + violence in media is scary except when we do it to minorities then its right and proper + we just fucking hate fun. Crowd.
aug 3, 2025, 10:43 am • 1 0 • view
It's incomprehensible. It's a strange thing.
aug 3, 2025, 1:54 am • 1 0 • view
I presume that this is what people worry about when they don’t have to worry about mass shootings because they have sensible gun control laws.
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 19 0 • view
Also, sidebar: I legit thought you used the word “ninja” as a PC version of the N-word. When you read the question in that context, it’s fucking hilarious.
aug 2, 2025, 11:38 pm • 1 0 • view
You don't see them banning British-made swords, knives or weapons
aug 2, 2025, 11:31 pm • 4 0 • view
Their whole system is based on strange women lying in ponds distributing swords so
sep 1, 2025, 8:09 am • 0 0 • view
As a Brit: no idea. There isn't.
aug 3, 2025, 4:19 am • 3 0 • view
Scott Adkins movies?
aug 2, 2025, 11:47 pm • 0 0 • view
Pretty much it was one man, James Ferman, the head of of the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification), who was a bit obsessed. But that was over 30 years ago! www.denofgeek.com/movies/banne...
aug 3, 2025, 12:17 am • 8 0 • view
The article isn't completely accurate, exaggerating for effect in the opening, there. Everyone in the UK knew full well they were really called 'Ninja Turtles' and it had been censored to 'Hero Turtles'.
aug 3, 2025, 9:44 am • 3 0 • view
I loved the Ninja Turtles comics as a kid (more than the hero turtles show tho I did enjoy that too)
aug 3, 2025, 11:25 am • 2 0 • view
Both US and UK are prone to “won’t someone think of the children??” panics, most of which leave subsequent generations thinking “wth was that about?” There’s always somebody getting money/power out of it, though.
aug 3, 2025, 11:33 am • 5 0 • view
I’m not implying other countries aren’t prone to these panics, of course. When I arrived in Japan there was a panic going on about the moral degeneracy of teen girls wearing loose socks. shihyenshoes.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/j... Japanese loose socks (ルーズソックス) | shihyenshoes
aug 3, 2025, 11:42 am • 3 0 • view
I remember seeing those socks bunched up around ankles in Tokyo and elsewhere and thinking "WTF!"
aug 3, 2025, 12:00 pm • 1 0 • view
The fashion itself was pretty wtf, but the reaction by schools was super-wtf. Admin and some teachers were freaking out. I was like “It’s a weird fashion, but so what? Ignore it and it’ll disappear in a year or two.” Most fellow teachers agreed, but had to enforce school-uniform policies.
aug 3, 2025, 12:10 pm • 2 0 • view
I can assure you, most people thought the ninja thing was silly +at the time+. Like I said, it was mostly +one man+, who had a really weird thing about nunchuks.
aug 3, 2025, 11:35 am • 2 0 • view
As their political leadership longs to return to the days of Thatcher, so too do they long for the ninja craze of the 1980s
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 5 0 • view
Now I really want to see a movie about a british ninja who's overly polite and apologizes profusely after killing people.
aug 3, 2025, 10:36 am • 2 1 • view
They don't have guns, so they fear swords and mass stabbings. Ninja swords are the most iconic swords.
aug 2, 2025, 11:54 pm • 0 0 • view
Wanna help make this Times Square billboard a reality? Read. Respond. Resist. (~);} secure.actblue.com/donate/25-bi...
aug 3, 2025, 5:53 pm • 0 0 • view
Wouldn't doubt it, if it had something do with what's currently happening with ICE in America (~);{
aug 3, 2025, 5:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Between ninjas/UK, clowns/US, and skeletons/China, a ninja clown skeleton could rule the world. Hopefully, the reign of Bubbles Bone-san is benevolent.
aug 3, 2025, 12:12 am • 3 0 • view
The sword or the electrical appliances? 😁
aug 3, 2025, 12:06 am • 0 0 • view
I'm guessing, since they don't have the gun problem we do, that there's some section of their society that gets stressed over ninja weapons. But the US has some version of this too. I'm pretty sure some local governments have outlawed throwing stars at one time or another. Sort of like switchblades.
aug 3, 2025, 12:46 am • 0 0 • view
California famously has a nunchaku ban.
aug 3, 2025, 12:46 am • 3 0 • view
(yes, nunchaku are not ninja weapons, they're Okinawan) THAT'S MICHAELANGELO ERASURE
aug 3, 2025, 12:48 am • 3 0 • view
MI-5 lost contact with Master Splinter, now they're worried.
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 2 0 • view
Just for the people reading Jamelle's post, the oddity about the Hero Turtles stopped by 2003 when the series that came out then was the uncensored Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
aug 3, 2025, 11:54 am • 0 0 • view
Have you seen what British ninjas look like? www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynzo...
aug 2, 2025, 11:30 pm • 3 0 • view
I mean, have you seen ninjas?? Exactly, and that’s what makes them so dangerous.
aug 3, 2025, 12:55 am • 7 0 • view
As I understand it, the panic was mostly one guy called James Ferman, who - while liberal in general - developed a weird obsession with the dangers of ninjas and in particular with nunchucks. Unfortunately, he was the head of the British Board of Film Classification (does the age restrictions).
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 245 3 • view
James Ferman definitely hit himself in the balls with a pair of nunchucks so hard it changed him as a person
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 181 1 • view
Honestly can’t tell if this is satire.
aug 3, 2025, 10:35 pm • 0 0 • view
google what "satire" means, for a start. it's not a synonym for "joke"
aug 4, 2025, 12:03 am • 1 0 • view
Google what “saltire” means, for a start. It’s not just a synonym for the flag of “Scotland”
sep 1, 2025, 7:56 am • 1 0 • view
Pretty pro porn interestingly.
aug 3, 2025, 12:17 am • 0 0 • view
Don’t tell me they hit restrictions on Beverly Hills Ninja.
aug 3, 2025, 3:26 am • 1 0 • view
ARE NUNCHUCKS CENSORED? This is like learning one of your parents was once married to a sailor or something.
aug 3, 2025, 8:21 am • 4 0 • view
lol I just posted about this on another thread. Yes, and the BBFC boss was obsessed. https://bsky.app/profile/branmacmuffin.bsky.social/post/3lv6er32iqk24
aug 3, 2025, 8:43 am • 0 0 • view
Well, not any more because once he retired in late 1990s everyone looked at each other in a kind of “thank god the mad nunchucks guy has gone”. But effectively yes, for about 20 years he’d wave through a release of “Crash” but one glimpse a couple of sticks with a chain on them and he’d demand cuts.
aug 3, 2025, 8:29 am • 1 0 • view
This is such a parochially british type of censorship I almost support it because of how leftfield it is. Kudos mate, you embodied the most british idea, "ban x because I don't like it even though its fine".
aug 3, 2025, 8:32 am • 1 0 • view
A friend in the groupchat has pointed out that 1980s sinophobia and hong kong action movies being seen by the youthes makes this panic make more sense.
aug 3, 2025, 8:46 am • 0 0 • view
In the early 90s they renamed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" and censored all the collectible cards with Michelangelo on them. Infuriating
aug 3, 2025, 8:23 am • 9 0 • view
Thats so mad. Particularly because I fondly remember the 00s TMNT cartoon which showed on Jetix and michaelangelo was at no point nunchuk-censored.
aug 3, 2025, 8:25 am • 0 0 • view
Idk if satellite channels constitute different rules though.
aug 3, 2025, 8:26 am • 0 0 • view
Could I have had a nunchuk on the BBC in 2004?
aug 3, 2025, 8:26 am • 0 0 • view
Maybe we as as a nation made him use a grappling hook instead due to our predilection for kinky sex
aug 3, 2025, 8:49 am • 2 0 • view
As we know Nunchucks could never have a sexual shape. Two phallic objects attached by a chain.
aug 3, 2025, 10:20 am • 1 0 • view
He tried to censor Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because he thought he saw nunchucks (in fact someone swinging a string of sausages). When someone pointed out that there was no record of nunchucks being used to hurt anyone in the UK, he triumphantly replied that this showed the success of his policy.
aug 2, 2025, 11:31 pm • 88 3 • view
This is actually insanely hilarious
aug 3, 2025, 1:13 pm • 0 0 • view
aug 2, 2025, 11:39 pm • 32 0 • view
Some got loose during a Japan/UK cultural exchange and they’ve never been able to find them. Japan however found all the Roundheads
aug 3, 2025, 12:21 am • 2 0 • view
No one has guns. Some people use knives for self-defense. A couple of murders were carried out with Samurai swords and so they were banned. Now the government are playing this impossible game of trying to ban Ninja/samurai knives with a loopholeless definition that doesn't ban every knife.
aug 2, 2025, 11:26 pm • 14 0 • view
It's worth pointing out that while the process is very silly, knives are massively less effective at killing than guns, and knives not specifically designed for killing people are much less effective than those which are. The policy saves lives.
aug 2, 2025, 11:30 pm • 7 0 • view
Ninjas OK, Zombies? No.
aug 3, 2025, 12:14 pm • 1 0 • view
bsky.app/profile/drew...
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 3 0 • view
RIGHT????
aug 2, 2025, 11:50 pm • 0 0 • view
Ninjas were responsible for the death of Richard III, and the U.K. has been fighting them in secret ever since.
aug 2, 2025, 11:56 pm • 0 0 • view
The 4K restoration of Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD is sending shockwaves through the United Kingdom
aug 2, 2025, 11:26 pm • 27 0 • view
Hahahaah I’m here for the Vinegar Syndrome jokes. That’s my jam
aug 2, 2025, 11:37 pm • 3 0 • view
You can't see them. Like vampires. They only managed to get on top of their vampire infestations last Thursday.
aug 3, 2025, 8:26 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s a can of worm you do not want to open, my friend.
aug 3, 2025, 12:06 am • 0 0 • view
they really wish they hadn't developed sane gun-control laws so that good british white people could start pogroms of those dastardly Irish folks
aug 3, 2025, 12:37 am • 1 0 • view
and everyone else of course
aug 3, 2025, 12:37 am • 1 0 • view
'britain for the zombies' britain first cries, as they march into the sea, because having stable coastlines is communist.
aug 3, 2025, 12:38 am • 2 0 • view
No idea, I didn't know we had one. I had assumed ninja swords were banned already.
aug 2, 2025, 11:45 pm • 1 0 • view
It's ninjas, innit?
aug 3, 2025, 1:09 am • 0 0 • view
Basically racism.
aug 3, 2025, 1:32 pm • 1 0 • view
Starmer is an authoritarian cunt, there is no public panic whatsoever about ninja swords.
aug 3, 2025, 10:31 am • 2 0 • view
Whut? I'm in the UK, and I know nothing of this
aug 3, 2025, 9:07 am • 1 0 • view
It was an 80s/90s thing.
aug 3, 2025, 5:25 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm 50. I was around for those years. I remember nothing.
aug 4, 2025, 3:54 am • 0 0 • view
Wait what?
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 31 0 • view
Yeah, apparently it was a thing. I had no idea it was still going on. In the UK they had to rebrand "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" as "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles."
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 5 0 • view
@icemateria.bsky.social did you know about this?
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 1 0 • view
I love here that the katana and sai are still there, as if the word "ninja" itself inspires violence but the weapons are fine.
aug 2, 2025, 11:30 pm • 7 0 • view
Ah, the logic of censorship!
aug 2, 2025, 11:37 pm • 0 0 • view
this is a whole thing! hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/2021/04/11/t...
aug 2, 2025, 11:26 pm • 179 5 • view
Was Tipper Gore involved?
aug 2, 2025, 11:54 pm • 1 0 • view
Just for reference The author is on BlueSky :) - @evansmithhist.bsky.social And has a book "No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech"
aug 3, 2025, 9:57 am • 2 0 • view
had a series of hero turtle books sent to me as a kid from UK family. still strange to see haha
aug 2, 2025, 11:28 pm • 1 0 • view
That was necessary context to your original question
aug 2, 2025, 11:42 pm • 0 0 • view
Normal Island.
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 58 0 • view
Britain is afraid of Japans power they know they are the inferior island nation
aug 3, 2025, 12:27 am • 4 0 • view
this has brought back my visceral reaction to the British phrase “video nasties” which sounds like something Mary Poppins would tut at
aug 2, 2025, 11:38 pm • 36 0 • view
They thought it would encourage kids to act it out in the playground at school, pretending to do Kung Fu and hurting each other.
aug 2, 2025, 11:28 pm • 3 0 • view
We had that discourse in the US in the earlier 90s when They brought over Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (though it didn't amount to anything).
aug 2, 2025, 11:30 pm • 3 0 • view
I’m sure the UK also had this discourse over Power Rangers - I firmly recall a news report when I was a kid where people were campaigning for it to be banned after one kid kicked another so hard he got kidney damage or something (it didn’t happen but of course people called for a ban, it’s the UK)
aug 3, 2025, 8:29 am • 1 0 • view
And the Tango man, apparently a kids eardrum exploded when someone done it to them
aug 3, 2025, 12:07 pm • 0 0 • view
A totally appcryphal thing I heard that is almost certainly not true is that Bruce Lee made nunchaku a popular weapon for gang violence in the 70s and so they were banned from TV and anything but R18 movies, which is why Mikey got that dumb grappling hook in later cartoon seasons?
aug 3, 2025, 12:21 am • 0 0 • view
I lived in the UK in the 1980s and regularly watched the "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" cartoon. Everybody knew that the name had been changed to replace the 'ninja', and everybody thought it was stupid. Nobody knew who was responsible for making that absurd change.
aug 2, 2025, 11:39 pm • 13 0 • view
I also don't know who made the decision to make it an offense requiring discipline for a child to say the word 'gun' at our elementary school. That also seems over the top. They're literally not allowed to say the word 'gun'.
aug 2, 2025, 11:42 pm • 11 0 • view
This almost feels like superstition, the promise isn’t anything supernatural but there’s some kind of idea that if you say the word gun too much one is liable to appear
aug 2, 2025, 11:54 pm • 8 0 • view
They also invented a category of knives from movies called "zombie knives" in order to ban them.
aug 3, 2025, 12:28 am • 1 0 • view
If we start a campaign to give nunchucks to trans people, Britain would be defeated overnight.
aug 2, 2025, 11:42 pm • 9 0 • view
!!!!
aug 3, 2025, 12:34 am • 2 0 • view
i don't know what the status is these days, but when i was kickboxing in the mid/late 90s, "ninja weapons" could only be purchased by 18+
aug 3, 2025, 12:39 am • 1 0 • view
In the US, it depends on the state Aka I got into an argument, & walked away saying “Wait, are nunchucks even legal?” and looked it up later
sep 1, 2025, 8:05 am • 0 0 • view
Hero was the wrong call, imo
aug 2, 2025, 11:32 pm • 4 0 • view
They're institutionally terrified of shuriken & nunchucks & katanas, it's nutty
aug 2, 2025, 11:26 pm • 14 0 • view
knoife croime!
aug 2, 2025, 11:31 pm • 4 0 • view
When they really should be afraid of this
aug 2, 2025, 11:28 pm • 4 0 • view
their real ultimate power poses a threat to parliamentary sovereignty
aug 2, 2025, 11:23 pm • 11 0 • view
Also, like the tans phobia, it was just one legislator who had a bizarre phobia that spread.
aug 2, 2025, 11:32 pm • 3 0 • view
Just like their fear over trans people. It's a "hidden" threat that's gonna attack them from out of nowhere.
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 1 0 • view
In a battle, English umbrellas are no match.
aug 3, 2025, 2:47 am • 1 0 • view
Bulgarian intelligence had to bring their own - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_....
aug 3, 2025, 9:10 am • 0 0 • view
I don't think it's a panic over ninjas per se, but over ninja *swords*. Because Ronan Kanda, 16, was fatally stabbed with a ninja sword in a case of mistaken identity, in 2022. Ever since there's been big pressure to ban them.
aug 2, 2025, 11:54 pm • 14 1 • view
It been a thing since at least the 80s. TMNT was censored because of it.
aug 3, 2025, 12:07 am • 3 0 • view
And this wouldn’t have saved him. If the UK were actually worried about shit like this, why aren’t all swords banned? Because not all swords are, only very specific swords that are not traditionally used in the West. It’s racist fear mongering.
aug 3, 2025, 2:06 am • 6 0 • view
Totally agree.
aug 3, 2025, 6:22 am • 1 0 • view
I thought this was a joke at first, and now I’m so happy that it’s not 🤣
aug 3, 2025, 3:26 am • 0 0 • view
Ninjas do wrong to each other sometimes and in that way the force of the earth comes around the moon. And at that presence, the dirt, it overshadows the grass, you like I can't cut this grass, there's no sun coming through.
aug 3, 2025, 2:33 am • 0 0 • view
So in order to enable each other the two fruits have to look each other in the eye and understand we can only be right, as the ripe is wrong, you know what I mean?
aug 3, 2025, 2:47 am • 0 0 • view
youtu.be/WtR2m20C2YM?...
aug 3, 2025, 1:39 am • 3 0 • view
They don't have guns.
aug 2, 2025, 11:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Lmao
aug 2, 2025, 11:44 pm • 0 0 • view
It's really weird, right? They did this in the 80s with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Too. Forced a name change to "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles."
aug 2, 2025, 11:28 pm • 49 1 • view
Ohh. I didn’t know that. Queued for bloomin hours in the 90s to get them.
aug 3, 2025, 12:10 am • 2 0 • view
Ninja running freaks them out?
aug 2, 2025, 11:26 pm • 2 0 • view
So many ways the start of this post coulda gone. The way the question went is not one I was expecting
aug 3, 2025, 2:38 am • 1 0 • view
Weird, when I grew up in the UK in the 1980s, we all loved ninjas. Times have changed.
aug 3, 2025, 10:01 am • 0 0 • view
Knife crime island
aug 3, 2025, 11:21 am • 0 0 • view
So you can't own a Ninja sword, but a Samurai sword is still ok? Nevermind all the longswords, rapiers, and claymores? I just want sensible Sword Control.
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 1 0 • view
They're so sneaky!
aug 2, 2025, 11:23 pm • 1 0 • view
This is a question for @beijingpalmer.bsky.social
aug 3, 2025, 12:19 am • 10 0 • view
Do we? Escaped me. Haven't seen any round here, but guess that's their MO...
aug 2, 2025, 11:46 pm • 3 0 • view
This is perfect as it is. I refuse to learn more or read any replies.
aug 3, 2025, 12:00 am • 0 0 • view
aug 3, 2025, 10:48 am • 3 0 • view
The pop irony of the sword surrender thing is per ninja pop lore, much reputed ninja weaponry was improvised from farming and other trade tools because of a formal weapons ban in imperial Japan. We're gonna see jacks back as caltrops and someone's gonna turn themself into Raiden with a Tesla charger
aug 2, 2025, 11:41 pm • 8 0 • view
We got rid of guns... so they had to have something else to be frightened of. It was knives/machetes/ninja swords/and ninja stars. Chefs lived in fear of being stopped and arrested for "knife crimes"(1). There was a heavy level of "inner city" racism/class-ism to it as well. (1) Only half joking.
aug 3, 2025, 4:27 pm • 0 0 • view
What they have a problem with is ridiculously specific weapons laws which either the press or the police give dumb names exhibit Z www.gov.uk/government/n...
aug 2, 2025, 11:35 pm • 3 0 • view
Wait 'til you see the Werewolf Knife!
aug 3, 2025, 5:36 pm • 0 0 • view
“Vampire knife” just a pointed stick, hasn’t been a problem still perfectly legal
aug 3, 2025, 7:35 pm • 1 0 • view
We have a vampire problem like you wouldn't believe tbf...
aug 3, 2025, 8:10 pm • 0 0 • view
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jen...
aug 3, 2025, 12:21 am • 4 0 • view
this looks like an onion headline lmao
aug 2, 2025, 11:22 pm • 240 0 • view
it's an honest question but also that's what i was going for
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 336 0 • view
When the Ninja Turtle cartoon aired in the UK, out of ALL their weapons, they banned the NUNCHUCKS and those frames were redrawn with a grappling hook. Eventually weapon use was phased out entirely.
aug 3, 2025, 4:47 am • 5 0 • view
That’s almost as bizarre as the replacement of onigiri with jelly donuts in the pokemon anime
aug 3, 2025, 6:11 pm • 1 0 • view
Didn't know about that!
aug 3, 2025, 6:42 pm • 0 0 • view
Alas this is actually our reality
aug 2, 2025, 11:42 pm • 8 0 • view
What like shark ninja air fryers?
aug 2, 2025, 11:28 pm • 22 0 • view
there is a LOT of time spent in the UK panicking about the possession and sale of kusarigama and shuriken
aug 3, 2025, 2:16 am • 16 0 • view
I had no idea
aug 3, 2025, 2:54 am • 1 0 • view
Me neither.
aug 3, 2025, 9:35 am • 0 0 • view
I live in the uk and this isn’t true?
aug 3, 2025, 10:04 am • 0 0 • view
Er, no.
aug 3, 2025, 9:35 am • 3 0 • view
Thank you for your service
aug 2, 2025, 11:44 pm • 2 0 • view
Might have something to do with the knife and sword panic in the UK
aug 3, 2025, 12:20 am • 1 0 • view
Wait is this real
aug 3, 2025, 2:14 am • 0 0 • view
I’ve not noticed any panic about ninjas. I just think a lot of street weapons get the prefix ‘ninja’ because kids think it sounds cool.
aug 2, 2025, 11:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Umm, wow. I have no idea. Are they having a ninja invasion?
aug 3, 2025, 4:32 am • 0 0 • view
absolutely overrun with them! 😆
aug 3, 2025, 10:32 am • 0 0 • view
they got no guns. enough ninjas could take over the whole country.
aug 3, 2025, 2:45 am • 2 0 • view
I think it's related to the cultural panic over zombies somehow, but I'm a little unclear on the details. www.gov.uk/government/n...
aug 3, 2025, 12:30 am • 2 0 • view
(When I first heard the expression "zombie knife" I assumed it was some analogy along the lines of "ghost gun" but it appears not to be.)
aug 3, 2025, 12:36 am • 3 0 • view
Oh oh maybe they can do a pirate-theme ban on cutlasses next!
aug 3, 2025, 12:54 am • 1 0 • view
YARR! They'll have to prise my cutlass from my cold, dead, one remaining hand.
aug 3, 2025, 8:50 am • 1 0 • view
Stereotypes of east asians are more negative?
aug 3, 2025, 1:11 am • 0 0 • view
Goes back at least to the 60s so I'd say some sort of WW2 thing? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendo_N...
aug 2, 2025, 11:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Ninja Panic sounds like a band name.
aug 2, 2025, 11:26 pm • 10 0 • view
They're a Swedish Hyperpop duo I think.
aug 2, 2025, 11:33 pm • 1 0 • view
Panic! At the Dojo
aug 2, 2025, 11:36 pm • 17 0 • view
Dressed like Ken...?
aug 2, 2025, 11:37 pm • 1 0 • view
Sure why not
aug 2, 2025, 11:39 pm • 2 0 • view
They didn't want to ban steak knives and chef's knives, which together harm far more people, I'm sure.
aug 3, 2025, 12:41 am • 1 0 • view
How many ninjas am I holding up?
aug 3, 2025, 12:38 am • 1 0 • view
My question is what is the deal with people in the South obsessed with Bigfoot? Life-sized (rusty) metal cut outs adorning their yards and driveways.
aug 3, 2025, 12:02 pm • 0 0 • view
There isn't one. 100% a nothing thing. The only cultural panic going on over here at the moment is panic over the apparent cultural shift in the USA.
aug 2, 2025, 11:25 pm • 1 0 • view
There’s also the great freak out over the existence of trans people
aug 2, 2025, 11:27 pm • 5 0 • view
I feel like that is a media / manufactured issue. And aping what is going on in the states again.
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Rowling is responsible for the trans ban there that has been cooking at least as long as the US so don't blame us for that.
aug 2, 2025, 11:52 pm • 0 0 • view
True
aug 2, 2025, 11:53 pm • 0 0 • view
JK Rowling helped get anti-trans laws passed in the UK, so it's definitely something that exists.
aug 2, 2025, 11:47 pm • 2 0 • view
True
aug 2, 2025, 11:48 pm • 1 0 • view
Are we playing madlibs?
aug 2, 2025, 11:29 pm • 2 0 • view
No such panic exists
aug 3, 2025, 10:00 am • 1 0 • view