A short, chubby kid with a spinning foot technique shouldn't be this fun to watch, but Nikumaru's chaos is the whole point. The show doesn't pretend he's secretly powerful or destined for greatness. He's just genuinely funny, genuinely skilled at what he does, and genuinely annoying to everyone around him in exactly the right way. Sixty-nine episodes of pranks and rival clashes and pure comedic momentum, built on the idea that a goofy ninja student doesn't need to be cool to be entertaining.

Nikumaru, whose name means meatball, is a seventeen-year-old student at Ninja High School, a school where young people train to become ninja. He is short and chubby, but he has a powerful technique called the kamikaze, in which he whips up a whirlwind using his feet. The episodes follow his many adventures and pranks as he runs into rivals both inside and outside the school. Aired as a 1982 TV series, the show mixes action, adventure, comedy, romance and sports.