Ninja Hattori-kun

Ninja Hattori-kun (忍者ハットリくん, Ninja Hattori-kun; also known as Ninja Hattori in some countries) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by duo Fujiko Fujio (and later by Fujiko A. Fujio). It was later adapted into a television drama series that aired on TV Asahi from 1966 to 1968, an anime series by Shin-Ei Animation, airing from 1981 to 1987, a video game by Hudson Soft, two anime films by Shin-Ei and a live-action film. A remake of the 1981 anime series produced by Shin-Ei and the Indian animation firms Reliance MediaWorks and later Green Gold Animations has aired since 2013.

Plot
11-year-old Kenichi Mitsuba is an average kid who goes to secondary school and struggles with his studies, he is very stubborn and is very lazy and therefore always ends up frustrating his parents and teacher. He loves to find an easy way of things much to the annoyance of Hattori.

Meanwhile, a little ninja named Hattori Kanzo befriends Kenichi. Hattori is now a part of the Mitsuba family along with his brother Shinzo, and his ninja dog, Shishimaru. Hattori helps Kenichi with his problems, and constantly keeps an eye on him, as a good friend. Yumeko is portrayed as Kenichi's love interest.

The main antagonist Kemumaki, a Koga Ninja and his ninja cat Kagechiyo. Kemumaki always troubles Kenichi. Kenichi asks Hattori to take revenge as a recurring storyline in many episodes. Although Hattori is a good friend, Kenichi sometimes fights with Hattori due to misunderstandings created by Kemumaki. Sometimes Jippou, Togejirou and Tsubame help him.

There are five main locations in the series: Tokyo City, Shinto Temple, Iga Province, Iga Mountains, Kōga Valley.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The theme song, especially in Japanese, is pretty catchy, being composed by Shunsuke Kikuchi.
 * 2) The character designs are nice looking, akin to other Fujiko Fujio shows. Kenichi's design is one example of this.
 * 3) The characters in this show are very well written and have interesting charisma, especially Hattori himself.
 * 4) Speaking of which, the characters are introduced one at a time, which helps the viewers get familiar with them and the world they live in.
 * 5) The animation, in the 1981 series and (to some extent) the 2013 series, is well-done.
 * 6) It had some crossovers with other great Fujiko Fujio shows, such as Doraemon and Perman.
 * 7) This show has over 600 episodes, each having unique stories and jokes, and unlike Doraemon, it doesn't often reuse story ideas from earlier episodes.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Some episodes are very mean-spirited, mainly involving Kenichi getting tortured.
 * 2) Kio can be really annoying sometimes.
 * 3) The Indian English dub, while faithful to the original Japanese versions, suffers from plenty of problems, such as the terrible voice acting and cheesy dialouge. Even the theme song has a watered down chorus along with rather corny lyrics. Even there's another English dub made in Asia that has much better voice acting and dialogue.
 * 4) The animation in the 2013 series is a mixed bag. While the animation is pretty good in the hand-drawn animation, it looks sub-par in the flash-animated episodes, considering that those episodes were made in India.

Trivia

 * It inspired several internet memes, such as the "D se Dab" commercial and the hilarious live-action commercials.