Real Ultimate Power

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Real Ultimate Power main page
Real Ultimate Power main page

The Official Ninja Web page: Real Ultimate Power! is a humor website created by Robert Hamburger (as a fictional, 13-year-old character also named "Robert Hamburger") about ninjas, whom he constantly describes with absolutes such as "totally sweet". The site has become very popular and has generated large amounts of attention including hate mail, as well as a number of parodies. The site is also credited with starting the "Ninjas vs. Pirates" debate, which has been referenced periodically in pop-culture and subcultures.

Contents

[edit] "Real Ultimate" Ninjas

Hamburger describes ninjas through three "facts":

  1. Ninjas are mammals.
  2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
  3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.


Much of the humor associated with the Real Ultimate Power website is obscure, drawing on the common youthful obsession with ninjas by elementary and junior high school-age children. Ninjas, along with much ancient Japanese culture, are often regarded with admiration by Westerners for their dangerousness and martial code; by choosing them as a subject the author may be mocking this somewhat fetishised respect. If the site's hate mail is genuine (see below), those sending it have made themselves the butt of this joke.

Other content includes several "pump-up" scripts, short stories about ninjas involving demented humour and gags such as Ninjas "fighting pirates" or "wailing on guitars" and thus "making all pirates explode", or about a ninja whose "boner smashes the entire restaurant" while the scripts themselves are written roughly like a real movie script, including description of music and camera effects, and they are supposed to "pump up" whoever reads them. Most often, they generate even more hatemail towards the site.

There also is a photograph gallery with fan-submitted images of "Ninjas" and "Pirates" inspired by the site's contents, links to other Ninja-related sites and media, and a ninja themed forum.

Many of the letters in the 'hate mail' section give the impression of being from 'real-life' versions of the Robert Hamburger character. For example one letter disputes the site's claim to have seen a real ninja on the grounds that "there are less than 50 real ones left, and only 5 live in the US".

The sheer amount and some of the contents of the hate mail section (apparently including at least a "Ninja Soke", who signs as Soke David D'Antonio Fujita [1], and at least 2 people "representing all martial artists" or even "having actually studied ninjas") suggest that some of the hate mail is actually fake (apart from the fictional lawsuit), or that the response of some people to the site's content was rather irrational and exaggerated. Although, if one were to view the hate mail entries as parody, they would note a distinctly different brand of humor from that which is present throughout the rest of the site.

Regarding the authenticity of the hatemail itself, the author implied in an interview that some of the hatemail is actually written by him, but others (like the infamous Soke David D'Antonio Fujita posts) are authentic.

[edit] Real Ultimate Power's secret

Real Ultimate Power contains a self-referencing parody of itself which replaces all "Ninja" references with "Hippos", by effectively showing how merely changing subject on a carefully planned but apparently nonsense page can actually be equally funny and more adequate for more than one subject. The fact that there are parodies of Real Ultimate Power about almost everything including president George W. Bush, Britney Spears or All Your Base Are Belong To Us, which change very little of the original text and pictures but still yield a powerful comic effect are further proof of the point.

[edit] Book

Real Ultimate Power, The Official Ninja Book (ISBN 0-8065-2569-X) was published on July 1, 2004, by Citadel as part of their Rebel Base Books line.

At 193 pages in length, the book's humor is more complex (and rather darker) than that of the Real Ultimate Power.net site, with footnotes including psychological evaluations of Robert Hamburger and interviews with his parents. It paints a somewhat tragic, perhaps autobiographical portrait of an isolated, roughly middle-school-aged young boy seeking refuge in his alternate reality of ninjas versus pirates; "Robert Hamburger" is shown to have neglectful parents and severe but easily handled behavioral issues, with fantasies of kidnapping and defective relationships with almost everyone except the book's editor and his dog Francine.

The product description posted on Amazon.com reads:

Dear Stupid Idiots,
A lot of you have been saying that I don't know anything about REAL ninjas. But that's a bunch of bull crap! You dummies don't know anything. And maybe YOU should get a life. I bet a lot of you have never even seen a girl naked! You idiots believe that ninjas had some "code of honor". Yeah right! If by "code of honor", you mean "code to flip out and go nuts for absolutely no reason at all even if it means that people might think you are totally insane or sweet", then you are right. But if you mean a "code to be nice and speak nicely while sharing and not cutting off heads", then you're the biggest idiot ever!!!!!! So if you have any brains, you will shut up and get a life. So go shut up, you stupid idiot.

No thank you,
Robert Hamburger

[edit] References

  1. The Battlefield 1942 mod, Killer Commando, references the site in its use of the "Ninjas vs Pirates" theme in the game-play.
  2. For fans of writing fictional crossovers between the popular and lengthy animes, Naruto and One Piece, the Ninjas vs Pirates theme is an obvious one, and the name is often used.
  3. The theme is present in the online fantasy MMORPG World of Warcraft, where characters who ingest Savory Deviate Delight are randomly transformed into either a ninja (tool-tip description: "Flip Out") or a pirate.
  4. Several video game magazines (GamePro, for example) have used references from the Real Ultimate Power website to review ninja related games.
  5. The Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy IV has a reference to Real Ultimate Power: In the town of Baron, there is a boy who says "I can't stop thinking about dark knights! They're cool... and by cool, I mean totally sweet."
  6. The second edition of the Ninja Burger Role-playing game features a pirate enemy for Ninja Burger (Pirate Pizza), and has a Real Ultimate Ninja mode for playing the game, wherein ninja characters are permitted to flip out and do crazy things.
  7. In Issue 207 of Nintendo Power, the preview section of the magazine contains a subtitle that reads "Can Ninjas and Pirates exist in the same section? Find out!" And not surprisingly, there is a preview for a Naruto game, and a One Piece game on opposite pages.
  8. The Game Boy Advance game Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2 has a line of dialogue from character Toumei that reads "Your spirited efforts, combined with the real ultimate power of an Onmyoji master's spell, banished the evil spirit from Borgrim's body." While it may not, in fact, be a reference to real ultimate power, the fact that its wording is unnecessary and the placement is irregular may lead to the assumption that it is indeed a reference.
  9. The song "Ninja" by a British band called 7 Seconds of Love, makes references to flipping out.
  10. The English band, 'You Remind Me Of Rasputin' have a song called 'Ninja, Please' which is also the title of one of Hamburgers scripts.
  11. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game released for Xbox Live Arcade has an achievement called "Real Ultimate Power".

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Video

[edit] Audio

  • Radio story on the creation of Real Ultimate Power, its inspirations and the resulting phenomena (including interview with creator Robert Hamburger) on WNYC's Studio 360 (NPR): Link
  • Radio interview with Real Ultimate Power creator Robert Hamburger on The Sound of Young America: MP3 Link
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