Hey, you kids love ninjas, right? Sure you do! What anime fan doesn't have an obnoxiously inordinate amount of love for ninjas? You dress up as them at anime conventions, you buy every ninja game you can get your hands on, watch every ninja show, including ones that only exist in your dreams, and like to run around in public pretending you have magical ninja abilities, much to the embarrassment of your entire family tree. Now that we've established how much you love ninjas, get ready for the next step in your personal ninja-volution: ninjas who cry!

That's right, they're finally here: ninjas who understand you like no one else can! (Especially that guy who keeps sticking your head in the toilet at lunch and flushing. That's borderline waterboarding there, fella!) These ninjas like to listen to Dashboard Confessional and hate their dads. All of them. Welcome to the world of Nabari no Ou, domain of the angst-ninjas.

Nabari no Ou focuses on Miharu Rokujo, a young apathetic boy, who'd probably think Final Fantasy VII was the greatest video game ever made, if he weren't too busy not caring to get a hobby. To Miharu, there's nothing more satisfying than moping around. But for some reason one of his classmates and one of his teachers, Koichi and Kumohira, respectively, just won't leave him alone about their ninja club. Oh to be young, pretty, and completely unlikable as a character and yet somehow slightly popular!

Of course, it turns out they had their own agenda, and that Mr. I Don't Care About Anything is the container for the Shinra-Bansho, a super-powerful secret shinobi art with the power to potentially save or destroy the world. (And in particular, the power to halfway activate in the first episode and suddenly become ultra-dormant, so people can spend lots of time talking about it, instead of showing what it's capable of with no plausible explanation after the ease of provoking its initial emergence.) Ninja created it back in the warring states period, and then decided to seal away because its creation wasn't such a good idea after all.

With no other choice, Mopey-Pants is dragged headfirst into the world of Nabari - the world in which ninja exist and operate and everybody is inexplicably pretty and not very interesting. It's every teenager's fantasy, waking up to find they have super special new powers that no one else does, e.g. "You're the One, Neo," and enjoying the luxury of pissing everyone else off by not caring. It's so hard being fourteen! Girls might look at you, and stuff. Good thing there's bad guys to help with that issue.

Enter the Kairoshu, a rogue group of slightly more interesting former Iga ninja bent on using the Shinra-Bansho to further their own interests in transforming the world into a better place, as opposed to the Banten and Fuma groups aligned with Miharu, who intend to find a way to strip the Shinra-Bansho from him and destroy it. Oh, the perils of idealism! Good thing they've got their own wristcutter carbon copy of Miharu to draw his sympathy in Yoite, a tall kid with a funny hat who points at people and makes them die. The kicker? Doing this makes him die a little bit inside, too. Various ninja clan rivalry subplots play out as these two grow closer, crawling in their skin with lots of undertones to make the slash fanfiction community cream their collective pants.

The first half of the series revolves around a handful of mostly-rushed story arcs, where they introduce the Banten and Kairoshu factions, establish the rules of the Nabari world and relationships between the ninja clans, and find every excuse they can to make every other character wallow in their own self-hatred and anxiety. There's also something in there about sealing away immense power or using it to save the world, and occasional talk about making Miharu into the titular "Nabari king," whether that meant his using or losing the Shinra-Bansho. But let's be honest: nobody really cares about that or believes for half a second that this walking Squaresoft trope has it in him to become the king of anything. He's too busy feeling sorry for himself even though he's soooo special!

Nabari no Ou is my third action show in a row. I'd almost say I'm cursed, if not for that Kaze no Stigma was actually pretty fun. While not quite as offensive as Ikki Tousen, Nabari Ou isn't anything good. Where in Ikki Tousen, we followed a bunch of superpowered busty girls around who were constantly getting their clothing torn off and rape and sexual abuse imagery and themes hung over everything, Nabari no Ou is more interested in a different kind of objectification. By design, the cast is more or less a wet dream for the slash fanfiction and doujinshi community, with little female presence to get in the way. With little development or personality, the show is largely centered on a cast of young pretty boys who all affect a variety of trendy looks and sport perfectly messy hair at all times (that never shifts from its carefully-styled disarray). The few female characters are written to be non-threatening to potential pairings, most of them being little more than part of the background scenery, with the exception of the token tough girl. You've got to have someone there to work out her screwed-up relationship with her pretty-boy older brother who kinda murdered their family, though they could've written her as a little brother instead. Oh, the missed opportunities!

The art direction in Nabari no Ou is decent enough. The backgrounds tend to have an attractive aesthetic going for them, and the overall appearance and animation of the characters aren't too bad, either. There's an appreciable use of color in this show, amounting to something that isn't offensive to the eyes. That said, the character designs leave plenty of room for criticism. Every character without exception has the exact same basic body - they're either all tall and gangly or eventually going to be, and not in the Mohiro Kitoh sense. The entire cast could stand to eat a sandwich or twenty, and the closest you'll see to the expected ninja outfit are Kairoshu grunts wearing ski masks in the earlier episodes and the occasional kimono. There is no everyman - only a boatload of pretty, feminine men with some ambiguously close friendships, and the occasional woman. Though at least amongst the Kairoshu — who make up the better side of the cast — there's more variety.

As for the show's music, we get an opening all about rebellious teenage apathy. (Yes, including a chorus where "I don't care!" is sung in English, repeatedly.) The closing is, rather predictably, an angsty ballad about the search for love. And the background music, while not terrible for what it is, feels completely out of place in a ninja action show, and is better suited to some sort of gothic shoujo series — once again focusing on feminine gentlemen over actual ladies.

Still, we can't forget that underneath everything else, this is an action show. As a ninja series, the action's gotta be badass, right? Lots of teleportation-like movement, ultrafast attacks, and bloody death. Don't worry, there is some of that in Nabari no Ou. The show starts off with a deceptive amount of violence earlier on, and the action that's there is actually satisfying in its swiftness and brutality. Unfortunately, as you get farther into the show, these scenes are fewer and father between. Instead, you get more of Yoite threateningly pointing his finger at people. Oh no, don't kill me by pointing at me!

Technically, Nabari no Ou attempts to sprinkle a little bit of humor in here and there to offset the heavy amounts of angst. I say 'technically' because the show's "humor" amounts to no more than a few awkward character quirks, and "Look at Miharu manipulate people with his looks! You can tell he's being mischievous because he's suddenly got bat wings! Ain't he a stinker?" No, he is not. This is awful. These attempts at humor presume that the audience has been charmed by this aggravatingly self absorbed whiny teenager. You'd have to be 14 or 15 to find this character appealing.

Remember what it was like back when brooding teenage angst seemed like a cool-guy kinda thing? You were wrong, then — dead wrong. As Nabari no Ou celebrates just this kind of attitude, it's a pretty damn bad show. So far, it has been nothing but a chore to watch, and I can't say that I'm looking forward to seeing how they ruin in the second half the only character or two I don't hate.