posted: 2025-06-01

Humor at Everyone’s Expense - Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja

The funniest thing that can happen in Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja takes place when Izuna steps on a “Tub Trap”. A white porcelain bathing vessel drops on Izuna’s cranium, dealing 100 HP of damage and removing any and all progress you’ve made on the map of the current floor. Izuna gets a concussion because a bathtub gets dropped on her head. Look if that ain’t video games, I don’t know what is. It’s a moment that everyone can find funny, and then brush off. Izuna won’t have any lasting mental damage, she’s an anime character, she’ll be fine. And we, as the player know that the last impact of this trap lasts only as long as we let it bother us. We can all laugh about it together.

Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja (no “The” in there after the colon), is a 2006 Mystery Dungeon-styled dungeon crawler developed by NinjaStudio Limited, and published by ATLUS for the Nintendo DS. Like comparing the Meijer brand “Frosted Shredded Wheat” to the more widely understood “Kellogg’s Mini Wheats Cereal”, Izuna is an ATLUS-brand spin on the Mystery Dungeon formula first brought about by Torneko no Daibouken: Fushigi no Dungeon, modernized by Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, and then later popularized by Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. The loop is like most Mystery Dungeon roguelike games: the player, as Izuna, must progress through procedurally generated mazes in search of the stairs to descend deeper into the dungeon. Should Izuna run out of health (HP), the player will be kicked out of the dungeon, losing all their items in the process. It’s standard roguelike dungeon crawling fare, even if it doesn’t actually champion the “Mystery Dungeon” label. It all tastes the same even if the boxes look a little different ¹, not that I mind- I eat this junk cereal every single morning. And I mean, for Grandboss’s sake, look at those boxes!

At least Izuna has the decency to not use Papyrus as its primary font.

If you, like me, enjoy the Mystery Dungeon gameplay loop, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja is worth a smoke or two. But maybe don’t smoke this one down to the filter. Why? You ever smoked too much and had people laugh at you and be uncertain as to why? And then you start to wonder if people aren’t laughing with you and instead laughing at you? MIzuna.

There’s a sense of unhinged comedy in all facets of Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja- yes, even in its promotional material. If you had a Subscription to Nintendo Power, or any other gaming magazine in the mid-2000s, you may have seen this full page spread.

Beyond the obvious full page Nintendo Power advertisement, have you seen the official promotional trailer from ATLUS?

I mean just look at it.

When was the last time you saw an advertisement for a video game with its protagonist threatening to blast her temples full of buckshot if you don’t buy her game? And an official advetisement at that! And no, you're not allowed to say Persona 3.

I’m particularly partial to the text sliding in on a black background, and fading away as the next text slides in from a different direction. But also, like, look at them inverting the colors on the title screen to keep things interesting! Look at how they stretch and squash the gameplay windows, which feature footage which I’m pretty sure is being presented at a 1.5× playback rate! I love the rotation transition at 1:00 minutes in where you can see the character portrait itself still fading out. And it happens again not even eight seconds later when a second character fades in too soon! In fact, it quite certainly happens every single time there happens to be this mid-2000s PowerPoint transition. I haven’t even mentioned the audio distortion at 1:32. Goodness gracious. I’m like 95% certain I could recreate this promotional trailer within a day or two if I was on a crunchy time limit ².

But I really should be fair to this video. I have to judge it surrounding its contemporaries. Here almost eighteen years later, we’ve got video game promotional trailers down to a science. I don’t mean to bemoan this work; I’m certainly not an advertising professional, let alone one from 2007 working at ATLUS. But wow, they really leaned into the “hot chick” angle in the marketing materials, huh? From the description:

“Finally, a dungeon RPG strong enough for a man but played as a hot chick! Bust out those nunchucks and get back to the old school, hardcore, monster-bashing we all grew up on! See if you have what it takes to conquer the impossible levels and gruesome bosses. After all, does it get any better than the feeling of cold steel at the palm of your hands?”

I love it. It’s stupid. I love it.

Izuna is silly, Let’s Laugh with the Game at Her

Speaking of being stupid, and loving it: Izuna!

jesus christ izuna

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— john videogames (@voltage.neocities.org) April 15, 2025 at 9:45 PM

lord she went and did it

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— john videogames (@voltage.neocities.org) April 15, 2025 at 9:46 PM

Honestly, shout outs to Izuna, the pink-clad boobie Ninja girlie. She’s got spunk, I’ll tell ya that. She’s like what the worst Naruto fan thought Sakura was. She’s got the energy of the worst person you’ve ever met, a la Haruko from FLCL but like, she actually still cares about her found family. She’s a brat in the best way possible. She’s easily role-playable on forums.

Oh and she is NOT into girls. (But do we really believe her?)

I like Izuna! And no, it is not because I have a penchant for crushing on pink-haired anime ladies ³. She’s just a really funny character to embody while playing a Mystery Dungeon-like game. When I think of the Mystery Dungeon Franchise, I’m usually concerned with the moment to moment “trying not to blunder”-ness of each of my actions. I am trying to be strategic and precise in how I choose to move my units, lest I be thrown into the hell that is being surrounded by six monsters after stepping on a Demon Trap. I am not thinking about how “badass” my character is from a distance as a third-party observer, I am role-playing as the character themselves. I think then, it’s especially fun to embody this hot-pink heroine as a subversion of what the “average gamer of 2006” might consider to be a badass ninja. Finally, a dungeon RPG strong enough for a man but played as a hot chick!

Oh god, the marketing actually fucking worked on me.

But I am not ashamed to admit that. I think that it’s fun to hear Izuna’s effort noises when she swings her sword! I find her little whines and “kuso”s really funny! Sure they get old, but, like, I can just turn the volume down on my Ningrundo Double Scream system ⁴. I’m not so invested in the auditory experience of Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja that I feel like I’m missing out on something because I can’t hear the (admittedly quite fun) dungeon music. It’s Mystery Dungeon; the auditory experience isn’t supposed to be cinematic, it’s meant to provide entertainment as you do the same dang thing over and over and over again. So the fact that there’s any other kind of sound besides the whoosing of a sword, or a “blooh” of an enemy attacking my character is a win in my book ⁵.

Still, Izuna remains a great protagonist on a simple rubric. She’s easy to distinguish from other NPCs, she’s got a sharp personality, and having her act out the actions of the player feels believable within the bounds of the course of the gameplay. This last point is especially poignant to me. Sure, she’s kind of an idiot, what with her touching a totally not magical crystal the moment causing it to break the moment she enters a new town and then just assuming that this incident wouldn’t have lasting implications on this village, but she still cares enough to set things right. Or at least, she wants to make sure that her found family of rejected ninjas can at least leave town to find work elsewhere. She cleans up her messes. It makes sense therefore that when we take Izuna into the dungeon and she sets off an abacus trap, which causes her to run full speed until she collides into a wall cutting her health in half in the process, we can laugh, we can laugh at Izuna’s moment of physical comedy. It sure helps too that in the dungeons ⁶ , as Izuna, we are concerned not only with finding the stairs to descend to the subsequent floor, but with finding treasure and money so that we can support ourselves and our community.

The plot isn’t complicated, nor is Izuna, but the premise and writing feel genuine given the circumstances. You could adapt this whole into like a six episode anime OVA, one episode for each of the primary dungeons (more on this later), and no one would really bat an eye, especially when it comes to Izuna’s characterization. She’s a brat, she’s kind of dumb, but she has a good heart, and she’s willing to do what is necessary to fix her mistakes and help those she cares about. I happen to adore this game’s localization actually, Izuna, along with other members of the ensemble, happen to have some really fun ways of talking. It would be one thing if Izuna, in having to choose between some precious gems and her sister, said something to the effect of “I want those gems, but I want my sister Shino back more!”. Literal translations are fine, but they often fail to add that extra charm to a game that I happen to really enjoy. No, Izuna instead says this:

The localization is really fun! I hadn’t entered this game expecting anything out of the writing and was pleasantly surprised when the localization got quirky on me. Why go for a transliteration when you can get a little goofy with it? And since we’re on the subject, here’s my favorite line in the whole game (sadly, not from Izuna, but can you fault me?):

She’s a country bumpkin!

Alright, that’s enough gassing up Izuna (and company).

A Different Spin on Mystery Dungeon

Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja feels like an ATLUS-brand Mystery Dungeon game. While I’ll spare you the intricacies of the Mystery Dungeon process ⁷, let’s just summarize it as follows: navigate procedurally generated mazes to find the stairs. Find the stairs enough times, and then you fight a boss (more on this later). Defeat the boss to progress the threadbare plot, and so on and so forth. If you’ve only experienced the Mystery Dungeon gameplay loop through it’s Pokemon flavored offerings, then this game will be a rude wake up call. This game is not easy ⁸. For one, if you’ve only cared to play Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team as a random example, you may notice that in contrast to your previous two-party member rescue missions, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, only affords you a single unit in a given dungeon. It’s a small difference, but one that has major ramifications about how you might go about navigating each floor.

To mitigate this, you can find equipment- armor and weapons, as well as talismans to bolster your chances at a successful dungeon crawl. The latter effects are especially novel to Izuna, as they can be used in two distinct ways. You can either use them on their own, speding your own MP to activate the innate effect, OR you can attach the Talisman to your equipment. However, if the Talisman’s numerical value is greater than the equipment’s capacity, as denoted by its SP value, the Talisman will cause the piece of equipment to eventually break. The only I reason I knew this though was because I watched the hazel video where she explicitly made it clear that the number corresponded to this value, as the game doesn’t really explain this in its own context. I think the talisman system is pretty cool, but it is hardly explained in a capacity that I’d ever consider “complete”. Then again, the whole system is not something that can be explained within like three text boxes and I’m not a game designer. I just wish that I had understood what it meant to “burn in” a talisman to your gear before I made it to the seventh dungeon.

Other items in the (not-) Mystery Dungeon include pills, which really could have been named with more clarity in mind. An “Awake Pill” does not wake Izuna from an unrestful slumber, but rather “awakens her latent ninja abilities” allowing her to predict the movements of her enemies, thus raising her evasion. Then again, maybe these names can be a bit too literally, for example, the fire pill does exactly what you’d expect: swallow the fire pill and you take 1000 damage ⁹. I must admit I Jason Bateman-Arrested Development-ed when I made Izuna swallow the pill on a whim. “Gee, I wonder what the fire pill does”. I played myself. I should’ve thrown it at an enemy forcing THEM to swallow it. Duh!

As her ninja career requires, to be successful in the (not-)Mystery Dungeon, one must be shrewd. One must understand when to fight enemies head on and from afar. One must understand how to navigate through hallways with precision so as to lose the foe in a dimly lit corridor. One must embrace the shape of the floor and use it to their advantage to conquer their foes. Yes, the Mystery Dungeon formula lends it self well to the stylings of the modern public’s understanding of a cartoonified version of a ninja, with a heavy emphasis on “cartoonified”.

The game seems to relish in subjecting Izuna, and thus you the player, to ridiculous kinds of circumstances, each both humiliating and debilitating. A kappa who has had too much to drink will vomit all over Izuna. She’ll get all sweaty. She won’t want to wear clothes anymore until the status condition wears off. This aversion to the fabric of ones clothes sticking to their skin extends as well to Izuna’s equipped gear! Aaaahhh, now I see what they’re doing here. These status conditions are an attempt to inserts some schadenfreude. We’re laughing at Izuna’s expense (even if her expense is also ours).

The jokes are fun and all until they’re told one too many times. Then they’re not and you might be wishing you were anywhere bit here. Fight enough of those annoying enemies that throw talismans at all your items, or step on a trap that makes you float, thus preventing you from stepping on anything on the floor including the stairs, and you might find Izuna in a precarious pickle. Sure, you could eat a Heavy pill, which itself is a (tasteless) joke centered about Izuna getting fat, but like, why do that when you could instead do something secure? Naturally, the solution is to embrace the secret technique passed down through the ages only the most skilled warriors: retreat. I got plenty of practice in this exercise in tactical maneuver, complete with a chance to practice a Mel Brooks-esque “RETREEEEEEEEEAT!”. It quickly became my custom to bring a Kikan (a dungeon evacuation item / Escape Orb equivalent talisman) on every single journey, maybe even two if I was feeling uncertain. My gameplay loop thus became “enter the dungeon, go as far I could, reach a point where shit was about to hit the fan, and then bail”, ad infinitum broken only upon the rare occurrence where I actually reached the bottom of the dungeon.

At the bottom of the six primary dungeons, each with a monotonically increasing number of floors, waits a God. These Gods ticked off because someone messed with their village’s sacred crystal, and are enacting their punishments on the villlage accordingly. Thus, to make them have a change of heart, you, as Izuna, must beat the tar out of them using your ninja techniques. What struck me about these boss fights is that they actually challenge your mastery of strategic navigation and adaptability. Whereas both the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and original Shiren the Wanderer boss fights take place in a single dedicated arena, the boss fights in Izuna instead take place on another procedurally generated floor. Therefore, in order to defeat the boss, you must first find the boss amongst the other previously encountered foes, and lure the boss into vulnerable positioning wherein you can take advantage of the various room and hallway layouts.

Given that Izuna’s health regenerates with every step, boss fights become exercises in spatial precision. You want to keep the boss far enough from Izuna such that they cannot use their specific powerful attack, and so that Izuna can throw projectiles or lay traps. I found that one of the most important aspects of the boss fights was traversing the entire floor before even thinking about attacking the boss. I needed to know the battlefield before I could use it to my advantage. Once I found a hallway that I could use as a loop to keep the boss in a perpetual state of pursuit, I would have them tail me as I traversed the same path over and over and over again until I had enough HP to get close enough to hack and slash away.

Let me be clear: I am shocked that more Mystery Dungeon games haven’t taken this approach to boss fights. I think about boss fights in, say, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team. Each of the eight primary boss fights in Red Rescue Team’s story mode take place on an open battle field. Perhaps you begin further away from the boss in some boss fights than others, and maybe some of the boss fights have multiple units which can move in a variety of directions, but never does it feel like you’re using the tactical navigation skills you’ve developed over the course of the game. Even in Shiren the Wanderer, the boss fight with the Insect Queen does not require the player to apply their improvisational skills that they had developed over the thirty-floor trek. In Izuna, these boss fights challenge the player to show what they know and adapt to the unpredictable boss blasts that might disintegrate any woefully underprepared and inflexible ninja. These fights rule, dude.

And hey, before fighting the bosses, Izuna sure does try every other solution. Yes, even trying to seduce a God (It does not work). I had a good time. I laughed.

Singularity: The Game is Laughing at You

We can all laugh a good joke at Izuna’s expense, sure. But can we laugh a joke when it’s at our own expense? Lucky for me, I got to experience this grand ol’ thought experiment in real time.

So, after I beat what I thought was the final dungeon, Maze of the Gods, I got bonked on the head with another dungeon: Singularity.

First, allow me to provide you some context. The dungeon “Maze of Gods” really feels like a final dungeon. It’s located in the shrine that you’ve been able to see, but haven’t had access to the entire game. The dungeon is the longest one yet, 20 floors. It’s got enemies of all kinds we’ve seen before all in what I thought was their strongest forms. It’s the last dungeon where you would have to confront a God having all five orbs from the other five Gods. The confrontation with the God at the bottom of this dungeon has a much more involved cutscene than any of the previous bosses. the Boss fight itself has much more intense music during the fight. After the fight there’s a “powers combined” cutscene, and after Izuna leaves the dungeon while hearing the voices of all the people she helped using the Gods’ orbs, a la Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. For all intents and purposes, the story is OVER and we feel very satisfied!

… And then no one can leave the town because there’s one more dungeon at the entrance to the town. And it’s 40 Floors. And it’s a mashup of all the previous dungeons. And the monsters are even stronger than those found in Maze of Gods.

I was level 40 at this point, and I was struggling to even get past the first floor of the dungeon. By the end of this whole affair, I was well beyond level 80.

Like catching a particular mileage on your car's odometer, so too are these moments fleeting.

Every day I spent attempting Singularity went as follows: I would come home, open up my Ningrundo triple double scrouble, check my inventory and gear, and then make my way to the Southwest corner of town to dive into Singularity. I’d scramble through floor after floor, looking for any powerful weapons or gear I might be able to use as an upgrade or secondary article in the event that the game decided it was time for Izuna to step on a few rakes, take all her clothes off and then get a concussion. And when the game until the game decided that it was time for this comedy routine some twenty minutes and seven floors deep, I would nope the heck outta there. By this point, my fiancée ¹⁰ would have made it home, meaning that it was time to give her all the love and attention she deserved; Singularity wasn’t going anywhere.

In time, I decided to search for any Action Replay codes for this final dungeon. I couldn’t find any experience multipliers, but I did find a code that gave me the maximum HP value, boosting me from roughly 3500 to 9999 HP. This only made the descent into Singularity marginally more manageable. I could go maybe a hand’s worth of floors deeper per run before once again bailing.

Still I persisted through this obnoxious time sink. After another week of attempts, I eventually made it to the fortieth floor, and found the boss… Grandboss…. The boss fight took but a single attempt, and when I returned to the town, I was met with a muted appreciation. The “yeah nice job, we’re proud of you Izuna” sentiment was undermined by the fact that nothing really changed. It was at that moment I realized that I probably wasn’t going to get any kind of credits roll, or any kind of meaningful closure for that matter. All my efforts digging deeper and deeper into Singularity were rewarded with the internal satisfaction of knowing I did it (with Action Replay codes). It all felt like some sick joke.

I just have to ask, “why?”. I mean, “oh woe is me, I have to play more of a game I’m enjoying”, but like, is fighting like 3-8 enemies on the first floor of a dungeon and then bailing using a Kikan really that fun? I don’t really think so. The loop gets so tight that it starts to hurt my hips as I begin to make sharper and sharper turns inward ¹¹. I would absolutely not recommend you do what I did. I would not recommend you try to beat this dungeon unless you’re trapped in a nuclear fallout bunker and Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja happens to be the only video game left at your disposal. Maybe then you can find some humor at the notion that the game is explicitly ramping up the “bullshit” perhaps for its own amusement. Maybe you’ll even start to think the computer is really sentient, who knows.

I have to assume that I got to the end of the game, or at least played the game to the state at which one might consider a game “beaten”. The townsfolk all congratulated and thanked Izuna. Izuna’s ninja clan all said really positive things about her. By all measures of a conclusion of a narrative arc, this game had run its course. It had crossed the finish line like 40 levels ago when I beat “Maze of Gods”.

Again, the credits never rolled! Sorry, I just need you all to know that it took me a while to get over this. They never rolled even when I cleared either Maze of the Gods or Singularity. Maybe I missed a final final; dungeon that actually would incite a credits scroll, but like, I’ve got better things to do with my time. Maybe that’s why we know nothing about who actually made this game- no one bothered to get to the punchline. Still, I want to find the humor in all of this, and I don’t think the development team at Ninja Studios had direct malice in their hearts when they made this game. So after being really frustrated by a joke for too long, I decided to let it roll off my back. I’m not so uptight that I can’t laugh at myself, even if in the moment I was frustrated. They got me good.

Wrap it Up!

Should you play this game? If you enjoy Mystery Dungeon games for their gameplay, yes definitely. If you like the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Games for their story, then maybe not. If you’re interested in a quirky anime RPG from ATLUS with a unique gameplay loop you could do a lot worse! If you’re a freak who enjoys having a primary entertainment screen close to your face with a second screen in the background, this game works pretty darn well for that. And it’s not like this game is hard to source if you know what you’re doing, not that I’m going to send you my copy of the game anytime soon.

The game is a funny experience, and I’m ultimately glad I played it. It’s a game that finds humor at everyone’s expense, an equal opportunity humor minefield. You’re allowed to laugh at Izuna crashing into a wall, so long as you can find humor in being thrown into unfair gameplay disadvantages at random. That isn’t to say that this game isn’t one that requires skill; rather Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja requires you to have a sense of humor and the ability to laugh at yourself every so often. It’s a video game! You’re playing as a bratty little ninja with a heart of gold! This isn’t Xenogears dude, it’s a fun little romp through a game that never takes itself too seriously. And if you’re having a fun time while playing a game, who really cares if it’s not “high literature”? Smoke this one long enough to get giggly, but stop before you start getting those paranoid thoughts in your head even if you’ll ultimately forget them all in the morning.

Footnotes- As is the Norm.

This analogy was originally about Trader Joe's Brand Mac&Cheese, but it broke down once as your dutiful gamer regrets to inform his readers that he does not and has not cared for this kind of meal since he was twelve years old. He does however still enjoy a good romp through Mystery Dungeon on a regular basis, something he has enjoyed from the age of twelve up to present day. ↩︎
I want to put out a call to any and all readers who happen to be amateur (or pro!) video editors: make a promotional trailer for your favorite game in the style of this Izuna one, flaws and all. I'd love to see it.↩︎
But this doesn’t help me beat the allegations. Ah well.↩︎
something something tyler the creator cyberbullying tweet↩︎
how do you even describe the onomotopiea of the standard attack noise from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team?↩︎
which technically aren’t “Mystery Dungeons”, but for the sake of this writing, you can essentially link these dungeons with their procedurally generated maze floors to be the dungeons all the same.↩︎
for now↩︎
Or at least not as easy as the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon franchise is in a general sense. I won’t lie, this Izuna game wasn’t hard by any stretch compared to some other mystery dungeon games, but it’s a step up. It’s about as hard as some of the late-story mode dungeons in the PMD franchise.↩︎
an accurate representation of what happens when you “take the red pill”.↩︎
now wife!↩︎
this is a running metaphor, don’t worry about it if it doesn’t make sense to you↩︎