Unlike the original, the bad ninja movie English is mostly gone. But like the original, Iron Ninja Burger Monkey is divided into employee and manager sections. Both introduce new rules.
The employee section of the book starts with character advancement rules. It turns out that each ninja clan from the original Ninja Burger has an area of expertise in business management. Each business area has a traditional clan goal, the completion of which during a delivery allows the ninja to regain one lost point of honor.
Regaining honor is of course good, but there are also employee perks. The more deliveries you complete, the more perks you get. You might get a personal day, an employee discount, health insurance, or even a gold watch. Complete enough missions and you get promoted.
Each perk has a game effect. A personal day restores either KI or HITS, ninja's choice. Training allows mastery of a new skill. Promotion moves the ninja from delivery to management. Time for a new ninja to start delivering for Ninja Burger!
The phrasing of the perk rules presents an interesting complication not normally found in an RPG. Points lost on a delivery aren't automatically restored before the next one. It doesn't matter what types of points were lost. Use a few points of KI or lose some HITS on a delivery, and you don't get them back without taking a personal day.
Given the already high mortality rate of delivery ninja, I don't think this was necessary. It short-changes survivors in favor of new characters. Sure, if a ninja survives enough deliveries, his chance of survival goes up as well, but the initial perks are not enough. At least until the health insurance kicks in.
After the character advancement rules come the time travel rules. That's right. Ninja are actually the Masters of the Space-Time Continuum. Of course they use this power only for good, by traveling into the past to preserve the ancestors of their customers, and by delivering bags of tasty Ninja Burger to the peasants. Thus does the taste of Ninja Burger pass into legend, until as foretold it becomes available again.
Remember the gold watch? It's not just a timepiece. It actually allows the ninja wearing it to stop time once per delivery.
With the need for secrecy no lesser in the past than in the present, delivery ninja must carry gear that does not arouse suspicion. To this end, Iron Ninja Burger Monkey supplies new tables of ninja weapons and assorted equipment, all meant to be innocuous in the past. But be careful of the comb. There's a young woman with a green Tai Chi sword who wants it back.
There are also four new ninja magic abilities. Except for the Endless Queue Kata, which forces people to queue up single file, they all appear to have been lifted from Chinese wu xia movies. Hmmm.
A new Ninja Burger sourcebook calls for new house rules. Yet another movie reference comes in here, with Bill-San and Ted-San's Excellent Adventure Rule. This allows you to "find" equipment you'll leave for yourself later. And in keeping with the Snake Eyes rule from the first book, the promised Storm Shadow rule appears, allowing you to change clans by declaring a vendetta against any other character.
The references fly fast and furious in the Ancient Dishonorable Disgrace chart. If you are severely dishonored during the delivery, you might get a warning issued by a time cop. Or you might get crushed by a falling telephone booth, beaten with a super-sonic screwdriver (sic), or even make a quantum hop.
At this point the pop culture references become more fun to read than they would be to play. Some of them might not even make sense to a younger crowd, such as the silver car that appears out of nowhere. Ninja Burger is intended to be humorous, but nothing is less funny than the phrase, "I don't get it." And pop culture reference is not automatically funny, even when everyone gets the joke.
The manager section is both very brief and more than half the book. There are only two pages of new rules, all of them dealing with new ninja enemies. There are new modern enemies, belonging to a single fast food competitor. There are ancient enemies, the functionaries and warriors of a bygone era.
And then there's the adventure. Most of the manager section deals with an attempt by Kung-Pow Fried Chicken to assassinate a street vendor in the past. Ninja Burger employees must thwart the assassination, while delivering tasty Ninja Burger to select people.
This may be the best Ninja Burger delivery available anywhere. There's the usual secret delivery, but there's also infiltration. Success is not automatically measured in body count. And the ninja may run afoul of the legendary Iron Ninja or his assistant, the Burger Monkey. It's actually quite complex and layered, with plenty of opportunity for ninja humor. Iron Ninja Burger Monkey is worth the price just for this alone.
Art-wise, it's mostly doodles on the occasional page. They're not good, but they are clear enough. The cover and interior pieces by Abby Perry are very nice, though. I missed the ninja comic strips from the original.
