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. Download high resolution version (1003x641, 103 KB)Real Ultimate Power This is a screenshot of a copyrighted website, video game graphic, computer program graphic, television broadcast, or film. ... Download high resolution version (1003x641, 103 KB)Real Ultimate Power This is a screenshot of a copyrighted website, video game graphic, computer program graphic, television broadcast, or film. ... A website (or Web site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. ... This article refers to Japanese spies and assassins known as Ninja. For other uses, see Ninja (disambiguation) This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Hate mail (as electronic, postal, or otherwise) is a form of harassment, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient. ... Parody of Back to the Future In contemporary usage, a parody is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... Pirates versus Ninja or vice versa refers to a joke about a supposed debate in various internet subcultures. ...

"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. Subclasses Allotheria* Order Multituberculata (extinct) Order Volaticotheria (extinct) Order Palaeoryctoides (extinct) Order Triconodonta (extinct) Prototheria Order Monotremata Theria Infraclass Marsupialia Infraclass Eutheria The mammals are the class of vertebrate animals characterized by the production of milk in females for the nourishment of young, from mammary glands present on most species... Hate mail (as electronic, postal, or otherwise) is a form of harassment, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient. ...

Other contents include 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 usually, they generate even more hatemail towards the site. Look up humor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Look up pirate and piracy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

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. A sepia-toned photograph taken in England in 1895 U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945 Peter Leibings photograph of Conrad Schumann leaping over barbed wire into West Berlin on August 15, 1961 Buzz Aldrin salutes the US flag on the surface of the... Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a users digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others (whether publicly or privately). ...

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. Hate mail (as electronic, postal, or otherwise) is a form of harassment, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient. ... Soke is a Japanese title that means Headmaster (or sometimes translated as Grand Master or Head of the Family). It can mean one who is the leader of any school or the master of a style, but it is most commonly used as a highest level Japanese martial arts title... DAntonio David or Soke Fujita is an American Ninjutsu[] martial artist and instructor, who owns and operates the Bufukan Ninpo Dojo located in Audubon, Pennsylvania. ...

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. DAntonio David or Soke Fujita is an American Ninjutsu[] martial artist and instructor, who owns and operates the Bufukan Ninpo Dojo located in Audubon, Pennsylvania. ...

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 or Britney Spears, which change very little of the original text and pictures but still yield a powerful comic effect are further proof of the point. Binomial name Hippopotamus amphibius Linnaeus, 1758 The hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), from the Greek ‘ιπποπόταμος (hippopotamos, hippos meaning horse and potamos meaning river), is a large, mostly plant-eating African mammal, one of only two extant, and three or four recently extinct, species in the family Hippopotamidae. ... Nonsense is an utterance or written text in what appears to be a human language or other symbolic system, that does not in fact carry any identifiable meaning. ... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the 43rd and current President of the United States, inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ...

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. July 1 is the 182nd day of the year (183rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 183 days remaining. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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: Amazon. ...

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

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.

Battlefield 1942 is an expansive first-person shooter (FPS), set in World War II, developed by Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows (2002) and Apple Macintosh (2004). ... Pirates versus Ninja or vice versa refers to a joke about a supposed debate in various internet subcultures. ... Fan fiction (also spelled fanfiction and commonly abbreviated to fanfic) is fiction written by people who enjoy a film, novel, television show or other media work, using the characters and situations developed in it and developing new plots in which to use these characters. ... Naruto ) is a manga by Masashi Kishimoto with an anime TV series adaptation about a loud, hyperactive adolescent ninja, Uzumaki Naruto, who constantly searches for approval and recognition. ... Serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump Shonen Jump BANZAI! Original run August 4, 1997 – (ongoing) No. ... An image from World of Warcraft, one of the largest commercial MMORPGs as of 2006, based on active subscriptions. ... World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ... Cover of the May 1994 issue. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Final Fantasy IV ) is a console role-playing game developed and published by Square Co. ... The Ninja Burger logo. ... Nintendo Power magazine is a monthly American news and strategy magazine from Nintendo. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Onmyōji (陰陽師, lit. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ...

See also

• Internet phenomenon

This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

External links

• Real Ultimate Power website
• The Official Real Ultimate Power Parody Directory Web page
• An interview done with the author of RUP by The College Hill Independent, a college newspaper at Brown University

Brown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island. ...

Video

• Ninja Jeopardy! A Flash cartoon of Jeopardy!, inspired by Real Ultimate Power
• Holy Shit! Ninjas!!!! A music video inspired by Real Ultimate Power.

Jeopardy! is a popular international television quiz game show, originally devised by Merv Griffin, who also created Wheel of Fortune. ...

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