# ?



## Hudson69 (Jul 23, 2010)

I am not going to say anything: http://www.warriorquest.com/

?


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## Bruno@MT (Jul 23, 2010)

Well, I just had a look at their website.
While I think that for actual ninjutsu / ninpo in a historically accurate semblance you need the X kans, this warrior quest international has a couple of saving graces.

They don't claim a historical lineage afaict, they give a reasonable answer to the MMA vs ninja question, and they admit that they don't have a conclusive answer to questions as '_is dim mak real'_ or '_did ninja use the ninja-to'_.

While I think that their ninja claims are overrated and not based on authentic ninjutsu, and while I think that their curriculum seems very much like the hollywood / childhood fantasy interpretation of ninjutsu, at least they are honest about not having an authentic lineage. So imo that puts them way ahead of people who claim authenticity and demand your faith without being able to prove anything.


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## WQI Yama Kuma (Jul 23, 2010)

I trained with this group for far too long and can tell you that they are great if you want to learn movie fighting but not ninjutsu/Ninpo.

The teacher Mark Grove, goes by the title of "Jonin", and while he doesn't make a claim on the website about it being authentic, he does make that claim regularly during class while at the same time saying negative things about the X-Kans.

Grove's actual training is in Hakkoryu Jujutsu and then he added movie-style fighting techniques, some high kicks (TKD origin, maybe), some crazy acrobatics, and a ton of Chinese weapon skills.

The school has an overall cult element to it and really attracts people who want to believe that they are ninja.


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## Xue Sheng (Jul 23, 2010)

Not knowing much about ninjutsu I should probably not post anything but looking at that website I would venture a guess that based on the Fall Camp - Mysticism I would also say a bit of Naruto and based on a few pictures I would also say a bit of X-Men (Wolverine)


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## Tanaka (Jul 23, 2010)

WQI Yama Kuma said:


> I trained with this group for far too long and can tell you that they are great if you want to learn movie fighting but not ninjutsu/Ninpo.
> 
> The teacher Mark Grove, goes by the title of "Jonin", and while he doesn't make a claim on the website about it being authentic, he does make that claim regularly during class while at the same time saying negative things about the X-Kans.
> 
> ...



At least hes creative.
I saw his videos and he has some creative choreographed fighting scenes.


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## Tez3 (Jul 23, 2010)

Xue Sheng said:


> Not knowing much about ninjutsu I should probably not post anything but looking at that website I would venture a guess that based on the Fall Camp - Mysticism I would also say a bit of Naruto and based on a few pictures I would also say a bit of X-Men (Wolverine)


 

Oooo Wolverine is sexy! Where do I join up? I'm good at mysticism too, I can outmystic loads of people. 
I was at a seminar once where there were Ninjas, they had home made uniforms and home made rope sandals, their techniques were iffy to say the least, the trouble is because they were really nice sincere people we didn't point out to them or even try to resist what they were teaching so I suppose we contributed to their belief that these techniques worked.One was that before we could attack them they would have unrolled this piece of wire they keep on them and would have stabbed us in the femoral artery with it so we would bleed to death before hitting them. They kept apologising for going heavy on us and tbh our kids do the techniques harder but as I said they were very polite and very humble believe it or not, such a shame, we really liked them even if they were odd.


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## Brian R. VanCise (Jul 23, 2010)

They are not a part of the Bujinkan.  He does his own thing from what I understand!


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## ElfTengu (Jul 24, 2010)

WQI Yama Kuma said:


> I trained with this group for far too long .......................................and really attracts people who want to believe that they are ninja.


 
I'm glad you grew out of it!  

Seriously though, just look at them, no apparent background in any real martial arts whatoever. Martial arts are about life and [avoiding] death, and these kind of people really should not be getting involved with such a grave and somber subject.


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## Kajowaraku (Jul 24, 2010)

There's one of these in every country I suppose. And it's only natural in our day and age. True martial arts are by nature reserved for those enduring enough to go through years of training. That means you hardly get to do the "spectacular" stuff from day one, and that also means you don't advertise yourself with those superficialities, unless of course you wish to attract a certain crowd of followers. Note how they don't present themselves as a dojo or club, but as a "clan". Clan implies unrefutable and unescapable ties of kinship, but in contrast to the more harmonious sounding "family" it also implies the absolute authority of the clanleader, or jonin as said person here calls himself (and that too happens more that I care to think). Such groups seems to exist almost exclusively for the glorification of one "charismatic" leader, and as we see here too, he will also prefer to display himself in a "cool" or "impressive" fashion, like the wolverinesetup or all the other "behold-my-impressive-tats-no-kamae". There's an audience for it though, perhaps even more so than for traditional martial arts, probably to compensate for one or two things.

I for one will be getting cool tattoos and am looking fervently for a set of wolverineclaws. I hear chicks dig that in a man .


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## ElfTengu (Jul 24, 2010)

Kajowaraku said:


> I for one will be getting cool tattoos and am looking fervently for a set of wolverineclaws. I hear chicks dig that in a man .


 
I must admit that when I was younger (about two decades younger) I did believe that the fairer sex would be bowled over by my martial escapades, but true to my self and my gender I have continued to train even though I am now fully aware that it bores the knickers off 99.9% of females. 

I should have become a cage fighter, chicks definitely dig cage fighters! 

vacuous ones anyhow.


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## Tanaka (Jul 24, 2010)

ElfTengu said:


> I must admit that when I was younger (about two decades younger) I did believe that the fairer sex would be bowled over by my martial escapades, but true to my self and my gender I have continued to train even though I am now fully aware that it bores the knickers off 99.9% of females.
> 
> I should have become a cage fighter, chicks definitely dig cage fighters!
> 
> vacuous ones anyhow.



Well that's weird. I find women who do martial arts as a +1 in hott.
On a second note,
I noticed that they all have Japanese nicknames... On the page where it introduces all the instructors. If you hover over the picture to get the URL. You'll see their nicknames in the picture URL.


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## Bruno@MT (Jul 24, 2010)

WQI Yama Kuma said:


> The teacher Mark Grove, goes by the title of "Jonin", and *while he doesn't make a claim on the website about it being authentic, he does make that claim regularly during class while at the same time saying negative things about the X-Kans.*
> 
> Grove's actual training is in Hakkoryu Jujutsu and then he added movie-style fighting techniques, some high kicks (TKD origin, maybe), some crazy acrobatics, and a ton of Chinese weapon skills.
> 
> The school has an overall cult element to it and really attracts people who want to believe that they are ninja.



Thanks. I'll have to revise my opinion then. I suppose he keeps his website sanitized to prevent people from calling him out on his claims.


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## Cryozombie (Jul 24, 2010)

*edit*

Nevermind, I was wrong.


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## girlbug2 (Jul 24, 2010)

My favorite page explains the art of the female ninja: who never wastes time or energy in combative situations, but instead "uses her outward appearance and conditioned emotional responses to manipulate those who would cause her harm"

LOL what century is this again???


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## cypher (Jul 24, 2010)

ElfTengu said:


> I must admit that when I was younger (about two decades younger) I did believe that the fairer sex would be bowled over by my martial escapades, but true to my self and my gender I have continued to train even though I am now fully aware that it bores the knickers off 99.9% of females.
> 
> I should have become a cage fighter, chicks definitely dig cage fighters!
> 
> vacuous ones anyhow.




Hang on here....wouldn't "boring the knickers off 99.9% of females be a MUCH sought after technique? Think about it for just a moment...


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## jks9199 (Jul 24, 2010)

LARP.

That's all I have to say.

Maybe the actual classes are better and more in tune with legitimate ninjutsu training... but I doubt it.


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## Bruno@MT (Jul 25, 2010)

girlbug2 said:


> My favorite page explains the art of the female ninja: who never wastes time or energy in combative situations, but instead "uses her outward appearance and conditioned emotional responses to manipulate those who would cause her harm"
> 
> LOL what century is this again???



Actually, that concept has some historical merit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunoichi

I was told that female ninja also had several methods for 'accidentally' making their kimono fall open so that a male opponent was momentarily distracted which allowed them to stab them or do other things.


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## ElfTengu (Jul 25, 2010)

cypher said:


> Hang on here....wouldn't "boring the knickers off 99.9% of females be a MUCH sought after technique? Think about it for just a moment...


 
I have thought about it, but am slightly worried that should said undergarments separate themselves from their wearer that the young lady in question might simply be utilising (to quote GirlBug2): "her outward appearance and conditioned emotional responses to manipulate those who would cause her harm". 

Although amorous advances should not fall under the category of 'harm' if a mutually satisfactory consensual outcome is desired.

Oh no, I just realised that females might be reading this and that I may have bored their........etc etc.:uhohh::lol:


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## Hayseed (Jul 26, 2010)

I think I saw a History channel program about Ninjas with MSG(no added) as the "Ninja Expert".  IIRC, there was a thread on E-budo about him, and I think I remember something about him offering a course of "Movie Fighting/Choreography" at the time...


A couple things about the menu icons...

1.  Next to "Advanced Modules", it appears to be a mock up from one of the Lin Kuei from Mortal Kombat.

2.  Next to "Student Testimonials", I think this is from a picture of a BJK practitioner.  I can't seem to find the photo now, but I'm 100% sure that I've seen that picture/pose before.

3.  Next to "Class Schedule", Isn't this from the San Diego BJK's old "Bujintech" website logo?


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## Muawijhe (Jul 26, 2010)

The methodology of this website smells like the same fertilizer Ashida Kim uses to grow whatever it is he grows. Modernized and a bit slicker in presentation than Kim's, it still has a very (scarily) similar approach to it.

Also, he may not claim any historical lineage, but that leaves two problems. 1) No lineage, not ninjutsu. 2) Where was he taught these secret ninja things that were dropped because they didn't fit in a modern world? And more importantly, where did he learn any of his 'ninjutsu'?

If a website like this came about with a direct heading of, "Come here to learn to be a ninja on film or in the woods for your next KANAR game!" I think that'd be pretty cool. At least they'd be honest about it, and heck, I'd probably sign up for some stage(d) ninjery.

(oh, and welcome to Martial Talk, Hayseed!)


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## Muawijhe (Jul 26, 2010)

I was just reading through the website. Lots of interesting things there to read, though I am still missing the connection to ninja outside of the media and slight historical context.

However, I did see that Jonin Mark Steven Grove "graced the cover of the second issue of "Shinobi No Mono" magazine", of which there is a picture. Just to the left of the picture is what appears to be pictures of other articles, one featuring Anshu Christa Jacobsen and the other being of Kyoshi Allie Alberigo of 21st Century Ninjutsu fame (and the topic of a heated thread not too long ago at Martial Arts Planet).


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## WQI Yama Kuma (Jul 26, 2010)

Some quick notes-

1. The Japanese nick names. So when someone reached brown belt in Grove's system he gives them a "warrior name" which he says is a Japanese tradition. Having trained in two other Japanese styles, I've heard mixed things if this is a true tradition or not.

In Grove's school, once you get this name that is all anyone refers to you by. I was one of the assistant teachers at his school for a while and when I see old students/class mates they still refer to me by that name instead of my real name. I figured it's a control measure, since it helps with the illusion that Grove is the head of some super-secret ninja group.

One of the big problems with this is that Grove, or I'm pretty sure any of his students, actually speak Japanese. So they use an English to Japanese dictionary to get the names. 

2. The sanitized website. Grove's website has undergone many, many transformations. When I first started at the school it was called the "Bugeikuden" and Don Roley ripped into Grove over on e-budo. At the time I was still a close "follower" of Grove so joined up trying to defend Grove and his teachings. It was actually that discussion that started me thinking that maybe Grove wasn't telling the truth.

3. The kunoichi thing. When I started, the school had two divisions-Samurai and Ninja. The Samurai focused on sword work and wore white, the Ninja focused on unarmed and wore black. Writing this now I have to say I'm embarrassed it took me ten years to leave.

Anyway, I walked in one day and there was a new division-Kunoichi. They got to wear bright blue gis. And they were trained in twin short swords. I would like to add that this division was created right around the same time that the Tengu video game came out, which featured a female ninja who used twin short swords.

Overall, there is some solid techniques in Grove's system. When I moved to an X-Kan based system, I was able to move up some of the ranks faster than people I started with. Now that I am training in Krav Maga I find myself still using some of the basics I learned at Grove's school. But, and this is the big problem with his system, he doesn't understand some of the finer points of techniques. While I learned Oni Kudaki under him, it wasn't until I trained at legitimate ninpo school that things like body dynamics and footwork were emphasized and the move became effective.

I feel like any ex-convert. When I was with the school I defended it, even against my best judgment. Now that I am no longer with them I try to dissuade anybody from ever training with him. While he is mostly harmless, I would rather see people train with legitimate groups that don't have the fantasy element to them.


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## girlbug2 (Jul 30, 2010)

Bruno@MT said:


> Actually, that concept has some historical merit.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunoichi
> 
> I was told that female ninja also had several methods for 'accidentally' making their kimono fall open so that a male opponent was momentarily distracted which allowed them to stab them or do other things.


 

Ah yes, the old kimono trick. I keep forgetting how easily I could win sparring matches...


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