Before Crunchyroll, before Toonami had a Saturday block, there was the Ninja Scroll DVD that got passed around like contraband. Jubei, Kagero, the eight Devils of Kimon, the stone guy. It was the first anime a lot of us saw that was unmistakably for adults, and it has been sampled, referenced and ripped off by rappers and producers for thirty years. On Wednesday, September 9, HIDIVE put tickets on sale for a 4K theatrical run. Anime Corner got an exclusive still.
The dates
Three nights in roughly 600 theaters across the US and Canada, presented by HIDIVE and Iconic Events Releasing. October 4 is the subtitled screening. October 5 is the English dub. October 7 is an encore, format depending on the theater. Tickets are live at Iconic Releasing and participating box offices. Anime.com has the full breakdown.
The restoration
This isn't an upscale. Sentai produced a 4K scan of the original 35mm negative at 3840 by 2160, then did frame-by-frame damage repair and color correction into a new archival master. Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who wrote and directed the film at Madhouse in 1993, supervised it himself. For a film that has spent three decades looking like a VHS rip on every platform that carried it, that's the difference between a rerelease and a resurrection.

Why this one is ours
Ninja Scroll belongs to the same late-night pipeline as Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Fist of the North Star, the films that reached Black neighborhoods through video stores, bootlegs and older cousins long before anime was a mainstream word. The Wu-Tang generation built a whole aesthetic on this stuff. Kawajiri's film, with its swordsman-for-hire and its body-horror villains, is as close to a kung-fu flick as anime gets, which is exactly why it landed with the audience that already had The 36th Chamber memorized.
Seeing it on a screen bigger than a tube TV, restored by the man who made it, is a first for almost everyone who loves it. The dub night is the nostalgia night. The sub night is the one for the people who know the ending and want to hear Kagero's last line the way it was written.
## Sources - Ninja Scroll 4K Remaster Sets October 4, 5 and 7 North American Theatrical Release — Anime Corner (@animecorner_ac), Sept. 9, 2026 - Ninja Scroll 4K in North American Theaters This October — Anime.com, Sept. 2026 - Tickets on sale — @HIDIVEofficial, Sept. 9, 2026 - Ninja Scroll | 4K Restoration Trailer — HIDIVE, 2026

