TFA Pics of Sidecar/Samurai Prowl, Waspinator and Cybertron Red Alert repaint

[GoktimusPrime]

To be honest, I don't know if real ninja had armour or not, but the Tenchu series of Ninja games had some "Ninja Armour" that could be equipped, and it looked like a lighter version of samurai armour, so maybe there was armour...

But yeah, Gok can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure ninjas are all about stealth, which is why they are always wearing single colour (usually black for camouflage, I guess), light, and mostly silent outfits. Whereas samurai are you soldier kind of deal, whom are fighting one on one with swords mostly, so they would definitely need armour

Ninja were basically guerilla fighters/assassins from peasant stock. Part of the reason why they rely so heavily on stealth, deception and the element of surprise is because your average peasant guerilla doesn't have the skill to attack a samurai in a head on fight, let alone a team of samurai. The ninja, being primarily Shinto, were also considered Pagans by the Buddhist Samurai so there was also a significant religious conflict between ninja and Samurai.

For those who don't know, the Samurai on the other hand are entirely different from ninja. They are a warrior class - born and bred through generations of Samurai families. As the movie "The Last Samurai" put it, "their sole pre-occupation for the past 1000 years has been warfare." (or words to that effect) The Samurai are also deeply bound to a strict code of honour known as Bushido (Way of the Warrior). Ninja on the other hand are without honour - hence why they can sneak around in the shadows, backstab, throw shuriken (ninja stars), use smoke-bombs, tetsuboshi and other weapons of guile and retreat (whereas a Samurai cannot withstand the shame of defeat and will commit honourable suicide rather than run from a fight). Ninjas are considered to be cowards without honour in the eyes of the Samurai.

Yeah... wearing all that armour wouldn't make one very "stealthy."

Semantically speaking the word "Samurai" (侍) literally means "servant" with the implied translation of "to serve upon a noble." The word "Ninjutsu" (忍術) means "the art of stealth" and "Ninja" (忍者) basically means someone who practices stealth. Another word for Ninja is Shinobi 忍び which means to sneak about. Heh, so I guess you could translate "ninja" as meaning "sneaker."

Depsite its histrorical inaccuracies with the blending of warrior classes, I do like the toy and the concept.

I'm not fond of the concept, but I don't fault the toy for it so I can like the toy on its own merits despite the inherently flawed concept. And for better or worse, the concept was used in the show so it is canonically accurate for TF Animated (although I don't remember Prowl's windows ever turning blue and teched out... still don't a fan of that).

P.S.: Another word for "samurai" is "Bushi" (武士) - and this means 'warrior.'* The Mini-Con's name "Kobushi" (古武士) means 'old warrior' or 'ancient warrior.'

*This word is not used in the context of Transformers' functions though. Autobot warriors are called "senshi" (戦士) whereas Decepticon warriors are called "heishi" (兵士).