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3 Secrets

Niinuma, Ken

Vanishing Inc.

(Based on 1 review)
Ken Niinuma is not a household name in the west, but he has quietly amassed a very, very impressive arsenal of original, easy card magic. Joshua Jay "discovered" Ken on a trip to Japan nearly a decade ago. They have worked for months to bring you such an unusual and, frankly, exciting collection. This is NOT the kind of material you will find in magic shops or online stores. This is a rare glimpse into what close-up magic looks like very far from where most of us reside.


So what does Ken Niinuma's magic look like? Think John Bannon, Allan Ackerman, and Caleb Wiles...with a distinctly Asian flair. Here are details on three routines found in the collection:


Waltz: a beautiful effect for couples where under impossible conditions two signed selections find each other.


Thunderstruck: The Bannon Triumph, Japanese style. In this blockbuster Triumph extravaganza, you find all the cards of a particular suit, and then find ALL the other suits in an unexpected, surprising ending.


Crackdown: This is that rare sandwich effect worth learning (we're cynical about most sandwich tricks, but this is GOOD). Two selections are inserted fairly into the deck and the Kings then placed face up in the middle. With no moves whatsoever you immediately spread the deck to show that the Kings have moved throughout the deck to sandwich the selections.


The name Three Secrets is a hint - a big hint, actually. There really are three secrets hidden within this DVD. There is much more than meets the eye, so happy hunting, easter-egg fans!

Reviews

Dr. J. M. Ayala De Cedoz

Official Reviewer

Sep 04, 2014

This product was interesting in a few different ways.

First, I loved the whole feeling that the setting of the DVD gave you - there was just something about it that is indescribable.


The production quality is not great but it is not horrible either - somewhere in the middle. The lighting and the sound level for the music are good. The video is a little bit grainy at times but nothing that affects the ability to see the performance clearly nor the ability to learn the effects. There is no talking - everything is taught via text on the screen. It was kind of annoying because even though the video would freeze momentarily as the text was on the screen, sometimes it was too fast to read without having to pause it. The English text was very well-written and easy to understand, which made things very clear and easy to learn.

The three effects that you learn are not earth-moving and are not new, but rather they are unique approaches to existing effects.

Thunderstruck will look (and be) familiar to you if you are a fan of John Bannon. I am not sure that this particular take adds anything to the Bannon effect that it is based upon, but the ending was quite nice. I personally think there is a lot of over-handling at some points that are quite obvious, but the effect is not hard to do at all.

Crackdown is probably the "hardest" of all three effects, but it is still easy to do. Though they are not mentioned, to me this one has a bit of Pit Hartling and Denis Behr type of sandwich effect flair to it - it looks very good.

Waltz is a nice handling reminiscent of the Doc Eason Anniversary Waltz but without the cards fusing together. It looks quite nice and is easy to do.

Now for the three bonus effects: I will not be describing or naming any of them. The only thing I will say is that the first one is a nice combination of card ideas that looks magical. The second bonus is and effect based on an older routine from another magician that, in my opinion, would look very good if used with that original routine. The third bonus is nothing more than a different way to display a certain effect with rubber bands. In my opinion, I would stick with the other methods out there but the display looks great.

I just have to say that I personally think the first bonus that was on this DVD was actually better than Thunderstruck, overall.

In order to find those three bonuses, you will have to put on your detective hat. While I did find all of the necessary clues to find the bonuses, there were times where I was over-thinking some of the clues, which only ended up making it harder on myself. The places and the ways in which all of the clues are hidden are very, very clever and I personally enjoyed the hunt for all of them!

For one of the effects and other information, you have to visit a special website for this product, the address for which is provided. Once there on the main page you will find an option for a Japanese version and an English version of the main site. The English version is listed as "being under construction" with no timeline of when it may be completed. Seeing as this product is a few years old already, this should be up and running.

The page where you have to enter a user name and a special password to get your second bonus effect works just fine in English, but the resulting page(s) is/are all in Japanese so unless you speak or read Japanese, you will be out of luck. The videos that come with the first and second bonuses are easy to download though, and they are in MP4 format.

All in all you might like some of the effects on here and they really are not hard to do and most of them look good. I like the fact that you can do any of them to music or with a spoken script - it makes them versatile. If you like what you read in the ad copy - which is accurate - you might get something out of this product.
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