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Ken Niinuma: 3 Secrets Reviewed

One disk, 3 effects, 3 more hidden effects, agony and suffering to access one of the hidden effects and $25 bucks. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.

Effect

A total of six effects are "included." 3 of them are hidden. Finding the three hidden ones was pretty easy. I found all three right away. However, one of them requires a password. Figuring out the password was a pain in the butt. I had figured out most of it on my own. Then I had to turn to fellow reviewer Dr. J for a hint to find the 2 pieces I was missing.

Thunderstruck

This is an adaptation/modification of John Bannon's The Bannon Triumph (a.k.a. Play it Straight Triumph). You get some good looking displays along the way to "prove" that the deck is truly shuffled face-up into face-down. Then you do the magic move and spread the cards. They're all facing the right way except for the Diamonds. The Diamonds are not only face-up, but they're in order. The missing Diamond is the one selected by the spectator.

Kicker ending: The rest of the deck is 100% in order as well even after all the shuffling.

Crackdown

This is a pretty clean sandwich effect where two selections are put into two separate parts of the deck. Then the four Jacks are cut into the middle. Instantly, two of the Jacks are in one half of the deck sandwiching one selection, and the other two Jacks are in the other half of the deck sandwiching the other selection.

Waltz

Two spectators are each given half the deck. Each spectator selects and signs a card and replaces it in his/her half — one of them is replaced face-up. The cards are dealt into three piles. The pile with the face up selection is kept, and the other 2 eliminated. This is repeated (by the spectator) 2 more times, each time with the remaining stock. When all is said and done, there is one pile with two cards. It happens to be the spectator's two cards.

Secret #1

This is some less-than-impressive looking finger stuff that requires you to be pretty darn flexible. If you have arthritis, fuggetaboutit.

Secret #2

A decent Ace assembly where the Aces appear one at a time in the "leader" packet in a pretty visual way. Kicker ender: The backs of the four Aces are all different colors.

Secret #3

A linking rubber band that is one of those things that the audience won't be able to duplicate, but they'll, likely, know what you're doing to create the linking illusion.

Method

The methods are pretty standard. There are no new ideas here really. There are some clever combinations of concepts, but that's about it.

Thunderstruck

In this effect, there's a moment where you basically undo the shuffle right in front of the audience. It looks exactly like you're doing exactly what you're doing. I have a hard time believing that this fools anyone. The kicker at the end where all the cards are in order is still fooling, but the move in the middle is way to obvious in my opinion.

Crackdown

This is one of those effects where you do a whole bunch of "movey" stuff up front to over-prove a simple thing: I'm holding only four Jacks. After all this overkill/over-proving, you've now done all the dirty work, and it feels like it. The good news is that, the rest of the trick is very fair feeling, and even though the beginning was very "movey," you still end with a pretty surprising moment.

Waltz

The method on this is 100% self-working and uses one of those principles that lets you fool yourself. That's always fun. The audience handles the cards 99% of the time, and there's a potential for an engaging presentation when done with a couple. The downside is that there's a fair amount of dealing cards into piles. This, however, can be justified with a little thought.

Secret #1

This one requires some nimble and flexible fingers. Most of the moves I was physically unable to contort my fingers into the necessary position.

Secret #2

This is another one of those over-proving-up-front methods that allow for super-clean endings. The moves are a little awkward looking, but overall, I think it's a reasonable handling that is workable. Just keep in mind that, often, these "movey" effects that require so much ado for something that should be so simple — showing four cards — cause too much suspicion.

Secret #3

This is a linking rubber band effect that requires you to somewhat reveal the method while getting the rubber bands into the right position for creating the illusion. This might be useful in a more elaborate rubber band routine or in a situation where you can use heavy misdirection to get into position.

Ad Copy Integrity

This is a tricky one. The description of the effects are accurate. However, there is a level of hype that goes beyond hype and is downright inaccurate. When you read statements like "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," it's reasonable to expect that you're about to witness something totally different from the typical magic of the day.

Frankly quite the opposite is true. In fact, the line following the claim of magic effects that are " . . . very far from where most of us reside" is followed by a statement that his magic is like "John Bannon, Allan Ackerman, and Caleb Wiles." They throw in the phrase "with Asian flair" to make it sound more exotic. There is no Asian flair here folks. This is standard (almost pedestrian) stuff. Sure it's worthy of considering for your repertoire to some degree, but it's nothing revolutionary whatsoever.

Further, when I think of Asian flair, I think of elegance and style and uncluttered beautiful magic. This magic was visually awkward and clunky at times. Most of this was due to the fact that they were using a leather table top which makes it difficult to slide, spread and pick up the cards. But dead cow table aside, the handling was often very not-smooth. Whatever it was, Asian flair it was not.

Product Quality

DVD

The DVD has an easy to navigate menu. Hidden in the menu are some of the secret clues needed to access one of the secret files, so the menu has some awkwardness to it, but it's all part of the game. Also, there is a "Play All" button. Yay!

Production

The lighting was done well. The entire video was shot with the magician and spectator seated at a table. The camera stayed at table-level showing only the cards, tabletop and hands of the magician and spectator(s). You never see a single face. Also, there is no talking. It's all English text overlay for both the presentation section and the explanation section. The text was way too wordy and moved on and off the screen way too fast. It made the watching experience a wee bit difficult. However, I'd say that about 95% of the material was "learnable" without having to read the words.

Teaching

The effects were presented clearly, and taught clearly (even with the text distraction). I doubt anyone will have a problem learning the effects from the teaching segments.

Final Thoughts

This one is a bit tricky to give a final rating to. First we have the problem of, generally speaking, awkward-ish methods. Next we have the hyped up claim of fancy flair from Asia that did not exist even in the most remote sense of the phrase. Then we have, mostly, variations of other effects.

On top of all that, you have hidden effects that make it a pain in the arse to access. I spent an extra 2 hours trying to figure out the crap needed to access one of the hidden videos. If I weren't reviewing this, I would have given up and not watched that video. It just wasn't worth the effort. You may enjoy the challenge, but I did not.

So really, you're paying $25 for 3 effects and the "privilege" of spending an hour or two (or more) to access the rest of the content. For all the build up what this was supposed to be, I feel that most people will be let down.

Final Verdict:
3 Stars with a Stone Status of gem with a super tiny Shrinky Dink® 'g.'