Price$25.00
Media TypeTrick
CategoryClose Up
Date AddedNov 25, 2013
3 Secrets
Niinuma, Ken
Vanishing Inc.
(Based on 2 reviews)
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
(Top ▲)
Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: Gypsy by Dio
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.'
(Top ▲)
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.
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.