My opinion...
Your art is very pretty. If it is any consolation, I do not think that you traced. Your voices were well acted (though some of them in the latter half of the flash seemed a bit poorly recorded). I want you to understand that I admire these things, and that I do applaud you on them. Please do not take what I am about to type as a savage insult session or something. That being said, you seemed to take a great deal of artistic shortcuts in this flash that left me a bit dissapointed. With your impressive artistic style I was hoping to see a glorious ninja fight scene, however there was no such thing. All conflicts in this flash were dealt with very quickly (in my opinion TOO quickly). While it does develope a character to have him slash through opposition in mere seconds, it makes a movie far more entertaining to have at least one duel between two warriors of relatively close skill. Just one fight that lasted over a minute or so would have greatly improved this flash. The closest to a reasonable duel that I saw was when he crossed swords with that guard, however that battle was mostly the tips of two swords poking at each other with a bland background (one of the artist shortcuts I was referring to earlier). I would also suggest that you increase the frames per second. I can't really tell what this is running on, but it looks a bit choppy. I'm sorry to hear that you won't be submitting anymore flashes, you seem to have potential. But I do agree with your statement that the ninja thing has been done. I understand why you don't want to continue this series. Btw, the point I gave you in humor is due simply to the line at the end about the guy's death coming quicker for medling. I thought that was witty.