Break time: Confusing 'Ninja Spirit' ending revealed!

I beat Ninja Spirit last night on the Wii Virtual Console. I have a Turbo Graphx-16, but sadly this was just more convenient. There is no written story when the game starts. A quick animated sequence shows the player character get zapped by green lightning and a white wolf runs next to him and howls. Before each level there is a small amount of Japanese text, but I'm not able to translate it. My friend recently beat it also and warned me that the story screen lasts for only a few seconds. With that in mind, I watched the ending with the camera ready.

The ending was pretty cool, but was only more confusing. Your character runs out into an open plain and falls to the ground. He then transforms between an almost-wolf and a human several times (remember at the beginning he wasn't a wolf, it ran along next to him). Then there's a nice 'boss procession' while the credits roll in which each enemy performs a menacing attack reminding you of the battles. After that the story concluded and I managed to get a picture (the text disappears really quickly!), but it captured the image in a weird state (the text is repeating):
Is "Tsukikage" supposed to be you or the white wolf? And did the wolf inhabit the player? Was the player character evil and causing all the evil? Or was the Tuskikage the good element inside the player helping me defeat the evil? Maybe it's that last one... though I think the introductions is more artful than clear. It's just about as confusing as a Metal Gear Solid story.