Ninninger Episode 2

Here's your nightmare fuel.

As a fan of tokusatsu it doesn't take long before you start to peg the cliches and and common story threads within the genre. For instance; in nearly every sentai there's a rivalry between two of the male team members, usually red & blue which is in full effect within the first 3 episodes. Guess what episode 2 is about...just guess. Cynicism aside this is actually nice step up from the premiere that gives us a much better idea of what to expect from this show. Let's take a look.

We begin the festivities by checking out the brand spanking new ninja dojo where grandpa expects the kids to learn better “nintality” (his word, not mine) without him actually teaching them. Instead he leaves some stuff behind and hopes the education just kinda happens....sorta reminds me of homeschooling. First lesson on the curriculum is elemental ninpo. The kids keep trying to channel the elements without success except for Yakumo who finds this whole ninja gig uninteresting. Odd side note here; in the premiere I assumed that his talk of studying magic in Europe was him learning to be some David Copperfield type but that's not the case at all. The kid actually knows how to do legit magic so there's some kinda Hogwarts knock-off out there. If there's ninja , yokai, and wizards running around in this show, what the hell else is out there?

 

As I was saying; Yakumo thinks he's above the ninja game (though he later reveals that he'll stick with it out of family duty) and this leads to bad juju with Takaharu who thinks trying to be the greatest ninja is the best thing since pitch black mountain dew. Before they can get too far into it a monster shows up. This week we have a fire extinguisher Kappa whose evil plan revolves entirely around throwing people into bodies of water, including shallow decorative fountains. I guess that's pretty evil.

After the customary first face off with the monster we got some more arguments from the boys and an attempts at character development for Kasumi. Truth be told I still have no idea what this girls deal is other than she likes to stand on or behind different things.

  One thing that worries me with Kasumi is that the actress may not be very good. Sometimes I take for granted how talented the casts of these shows can be. So far I'm not completely sold on this group though and it makes me wonder if some of them just can't sell the personalities of their characters. That's something that could take a while to become clear so we'll just blame sub-par development for now.

Other than that the episode returned to action which was much better this week with some nice moves that illustrated the differences between each character. For instance Fuka fights in a somewhat sloppy but playful fashion while Nagi does things like trip and confuse his opponents as any good trickster should. Kasumi doesn't move very much...yeah..I still don't get her.

Furthermore on the action front we got even more high quality robo action as we find that each individual robot can take the center command space and completely change the combat abilities. In the case of the blue dragon the main advantage is flight. This is probably the first time in sentai history were I've actually found myself interested in the robots.

  Finally the boys settle their disagreement with by deciding to be cool about their rivalry. I guess that works. Oh, and we get to see a little more of the main villains. Seems like they'll be showing up one at a time which is nice. It might easily save us from the repetitive bad guy arguments of last year.

Overall this episode showed progress while getting the general flow set up. Nothing ground breaking but it's enjoyable. Come back next week to see if this upward progressing continues. I also have a bit about old trading cards coming up. And maybe my mental health can withstand the next part of The Crossing.