Ninninger Episode 3

 

The lack of an article in between Ninninger recaps has a good excuse my friends. I'm returning to the land of the living after my first few days of PS4 ownership. It's no exaggeration that I've spent more hours with games in that time than I usually do in an entire month. Now it's time to return to my blogging responsibilities. There's some nearly done pieces on The Crossing along with a bit about Universal Monsters but let's get our Ninja coverage outta the way first.

 

Today's story is all over the place but I'll do my best to break it down bit by bit. The first focus of the story is on some character development for Nagi. Turns out that despite being a prankster (something we've seen very little of from him) the guy's a major study bug. He has this box full of text books that he uses to get certified in all sorts of nonsense and now he's using one for ninjitsu training. As you can figure he finds out that shit doesn't work out like it does in the books and his moral for the day is to learn from the people around him. Not a bad message overall but maybe they shoulda saved it for a time when everyone's better developed. Like what is he learning from Fuka? I'm sure there's a joke to be made there but I can't think of one that doesn't come across as mercilessly cruel or downright pervy.

 

The second main chunk of story is the return of Gabi Raizou. Turns out he's one of the main baddies primary henchmen. He's brought back by liquified fear that the weird fox chick collects from attacks on the populace. This is actually a nifty idea as fear can be gathered from the ninningers along with everyone else. This gives the villains a little more incentive to terrorize the heroes. Anywho, Gabi doesn't feel like collecting fear to bring back his buddies, let someone else handle that. That outlook doesn't stop him from interfering in the fight with our monster of the week (a roller blade guy...for real). He actually kills the monster himself, which works out just fine since foxey lady can use the shurikens to summon more monsters. This is odd weird though cause the baddies want to collect the shurikens, but aren't they the ones using them to make monsters in the first place? Somebody draw me up a chart.

 

The episode may not do much for actual character or story development but by god was there action. The team fought the MOTW, Nagi fought him solo, the team again, then they fought Gabi, then Gabi fought red solo, then they faced off against a wicked ass skeleton creature. All of it was damn well done, continuing the upward quality of the stunt work. It's just so odd that for an episode where they royally screw the pooch by losing multiple fights and letting the baddies get the shuriken, they all seem perfectly happy in the end. I like to see the heroes fail this early as it showcases an actual threat but it'd be nice if they'd acknowledge it. In other news, I still don't get Kasumi.

 

All in all it was a serviceable tale that would have been better as a two part ordeal. Now it's time for me to get back to see how many “in limbo” articles I can wrap up before the next episode. All? Half? One third? Maybe so much as a paragraph?