Ninninger Episode 4

A key component to any writing and especially blogging is having enthusiasm for the subject. Without that energy to power the word flow you end up with sentences like “this is a thing about a thing.” Having said that, Ninninger continues to be a show about people with ninja powers. Alright; it's not that horrible but there's something missing from the show so far. It clearly has the intention of being a high energy tokusatsu series but there's no heart just yet. I'll continue giving it the benefit of baby steps before clamping down to one sentence recaps. Until then let's take a look at what happened this week.

We start off with the kids getting their butts smacked in teamwork simulation training. Takaharu finishes the exorcises all by himself as he continues to miss the point of that whole “we're a team” thing. It's not long before he's sent to the penalty box (in this case a food cart). That's when our monster of the week shows up. This time we've got a fridge spider. Battle commences only to result in Taka being sucked inside of the monster.

While the others try to work out a solution, Taka finds grandad in the monster as well and lessons are shared through food. Our hero learns that much like food, teams require a good mix of flavors. So while he's the big meal finishing egg, he still needs the others to taste his best. It's a roundabout analogy but I'll take it as it avoids the more corny teamwork mantras.

After escaping the belly of spider beast, the team does their thing in another well done action sequence. Once they move on to the giant robot portion things get complicated. A sentai episode with a spider simply can't exist without a small amount of bondage. Thous the big guy wraps up all the bots. This is where we get our new story element. Turns out the kids can transform the sealing shurikens to summon more robots much like how the villains could use em to summon more monsters. We get an elephant robot, a new form for the big bot, nice action, lessons learned, everyone goes home happy.

What'd I tell ya? Spiders=Bondage.

And there goes another passable episode of Ninninger. Rankings wise I'd put it under ep 2, but still a lil better than 1 & 3. Next week the focus is shifting to Kasumi. Will she finally prove to have a personality? Tune in next week to find out in our next installment of people with ninja powers.