Thursday, October 1, 2015

Shuriken Sentai Ninninger Episodes 21, 22, and 23.



It's officially October my friends. That dark yet colorful month when so many of us are at our best. I'll need that boost in productivity too since I picked up a secondary part-time job this week. For the foreseeable future my Friday nights will be spent wondering the streets to deliver papers for a decent bit of extra scratch. Guess this means I won't miss out on fine autumn walks. Believe it or not this small life update was supposed to somehow segway into the importance of superheroes on Halloween but given that steam cleaning has made my seating situation a bit perilous you'll forgive me for loosing focus.
Getting back to the point, I've found over the years that the second best genre of entertainment for this month is superheroes. While not directly terrifying or seasonal in any fashion there's something to be said for folks who dress in garish costumes to face off against the worst threats imaginable. To a certain extent I usually have a craving for such fare about halfway through the month, especially for things like the Spider-Man trilogy. Today's post isn't about arachnid people though. In fact, it's about three more episodes of ninninger, and things are starting to get downright spooky lately. Let's do this.

21

Since I'm a little overdue on this post it's actually been a while since watching this episode. Not that big a deal though as it was a mostly stand-alone affair. The biggest development by far is the introduction of yet another main villain in the form of Ariake no Kata. She's the wife of the big bad demon general and so far has proven to more irritating than an actual threat. Lady at least comes up with a decent plan featuring a dream eating elephant.
As I said though, it's mostly self-contained as it revolves around Kinji struggling to get into the groove of normal ninja training now that he's officially part of the group. While practicing in the park he befriends a kid who dreams of being the best baseball player ever (do kids still like baseball?). The aforementioned elephant eats both the kid and Takaharu's dreams so the rest of the team has to play ninja vs monster baseball to save the day. Fairly entertaining, all things considered and it makes further strides in ensuring that it's an actually team show instead of constantly focusing on Taka.

22

Likewise to the previous tale, it's been a couple weeks since viewing so this will be rough. I do recall this being a very solid episode though with an even broader focus on the whole group. It kicks off with a summer present from Saika the monk. He's made a new shuriken that'll allow all the robots to combine with lion ha-oh. Problem is, it doesn't work. Turns out old lion doesn't much care for Kinji and Yakkun since they're both too stiff for his tastes. Being sentai, there's of course a monster who makes the boys face their current issue so they can bond and loosen up. Meanwhile Ariake actually joins in the fighting and proves to be a pretty tough opponent.
This episode also marks the moment I noticed Fuuka getting a good bit more attention. In recent episodes I've viewed she seems to be getting at least one good moment even when she has almost nothing to do with the story proper. Perhaps she's taken hold as a favorite among Japanese viewers. Can't blame em, girl's awesome.

23

Supposedly there's a balance to everything in life. Belief in such a concept may be the only way to accept the complete disparity between the greatness of Fuuka and wretchedness of Kasumi. You all might recall that I'd softened my opinion towards pinkie after a few decent episodes but she was back to her shitty antics in this one. It's a real shame too as it nearly ruins an otherwise fun tale.
We find the team suffering through the Summer heat. Kasumi reveals she's been practicing combining different elemental powers. Nagi asks for pointers on the subject so she brings him down for relying on people (cause that's something you don't want in a team). During a fight she ticks off a few other teammates by jumping on em like platforms. When asked if she has any fears, she confesses to Fuuka that ghosts frighten her. Nagi listens in and convinces the other boys preform a ninja courage test where they take the girls to a supposedly haunted building and scare the wits out of em. It all goes smoothly until they realize Kasumi's missing. I fail to see the problem.

One by one they reenter the building only to disappear, leaving Fuuka and Nagi to figure out what's going on. They find everyone's been frozen by a ghost lady. A fight ensues wherein Fuuka is injured and frozen, leaving Nagi to combine different elements in an attempt to defeat the ghoul. Then Kasumi shows up at the last minute, revealing that the ghost just froze a duplicate. They thaw everyone out and save the day with Nagi mixing three elements at once.
In the end, Kasumi tells all that she faked being afraid of ghosts and let Nagi hear about it so the villains would make one as the monster of the week. Then she simply decided not to tell her team anything about it, thous putting them all in danger. Why would you do that? You stuck up, rotten....urgh! She doesn't apologize to the boys since they tried to prank her but she does seek forgiveness for putting Fuuka in harms way which only increases my theory that Fuu has become the big favorite.

I was left highly conflicted after this episode. It was tremendous fun to watch them all dress up as ghosts & ghouls and play pranks. The action was solid and we got yet another Fuuka/Nagi team up which are always gold. Then Kasumi had to be an asshole and shit all over. On the upside, we get a small cliffhanger when Ariake gets tired of weak Japanese monsters and summons some baddies from the west. We're talking Dracula types here folks. If that's not a perfect lead-in for October, I dunno what is.

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