Ninninger and Kamen Rider Drive Spring Break Special

Remember when you were young and the only upsides to being sick were dodging your chores and watching cartoons? That's what the past week has been for this blogger. I'd been prepping some articles for last weekend when I had my first ever eye exam. If you've never had one lemme tell ya that after dilating your pupils, monitors are not your friends for a number of hours. It's bad enough that the dilation agent took longer to wear off than I was told but then your eyes are exhausted. Once that was all wrapped up my plans were to get right back to blogging......then it happened. After nearly 8 years of vomit free existence I suffered some pretty bad food poisoning which was a disgusting affair. Since then I've been working my way back to being a human. At least I didn't have to do the dishes, vacuuming, etc and I got to watch lots of Gumball (seriously, how great is Gumball?) and I also got to watch this year's Sentai/Kamen Rider spring break special. Let's give it a gander.

Pictured: Most of my week.

The crossover gets moving quickly with the ninjas fighting a new monsters who's some kind of fear spewing slime car. Oh, he's also got some slowdown technique he uses to escape. That's when the current Kamen Rider shows up and accuses the team of being roidmudes which I guess are evil robo people. It's only fair to point out that I've got almost zero knowledge about Drive or Kamen Rider in general. My only exposure to the franchise is Gaim which seriously, how great was Gaim? Gotta cover that one sometime. Getting back to Drive, he's a police detective with car powers and a talking belt that reminds me of Belly Beg from Uncle Grandpa only with dignity. His costume's also powerfully ugly but that's a matter for another day.

Shinnosuke (that's Drive's civilian identity) arrests Takaharu while the others escape to hunt the monster. After some scenes of the two heroes getting to know each other, Taka tries to show Shin that a Youkai is responsible for all the trouble. First he has to deal with his friends who've been covered in good old fashioned fear slime. A tad suggestive, don't ya think?

Commence a multi-stage battle involving the companion bots before we get a twist to the story. Turns out the evil fox lady (who is apparently an effeminate fox guy) pulled the ninjas into an alternate universe where they will eventually be erased from existence. This elaborate scheme was conceived by some mystery individual who we'll get to eventually. In the meantime, the police force tries to lock up the ninninger crew as they could cause harm to this reality. The cops plan to just lock em up until they disappear. Real nice guys. None of this sits well with Shinnosuke who be all like “fuck dat!” He leaves the force and belly bag behind to help the ninningers find a white haired man who overacts a lot.

Shin and Taka get into some major mystery solving while the others get in another fight where they get their butts handed to em again. I mean they really have a tough go of it this week. Before all is lost, the leads show up with some backup and answers, They've found that this whole conspiracy is somehow the work of long forgotten evil organization Shocker! Yes the filthy child in me giggles every time they say it

Of course the day is saved and the ninningers return to their own reality. Little does anyone know that all of this was actually the brain child of Kamen Rider 3 who unleashes a time altering green wave and the credits. Just like last years crossover, this is just the preamble to new Super Hero Taison movie. Thous nothing is truly resolved and anyone on this coast won't get a chance to see how things work out for months.

Overall it was pretty fun. There were some pacing issues and the supporting cast of Drive came across as kinda dickish except for Kiriko (girl got some legs!) It was pretty unbalanced in that it was basically the Taka and Shin show. Remember how the first Expendables was supposed to be a big action star team up but ended up as more of a Stallone & Statham buddy flick? Yeah, kinda like that. It did lift my spirits for a little bit though. Believe me; when recovering from horrific vomiting that's a huge gift. Thanks ninjas & car people!

In other news, I'm off on my first vacation in years but the laptop's coming with so updates can get back on track. There might even be a few extra entries covering the trip. Until then, why don't you think of the visual suggested by the dialogue in this last screencap.

That's disgusting!