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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