Ninninger 21 sanjou!

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Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by takenoko »

Wiki: http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Ninninger_Shinobi_no_21

I'm on fire, but not in a good way.

So in a Kinji and little boy based episode, we've got at least 2-3 instances of Takaharu robbing the spotlight still. I don't get it. I'm seriously wracking my brain to think of a Sentai where the writer unduly sucked red's dick as much as they do in Ninninger.

Oh, the new commander is Sailor Moon's voice actress? Nice.

Long rant with more bitching about Takaharu. Don't read it if that bothers you, since I really go into it here:
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When the little boy runs and picks up the baseballtized versions of the Ninninger's dreams, then just picks up red's to throw his back. Fuck you, little boy. Fuck you as the hand of the writer, being as stubborn and oblivious as you are. Not only are the side characters useless. They are rendered COMPLETELY unable to help. How is this even a Sentai when the ensemble cast is so poorly balanced as this.

Like even if this weren't a Sentai show where ostensibly teamwork is a main theme, this wouldn't work even as a Rider show. If the audience loves the side characters and hated the main character, that's just not going to work. You can't make the audience love the main character by giving him all the new toys while at the same time he's still spouting "I'm on fire" with that stupid gormless expression on his face in every episode.

It's pretty annoying to get so worked up over something like a kid's show, but I'm pretty sure even kid's don't like the way this show is written. The producers should really go in there and slap the writer on the hand each time he writes one of those catchphrases for Takaharu. It doesn't even bother me that Yakumo does it too, because he gets so little screen time that it doesn't become annoying.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Slowking »

Quite annoyed with Takaharu in this ep. At more than one instant I forgot completely that Kinji was the focus of this ep.

I also felt that this ep had issues of telling a story - a new general, grandpa teaching, a baseball child, a noisy Takaharu and a partly absent Kinji just don't fit very well together.

Regardless I liked the parallel drawn between the kid and Kinji; it was the execution of it that was bad.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by PHurricane »

Ninninger has unfortunately crossed from “not much fun to watch” to “painful to watch” for me. It’s honestly become so unpleasant that it took me over a day of starting and stopping the episode before I finished it. It’s sad.

It’s not like the complaints I’ve seen about Ninninger are new to sentai. Almost every year, I read the complaint about the red guy getting too much focus, certain characters being useless, bad acting, stale writing, illogical plots, etc. It feels like the biggest problem with Ninninger is that it’s managing to combine all of those bad aspects together. Honestly, I could tolerate a badly written show if I liked the actors more (and yeah, I’m mostly looking at Takaharu when I say that, but Yakumo isn’t much better).

Youkai steals dreams - fine. When Takaharu (and later the core team) has the dream stolen, he loses his enthusiasm for becoming Last Ninja. Maybe this would have been too easy of a solution, but there could have been so many other reasons to fight - protecting people, saving the world, acting on a sense of duty. Maybe it would have been too cynical of a message for little kids, but part of me wishes that they took the opportunity to address the fact that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t enjoy. (Like watch Ninninger every week…)

Couldn’t the Youkai have stolen that stupid “burning” catchphrase while he was at it? I about cried when I heard Kinji’s variation at the end.

I digress, and I’ve been negative long enough.

Oh, one more negative - not impressed that we get a new villain and the first thing she does is throw a tantrum.

I’ll try to end on a positive - we got an updated opening sequence! Kinji’s officially a ninja, and he has the clothes to prove it. It’s nice to see them finally acting like a cohesive unit.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by xiiliea »

I still don't understand a thing about baseball.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by VerusMaya II »

Trash episode. Completely bored throughout, though it doesn't help that I'm not super interested in baseball.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Jetman »

This episode was pretty forgettable. Just your standard filler episode with a goofy plot. It made me want Kinji to be the Last Ninja even more. Him, Kyuuemon and Yoshitaka are mostly what's keeping me watching at this point.

What I don't get is: why HIM? You have all these fun, quirky characters and THIS is the only one you care about, to the extent that everyone else is basically a glorified extra most of the time? Building the show so completely around just one of the Ninningers is bad enough, but Takaharu is the worst choice possible. ANY of the other Ninningers would have been better. Why? Because he is so damn shallow. There is no emotional depth or anything compelling or any potential or any reason at all to want to follow this character (oh yeah, and he can get just a bit annoying sometimes). I wouldn't say any of this was necessarily a big problem if he was just one of the team, but YOU DECIDED TO HAVE THE ENTIRE SHOW REVOLVE AROUND HOW AWESOME AND INCREDIBLE HE IS, AND HOW HE'S SO MUCH BETTER AT EVERYTHING THAN EVERYONE ELSE AND GIVE A BIG MIDDLE FINGER TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT LIKE ANY OF THE OTHERS! I just find it so disappointing. I think Ninninger had a lot more potential than most Sentai, and I just don't understand why it was unnecessarily botched so badly.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Lunagel »

I hate to say it only 20 episodes in, but this series will probably take my bottom spot of least favorite sentai. Currently it's Goseiger, but the worst that did was bore me. Ninninger's not even in the "so bad it's good" category, it's in the "I want to rip out Takaharu's voice box and throw it into Mount Doom" category. The rest of the characters are actually pretty decent, but the complete focus on Red to the exclusion of everyone else is just unforgiveable.

This is a sentai. Act like a goddamn sentai already.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by takenoko »

I definitely get what people are saying. But I don't want to damn the series just because of one element/character. I like almost everything besides Takaharu (I'm not too wild about Grandpa either, if we're going to be honest).
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Jetman »

takenoko wrote:I like almost everything besides Takaharu
Well, I agree. That's why it's starting to piss me off a little :lol: .
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Crimzonite »

So, last year we had a villian who was voiced by Ami's voice actress. Now we have one voiced by Usagi's. Will we have another Sailor Senshi actress next year?

Eh, it's probably just a coincidence. Though I did find it amusing that, last year, we had "anime Ami" in Sentai and "live action Ami" in Kamen Rider.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Knight of L-sama »

takenoko wrote:I definitely get what people are saying. But I don't want to damn the series just because of one element/character. I like almost everything besides Takaharu (I'm not too wild about Grandpa either, if we're going to be honest).

Yeah, but Grandpa's not in every scene trying (and succeeding by directorial fiat) to muscle his way into the spotlight at the expense of everyone else. :evil:

I wouldn't say I like almost everything else. Mostly because due to the excessive Takaharu focus Fuuka and Nagi haven't really had much in the way of character definition let alone development. And even what development Fuuka has gotten has revolved around her being Takaharu's younger sister rather than a developed, independent character.

But as I mentioned in the poll thread, I hope against hope that some of the interesting ideas that have managed to make their way in are actually properly developed.

Edit: Now that I've watched it the episode...

You know in any other year I might have let some of the Takaharu show-boating pass to show off the new form. But this time around... no. This was clearly set up as a Kinji episode but Bison King didn't even have the courtesy of a decent fight before before Lion Ha-oh came in. So boo.

Also I want to say that they screwed up when the decided that Shuriken-jin needed all five members to pilot because it means when Takaharu's off piloting Lion Ha-oh, Shuriken-jin becomes significantly downgraded. But at the rate things are going, I get the disturbing feeling that this might have been deliberate.

On the positive and at least neutral side:

Oh Japan. You and baseball. :lol:

New general (or is that "general") is interesting. Kotono Mitsushi is sounding more like Misato than Usagi though. If those costumes were more expressive, I'd say that Kyuemonn would have had a "just as planned" face on. And Gengetsu was suffciently annoyed and/or distracted that he didn't mangle Kyuuemon's name :shock:
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by ViRGE »

Well at least the universal hate for Takaharu gives us something to talk about.:lol:

I will give this episode credit for giving us mooks as sport broadcasters and baseball players. It's the most amusing mook dress-up scene since Akibaranger.

And that's really the only nice thing to say about this episode. Otherwise it was a muddled mess of kids, villains, Gold, and of course Red. It's downright ADHD at times. Takaharu aside, this episode could have been further condensed to better focus on Gold and the kid.

Finally, I'm not sure what to make of the new General. Is there a specific theme going on with her design? Even ignoring character traits for the moment, I feel like this is the least interesting of the General designs. It's missing something. Or maybe it has too much of something.
Lunagel wrote:I hate to say it only 20 episodes in, but this series will probably take my bottom spot of least favorite sentai. Currently it's Goseiger, but the worst that did was bore me. Ninninger's not even in the "so bad it's good" category, it's in the "I want to rip out Takaharu's voice box and throw it into Mount Doom" category.
I'm really starting to feel like the last decade of Sentai has developed a distinct cycle to it.

Year 0: The nostalgic one (anniversary year)
Year 1: The experimental/awesome one
Year 2: The lighthearted one
Year 3: The conservative one
Year 4: The awful one
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Knight of L-sama »

ViRGE wrote:Finally, I'm not sure what to make of the new General. Is there a specific theme going on with her design? Even ignoring character traits for the moment, I feel like this is the least interesting of the General designs. It's missing something. Or maybe it has too much of something.
I don't know but she looked a little sailor fuku/magical girl crossed with sengoku jidai period garb to me. But that could be my knowledge of her voice actor influencing me.
ViRGE wrote:I'm really starting to feel like the last decade of Sentai has developed a distinct cycle to it.

Year 0: The nostalgic one (anniversary year)
Year 1: The experimental/awesome one
Year 2: The lighthearted one
Year 3: The conservative one
Year 4: The awful one
Don't know. Maybe the last five years, but the five years don't really fit. Gekiranger, Go-onger and Shinkenger were all experimental to some degree. (First purple and a three and two team make-up with no true sixth ranger for Geki, a double "sixth" ranger with both silver and gold and a female "sixth" for Go-on and the first female red in Shinkenger). Also both Geki and Go-on were rather light hearted and while Shinkenger probably fits the conservative one to a degree (certainly it mostly used a standard team configuration) it was also definitely the awesome one of that batch. And personally while I'm not really fond of either Go-on or Gosei, I'd definitely put Go-onger as the weak link in the batch from Boukenger through Goseiger.
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by Kamen Rider Gumo »

ViRGE wrote:Well at least the universal hate for Takaharu gives us something to talk about.
It's not universal; I do not hate Takaharu. While yes, I do wish we'd get some more focus and actual development of the other characters....well, he's not Toq-1, so he's automatically 100% less irritating. Plus, I've got this feeling that Grandpa (in-universe) and the writers (out-of-universe) are giving him JUST enough rope to hang himself with and eventually he's gonna be faced with a situation where there's no-one around to support him and his rush-in-recklessly tactics are going to screw him over, making him realize how much he depends on everyone else (I thought they were going that route in the "upgrade" episode but they didn't follow up on it the way they should have). Might come too late in the show for some people but I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to end up. I more or less kept silent about my hatred of Toqger for a year, so I'm sorry if anyone gets angry that I actually dare to like this show which is almost universally despised, but, well, there it is. I am loving Ninninger despite its flaws (and likely BECAUSE OF a couple of them).
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Re: Ninninger 21 sanjou!

Post by kangchan »

Kamen Rider Gumo wrote:
ViRGE wrote:Well at least the universal hate for Takaharu gives us something to talk about.
It's not universal; I do not hate Takaharu. While yes, I do wish we'd get some more focus and actual development of the other characters....well, he's not Toq-1, so he's automatically 100% less irritating. Plus, I've got this feeling that Grandpa (in-universe) and the writers (out-of-universe) are giving him JUST enough rope to hang himself with and eventually he's gonna be faced with a situation where there's no-one around to support him and his rush-in-recklessly tactics are going to screw him over, making him realize how much he depends on everyone else (I thought they were going that route in the "upgrade" episode but they didn't follow up on it the way they should have). Might come too late in the show for some people but I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to end up. I more or less kept silent about my hatred of Toqger for a year, so I'm sorry if anyone gets angry that I actually dare to like this show which is almost universally despised, but, well, there it is. I am loving Ninninger despite its flaws (and likely BECAUSE OF a couple of them).
I think there are some problems about your taste which is different with us. Is ToQ Ichigou annoy than Takaharu? Maybe you did not watch any episodes of ToQGer or just viewed some first episodes and final episodes rather than whole series.

In my opinion, Right is better than Takaharu in his personality and acting. The actor who plays Takaharu is bad in acting and bad in his voice. Moreover, with the high support from main writer Shimoyama Kento, every ep in Ninninger also include stupid Takaharu in center role and have the similar problem as Kyoryuger.

ToQGer is traditional Sentai style which focus on overall and more on Red in the end look like Gekiranger, Shinkenger, Gokaiger, Go-Busters. I don't understand why you're so hate ToQGer and enjoy the badly show like Ninninger so much?

So so, with acting of Takaharu, the decreasing rating of show and bad writing of Kento, nothing will save the show until kick out Takaharu and Kento from the show.
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