:lolol

I think I would have liked this episode more had it happened maybe 3-4 episodes earlier. I mean, Kasumi is easily my favorite of this team, and I generally love her spotlights.

It's just... I'm starting to get worried. My appreciation of Ninninger (and kind of any toku show) has always been contingent upon the creators nailing the ending, and the closer we get to it, the more concerned I become that they have the space to do something special.

I'll always like the series for its unusual charms, but it won't rank very high in my estimation if the story just peters out.

As much as I'm not liking the series as a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I'm glad that they kept Kibaoni Mangetsu's true personality a secret in last episode's preview, because the reveal of that along with him utterly destroying Fuuka in the process was great.

Kasumi got some well-deserved character development, as I liked her well enough but always found her to be a bit too much of a know-it-all/I-told-you-so kind of character. Seeing her experience failure that could have had dire consequences was a great change of pace. Her un-henshined fight with Mangetsu was also extremely well-done.

Will next week's episode continue this? I personally doubt it, but if the end-game stuff can at least be on par with this, I guess I'll be satisfied enough.

Heck, even I am starting to get worried about the end game, and i've been defending this series all along. Maybe this episode was the beginning of the end, and Mangetsu is going to finally kick things into gear (he's clearly capable of it).