[Fish Sandwich]

I figure we've all got one, right? A show that you just know is secretly a gem, but nobody seems to agree? Maybe everyone hates it. Maybe no one seems to know it exists. Or maybe it's even looked upon relatively fondly, but darn it, not fondly enough.

The nice thing about the forums being all consolidated now is that your answer can be just about anything under the sun, too. Sure, it's fun to talk about [INSERT HATED SHOW HERE] actually being good, but if someone wants to say how, like, Mirrorman or some such obscure show deserves more love, that's great too! As long as it's a show with dudes in costumes, and other people aren't nearly as passionate about it as you are, it fits here.

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Anyone familiar with me will probably be expecting this to be the part where I bring up Kamen Rider Ghost or something, but what actually inspired me to create this thread was a desire to vent about a different show entirely, which is to say...

Shuriken Sentai Ninninger is criminally underrated.

It's no secret that there are plenty of shows out there in the Toku world that I enjoy way more than most people, but I'm starting to notice none of them make me genuinely sad to see bashed the way Ninninger does. With series like Ghost or Ultraman Ginga (especially poor Ginga), my love often comes with caveats. "But it definitely has some glaring problems". "Such-and-such part was super dumb". Stuff like that.

Ninninger's a totally different beast. It has its own faults too, but more in the way any show does. Minor things here and there and some issues from early on that were addressed as it went along. So often I see people dismiss its acting as stilted, for example, when that started improving almost immediately and by around halfway through was totally up to snuff. Considering Toei loves to get actors with little to no experience for their shows, this sort of thing isn't even that much more notable than usual.

But what really bothers me is how all the good in the show goes pretty much completely ignored to the point where I question if I even watched the same show as everyone else. Takaharu gets insane amounts of hate for crimes he's not even guilty of. I already covered the acting, but spotlight stealing? What spotlight stealing? Outside of the first and the last few episodes, the show barely ever focused on him as anything other than the butt of all the jokes or as a vehicle for reflecting on the team as a whole. Only a single episode in the entire series (30) was distinctly about him. Even his stupidity was rapidly toned down through character development as he grew into an unexpected source of wisdom for the team, making offhand remarks that helped other characters entirely along their own arcs. Takaharu is treated like this irredeemable black mark on the franchise, and the epitome of everything wrong with "fireball" Reds, when in reality he subverts most of the faults associated with them to the point of coming off like a deconstruction. He's never given the same kind of leverage someone like Daigo in Kyoryuger has, and even loans out his power-up form to the rest of the team, despite it being color-coded.

In fact, all of the characters are fantastic. Outside of Shinkenger, I can't think of a single Sentai I've seen with a team of heroes this fleshed out. Say what you will about the cast, the writing for them was great. All six of them had their own arc throughout the show, which is seriously impressive when the vast majority of Sentai are content to just single out at least one person on the team as "the bland one" early on and be done with it. But here? Takaharu becomes remarkably mature by the end, Yakumo gets way more open with people and sets out to become a whole new breed of ninja using magic, Nagi gains a lot more self-confidence and becomes the glue holding everyone together, Fuuka gains a sense of what she wants to do with her life, Kasumi, who's often treated as the perfect one, still becomes noticeably more humble by the end, and finally you've got Kinji, who makes peace with his inner demons and finds his family in a way he never expected. They're just so good! Even the supporting characters and villains have their growth. Yoshitaka is a remarkably nuanced Sentai mentor who learns as much from his students as they learn from him, and rather than make the main villain the growly, generically evil monster who hangs over the show but does nothing for most of it (i.e. Shinkenger), they just focus on Kyuemon, the actually interesting one, the whole time, and give him a ton of development throughout the show.

Seriously, I'm almost getting angry at people for not liking Ninninger just typing all this. Even the valid complaints like the lack of an overarching plot don't seem that valid to me. With all that character development, the end result is still a show with an INSANELY LOW filler count. Maybe like 2 or 3 episodes don't accomplish anything? Maybe? But the continuity is so tight that pretty much anything that gets brought up is at least referenced later on, and often times seemingly throwaway things get expanded upon at some point. It actually leads to some surprisingly good world-building for the crazy, kitchen-sink-esque fantasy universe the show takes place in. See the gradual expansion on Yakumo's magic studies that ends up resulting in an episode where we not only see the school he went to, but it turns out Magi Yellow of all people was his teacher.

Thematically Ninninger also does really well. It's one of the "family" Sentai but it takes the opposite stance to how this usually goes where, essentially, water is thicker than blood, so to speak. This is most obviously reflected in both Kinji and Kyuemon's arcs, but even the main Ninningers themselves, outside of Fuuka and Takaharu, are extended family that have to build up a relationship instead of just having it from the outset. But the thing that I think is way more at the center of the series than family is being yourself and following your dreams, which is extremely stock fare as far as messages go, but Ninninger makes it interesting with just how much it permeates the whole series. Everyone except Takaharu has some aspiration outside of being a ninja that episodes tend to focus on, and even the central premise of the series, "shinobi that don't hide" is a complete oxymoron that speaks to this idea of not getting too caught up in doing what's expected of you. I'm sure I'm making this sound a little pretentious, but I find it really interesting that a Sentai so steeped in Japanese culture has its two major messages be just about the exact opposite of what stereotypical Japan would dictate.

I don't know, it's just that Ninninger has taken its place in the cycle of THE WORST SENTAI EVAAAAR at this point, taking the crown from Goseiger which took the crown from Go-Onger which took the crown the crown from Gaoranger which took the crown from, like, Fiveman or some s***, probably, and that's a shame, as far as I'm concerned. The more I think about Ninninger, the more excited I get for the next WORST SENTAI EVAAAAR to come along so this one can finally get some positive attention. I know I have a habit of defending the indefensible, but I genuinely consider Ninninger to be above all that, and it's shocking to me that it can't, at the very least ,match the kind of 50/50 love/hate split most post-Gokaiger Sentai seems to have, because darn it, it deserves a better reputation than it has right now.

Anyway, that's my two cents for now. Looking forward to what personal favorites everyone else has. You don't have to write this much about them either if you don't want to, by the way.