[Kamen Rider Die]

RIDER TIME: SHINOBI EPISODE 1 - “FIRST NINPOW! VOLUME: HATTARI'S ONE-SIDED LOVE"



First off, thanks for indulging my little April Fool’s Day gag of watching the first episode of Ninninger instead of Shinobi. I was going to do the ZO movie, but we happened to land the start of Shinobi on April 1st, so I called an audible and decided to write up Ninninger’s premiere instead.

It was a neat premiere, and a huge change of pace from the recent DonBrothers premiere. (I think those are the only two Sentai debuts I’ve watched?) It was pretty surreal to have so much of the cast and premise laid out in the first episode, with a giant battle to cap it all off. Not 100% my thing for tokusatsu, but I had a fun time watching it and writing it up.

The only problem is, uh… I think I already said everything there is to say about this episode? Accidentally?

Like, ha ha ha, Shinobi DOES come from a family of ninjas! And his younger sister IS a ninja that he feels responsible for! And he IS significantly more goofy and enthusiastic than we saw him as in the Zi-O episodes! And there IS a ton of cool world-building in this first-third of Shinobi’s entire run!

Thankfully, it doesn’t just feel like it’s cribbing from Ninninger, despite way more coincidental similarities than I’d’ve assumed. It still has the shape of a Kamen Rider series. There’s a rival corporate Kamen Rider, Hattari, who has a friendship with the hero’s secret identity. The whole gimmick of The Nation’s Biggest Company Is Controlled By The Villains is the most on-target Heisei reference that the ongoing Zi-O project has come up with yet. There’s a sense of isolation to Rentarou’s role as Shinobi, even though he’s got friends and family. We don’t really get a lot of shows where the Kamen Rider hides his identity from his friends and family (not since... Agito?), but it feels pertinent for the Ninja Rider. There’s absolutely no bike-riding, so it’s clearly a Kamen Rider series.

It’s a pretty fun little goof, honestly. It doesn’t really make a case for itself as a lost gem, or anything. I didn’t watch this episode and think Why Were We Robbed Of This Series. It’s a little too light to feel like there’s potential here. Rentarou is too slapstick-y, and the world is too Everything’s Ninjas without really feeling like a coherent theme. It’s the sort of thing you can play around with for three episodes, and that’s plenty.

The only real misfire is the absolutely insane detail of Rentarou’s sister having a crush on his secret identity (gross), which Rentarou is super excited about (GROSS). It’s a bizarre gag to try and pull off, because it ends up making both Rentarou and Icchy look like massive creeps. Iroha is seventeen years old. The idea that grown-ass-adult Icchy is wistfully saying her name is alarming enough, but Rentarou even inadvertently stringing his own sister along as a love interest is mortifying. Rentarou should have immediately confided in Iroha that he’s Shinobi, if only to dissuade her from crushing on him. (But also because it’s uncool to hide his identity from his sister? Who is also in peril? That he didn’t tell her about?) There’s no need for this plotline, and I can’t believe it made it out of the planning stages.

Otherwise, this is easily in the Top Two for ninja-themed tokusatsu premieres I watched this week. Fun, but not exactly a revelation or anything.