[Fish Sandwich]

Ninnin Rewatch! 4 + 5

In episode 4, Akaninger learns a valuable lesson about working as a team. Let me repeat, he learns this 4 episodes in. Naturally, Ninninger makes this extra fun by giving us oden-based character development. Seriously. Takaharu just wants to eat the eggs, since they're his favorite part, but when he eats everything together he finds it tastes even better. This is completely genius in my book. In the climax he proceeds to make it a point to actively stop himself from rushing in headfirst and tells Yakumo to call the shots. I really like this episode and I really like Takaharu. Complaints of him being the center of attention are largely unfounded. Spotlight hogging is his character flaw, and he grows out of it by around halfway through. Rewatching the show I'm still not sure why people say Shunsuke Nishikawa's acting was bad early on either. I mean, the line delivery can be pretty goofy, but Takaharu is a pretty goofy character so it matches perfectly. Not to mention he gets more subtle as the character does, making Takaharu's growth come across very clearly.

Takaharu is not at all the center of attention in Episode 5! I just wanted to mention that so you don't get the idea last episode's lesson didn't stick past that week. This time it's all about Kasumi (and Yakumo). I love how the episode essentially mocks itself (and formulaic Sentai plots in general) by having the resolution to Kasumi's dilemma be that she didn't actually have a dilemma, Yakumo just misunderstood. Again, pretty genius as far as I'm concerned. The talk of everybody's various dreams is important though. The fact that the Ninningers all have their own goals outside of being ninja is very important to the show and this is the first time they really dig into it. The episode also ends with a fight on the Moon. You just can't go wrong with that. You also get to see Ninninger's remarkably thorough world-building come into play as, apparently, UFOmaru is actually an alien that Yoshitaka met and based the other Otomo-nin on. Yes, Ninninger is kind of a kitchen sink of fantasy ideas.