[Fish Sandwich]

Ninnin Rewatch! 35 + 36

Episode 35 starts a two part story that forms the last big step in Starninger's arc, but because Ninninger is all about balanced character focus Nagi plays a big part here too. Kinji goes behind everyone's backs to deal with some personal problems (I'm trying to be deliberately vague on plot details rather than have 80% of every post hidden behind spoiler tags, by the way), even teaming up with one of the bad guys. Nagi is the only one who knows about any of this, since he noticed his odd behavior. They have a chat about it and while he's pretty unsure at first, when Kinji asks for his trust Nagi lets him know he has it. When the rest of the team finds out Nagi is quick to stick up for Kinji and, sure enough, Takaharu is just as quick to stick up for Nagi sticking up for Kinji, getting the others to follow suit. Of course, this is a two-parter, so faith doesn't exactly manage to solve their problems in 22 minutes. Nevertheless, it's a great way of showing how tightly knit the team has become.

In episode 36 Kinji finally acknowledges and accepts his character flaws and is rewarded with a poncho. A shiny poncho. You know it's awesome. Anyway, this is a really solid resolution to Kinji's arc, and since their development has been kind of tied together for a while now, you also get to see Yoshitaka finally showing some real faith in Kinji too, although he tries to play coy about it at the end. Baby steps, Yoshitaka, baby steps.