Since these episodes are a tribute to Kakuranger, we see the return of Ninjaman and a cameo from Ninja White, Tsuruhime. I thought it was a little odd that in the weeks before this episode we only saw pictures of Tsuruhime in front of a blue screen rather than with the Gokaigers. I’m a little disappointed that she didn’t feature more in the episodes, but at least we had Ninjaman since many fans had been wondering about his lack of appearance in the Legend War.
I don’t usually enjoy clip shows, but I was okay with this one. It was probably because the clips themselves were quite short and there was something actually happening outside the flashbacks. I found the sub-plot of the Gokaigers trying to coax Ninjaman into handing over the Grand Power hilarious, especially Marvelous, Joe and Luka acting outside of their usual uncaring personas.
The Gokai Changes in this episode were interesting. The first one involved an all-blue change which I was slightly disappointed with since they didn’t do much, but I am glad that it happened. The second one was an all-Lion change. When Gokaiger was announced, I was hoping for a lot of mixed-team changes similar to this, so I enjoyed this particular scene.
Episode 46 involves Ninjaman taking the Gokaigers to train, but of course, only Don, Gai and Ahim show up. The following scene where the three train unmorphed was really good, especially because I didn’t notice any stunt doubles being used. Alongside this, the Zangyack plot-of-the-week is courtesy of Action Commander Juju who causes people to fight with each other reason for no apparent. This then ‘infects’ Gai and Don.
As Don and Gai escalate their fight by transforming, Ahim goes into battle to try and break them up. Ultimately, this causes them to turn on Ahim, even beating her down until she demorphs. Eventually, Ahim talks them out of killing her and Ninjaman discovers the importance of believeing in people. I don’t really have much to say about all this, except for that I loved it.
The Kakuranger battle, while short and ended abruptly, was cool. Like other tribute battles, it was great to see the team in action and hear the theme song once again. The scene where Ninjaman is revealed to be the Grand Power was quite funny since he had no idea that he was. It’s a shame that we didn’t get to see Ninjaman transform into Samuraiman, but there’s probably a good reason that it didn’t happen.
The final scene of the episode has Ninjaman fly off into the distance on a cloud while the Gokaigers prepare to fight their greatest opponent, Basco. I thought this was a great lead-in into the next episode.
GRADE
I give episode 45 a 3/5 and episode 46 a 4/5. While 45 was a good episode, the clip-show aspect did drag it down just a little.
Since there wasn’t a Zyuranger tribute episode which would become the MMPR tribute episode, this episode could easily take its spot. All shots involving the Kakurangers could be replaced and the Mecha battle could stay as it is.