Is anyone else disgusted with the Last Ninja contest from Ninninger?

[TheLastBlade]

Writers sure as hell wrote themselves in a hole. No matter what route they'll take, it'll end up being a cop out.

The bad guys doesn't seem to really care about the whole contest thing, because they're badguys..... And they know it's stupid. The fact that innocent bystanders and monsters trying to destroy the world makes this really dumb in hindsight.

I guess the contest itself isn't TOO bad, but the bigger offender is the grandpa. OMG, what's his problem?! There's being a strict teacher and then there's psychotic asswipe. It also feels like the one that's actually taking the time to teach the ninningers, and the grandpa takes all the credit because he's sssssssooooo great! "Hey, if you clean up this mess, I'll give you megazords." "Eh, I could help you. But then, you wouldn't learn anything." Now, admittedly, I took a break from ninnger after the crossover episode with kakuranger and hurrikenger. For the love of God, please tell me that he isn't that bad anymore.

 

[90210Girl]

I wish I could tell you more but after eisode 20 I stopped watching. Now mind you I still catch the torrents but I haven't the patience to watch them that way either or through keyholetv. I just wait for DVDs.

For what its worth Grandpa isn't imho too too bad just slightly annoying but not like Taku annoying.

 

[raden238]

No Grandpa is still an asshole, Takaharu is still annoying and taking up all the screen time and the Last Ninja contest is all pointless because we already have our winner since episode 1. Kasumi is smart, quick thinking and always thinks 2 steps ahead of everyone else, is solid on the battlefield but she won't win it nah we can't let girls be the winners in Sentai, thats the Red Ranger's gift .

 

[90210Girl]

No Grandpa is still an asshole, Takaharu is still annoying and taking up all the screen time and the Last Ninja contest is all pointless because we already have our winner since episode 1. Kasumi is smart, quick thinking and always thinks 2 steps ahead of everyone else, is solid on the battlefield but she won't win it nah we can't let girls be the winners in Sentai, thats the Red Ranger's gift .

Word!

 

[kuroihikari]

Competition is good. Especially a really healthy one like this. I think it's a good lesson for the kiddies.

 

[lazycoconut]

Competition is good. Especially a really healthy one like this. I think it's a good lesson for the kiddies.

It is not, however, good to teach children that some people are naturally superior to everyone else and the best the losers can hope for is the reflected glory of helping that person rise to greatness. That said, I don't think Ninninger is doing this. Although Takaharu is the focus of the show, neither Grandpa nor anyone else treats him as the guaranteed winner. Last week Grandpa said yet again that "none of you are anywhere close to being Last Ninja."

Grandpa is a jerk, but it's pretty common in shounen media for mentor characters to be jerks (or lazy, or perverts ... he could be worse)

 

[kuroihikari]

Well, I don't know any Sentai that actually teaches that. There are Sentai that portray that some people are simplly better than you at a lot of things, but not everything.

And it's also a good lesson. There's a wide world out there, and there'll come a time when you simply can't be the best. In the end it's your contribution that counts.

 

[Toku Prime]

Disgusted? No, not at all. Honestly the whole contest thing is very easy to ignore. The show is more concerned with the usual 'being a Sentai, fighting the MotW etc' stuff 99% of the time anyway.

I'm not entirely sure why you think it'll be a cop-out either. Maybe they'll surprise me with some kind of twist, but it seems like a forgone conclusion to me, with the show clearly angling for Red to win the title purely down to having main character privileges. Heck, it seems pretty clear that the other Ninningers expect him to win.

TBH it was only with last week's episode (26) that it even seemed like the other Ninningers were interested. And episode 26 was just a framing device for a clip show anyway. Until then the contest just seemed like something made up to motivate the lazy red ranger who doesn't want to practise.

As lazy mentioned, the grandpa acts like a fairly typical "trickster" shounen mentor. They establish in the show that due to his past experiences he has no desire to train anyone for fear of the past repeating itself, which is why he's mostly leaving it to his non-ninja son. He's not even that annoying by comic relief side character standards.

The bad guys don't care about the contest because...well why would they? They want the Ninningers dead because they oppose them. They want the last ninja dead because he opposed them. The contest has no effect on their motivation because they already want everyone dead.

The info I've read about this weekend's episode suggests that...[HIDE]...it will go into StarNinger's motivation and the conclusion of the story might actually remove his reason for wanting to be the last ninja altogether, but we'll have to wait and see.[/HIDE]

tldr: no, it hasn't bothered me :sweat:

 

[lazycoconut]

TBH it was only with last week's episode (26) that it even seemed like the other Ninningers were interested. And episode 26 was just a framing device for a clip show anyway. Until then the contest just seemed like something made up to motivate the lazy red ranger who doesn't want to practise.

We've had an episode each for Yakumo and Kasumi which established that they want to be Last Ninja and are prepared to fight Takaharu for it. That interpersonal rivalry element hasn't come up much since, but it still wouldn't be accurate to suggest no one but Takaharu had ever expressed interest in the title until last week

The info I've read about this weekend's episode seem like [HIDE]it will go into StarNinger's motivation and the conclusion of the story might actually remove his reason for wanting to be the last ninja altogether, but we'll have to wait and see.[/HIDE]

Going by the episode itself and the month's scans, it's actually the case that

[HIDE]The episode removed his reason for wanting the End Shuriken - he wanted to use it to resurrect his family, but now he's accepted their deaths and decided to let them rest in peace. I could be wrong, we'll need subs; but as far as I'm aware he did not say he wasn't interested in being Last Ninja.[/HIDE]

It may just be the case that he doesn't think he's able/allowed to be Last Ninja. When Kyuuemon said that Grandpa would never give anything to someone outside the family, you could see that Kinji agreed with that. Last week, he overheard Grandpa say that one of the team was far behind the others (and from Kinji's reaction it was obvious he thought that was referring to him)

 

[Photon]

The grandpa rarely appears lately, which makes it easier to forget the competition even exist (especially since most of the time it wasn't mentioned at all).

Heck the jerk grandpa in last episode wasn't even the real one, the real one didn't show up until near the end of the episode. And the real one is getting less jerk ever since they got Lion Ha-Oh.