Ninja Sentai Kakuranger 08 – A Tale of Two Kitties

And this episode began with Saizou on the wheels!

Nekomaru is running wild for some odd reason. He finally stops running after landing on a cat temple. In other news, kids are disappearing because of some chick who turns out to be a Yokai who kidnaps them! Do these disappearances have something to do with Nekomaru running wild?

This episode is surprisingly, a Nekomaru focused episode. As we all know since the start of the series that Nekomaru is more than just a crepe bus that looks like a cat, he is a sentient being that even purrs in some occasions. In the case of this episode, we saw him run wild that even Saizou can't even hit the brakes! Thankfully, he stopped in a temple wherein they met a lady who fed them. The only ones who noticed that there is something suspicious on why Nekomaru lead them to this temple that honors cats are Sasuke and Tsuruhime. Much to my surprise, they didn't say much about it to their teammates.

After getting filled, they decided to take a snooze, so yeah, it doesn't look like Sasuke and Tsuruhime knows that something is not right around them. As for Seikai, he is the first one who discovered the true identity of the kind lady who fed them, she is a Yokai named Bakeneko! Since this is a Yokai we are talking about, it is expected that there is something in their food. Not surprising, the Bakeneko controlled their movements to the tune of Bakeneko Rock! I am not sure where the rock in it because it sounds like some pop tune about cats. But hey, it was fun watching the Kakurangers do some cat movements!

Speaking of cat movements, doing a quick pause, you can notice that the ones who are doing the backflips are the stunt doubles less Jiraiya's. This made me conclude one thing, Jiraiya's actor, Kane Kosugi is the one who has proper martial arts training, and hence he can do backflips without the help of a stunt double. Guess this means that I will expect a lot of great out of suit fights coming from him in the future!

Enough with the Jiraiya talk; this episode is not about him but about how Sasuke and Tsuruhime fooled the Bakeneko! You heard that right; they are the only ones who fooled the Bakeneko! Sasuke's fight with the Bakeneko is seriously fun to watch. After 7 episodes, this is the only time I noticed Sasuke's unique fighting style. His movements resemble to those of a monkey, a creature that is often associated to Sarutobi Sasuke. Because of his unique fight style, I am starting to like Sasuke more. Before he has the chance to defeat the Bakeneko, she escaped. Thankfully, he found a way to track her down with the help of his Doron Changer.

As for Tsuruhime, she treated her subordinates with some bitter herb medicine to remove the paralysis caused by Bakeneko's food. So yeah, three of the five Kakurangers can't fight for now. Back to the Bakeneko, we finally learned the reason why she kidnaps kids, to serve them to hungry Yokai customers. To put it simply, she is a chef to the Yokai who enters her pet shop. What's cool (?!) about it is that she serves kids fresh from the block for her hungry Yokai customers, something our heroes doesn't want to happen to the victims.

Thankfully, the Kakurangers arrived to save the kids from harm. Sasuke fights the Bakeneko while Tsuruhime saves the kids. Sasuke's fight with the Bakeneko continues to be fun, like they are trying to establish a new rivalry or something like that. At the end, Sasuke is defeated by the Bakeneko... or so we thought. As for Tsuruhime, much to her surprise, the kids are under Bakeneko's control! Now that her four subordinates are out of commission, and she is currently under captive, can she stop Bakeneko all by herself?

Aaand surprise, the other Kakurangers arrived just in time to save the day! Guess Tsuruhime's bitter herb medicine works wonders! As for Sasuke, as it turns out, he fooled the Bakeneko into thinking that he died. His explanation on how he survived once again reminds us that he is a ninja and he can do such things. I will not spoil you how he did it, the only thing that I can say about it is that it is something most ninjas will do in battle. Now that all five Kakurangers are assembled, it is time for battle!

The fights in this scene are fun to watch. So yeah, there is nothing special about it aside from the CGI sparks in Sasuke and Bakeneko's duel, and that Nekomaru arrives and rams Bakeneko! This is when we learned that Nekomaru is also a member of the Neko clan like Bakeneko. As for why Nekomaru joined the side of the Kakurangers is something that they didn't explain in this episode. Oh well, at least this cat bus made one cool entrance.

The giant fight in this episode is interesting. We saw both Red Saruder and White Kark together to fight Bakeneko. This is when I noticed something, the series tries to highlight that Muteki Shogun is composed of five individual humanoid mechas, a first in the Super Sentai franchise during that time. The way they handled it in this episode is really great. It showed us that individually, these humanoid mechas are basically the Kakurangers in robot form. The only time they are not "robot" Kakurangers is once they form the Muteki Shogun just to perform the finisher.

At the end, they defeated Bakeneko, Saizou, and Seikai and surprisingly, Jiraiya are useless for most part of the episode and Nekomaru did a lot of work in this episode. Thus, he deserves a reward coming from our ninja princess, which is obviously, a kiss! As expected, the three useless ninjas in this episode are jealous with what Nekomaru received and want a taste of Tsuruhime's lips! Oh well, they might receive that kiss someday... or not!