Ninja Sentai Kakuranger 10 – Yokai Family

What a cute little baby... or not.

The Yokai Konaki-jiji just wants to have a family, and thus he starts getting human souls to reanimate the dolls and masks that he owns. As it affects more lives, the Kakurangers devised a plan to lure him out. Will this plan work?

This is one of the rare times in this series that I actually pitied a Yokai. The last time I did it was with the taxi driver Yokai one that Jiraiya met when he first arrived in Japan. Even though the guy wants to have a family, it doesn't mean that he should steal human souls just to reanimate his dolls. Why not get married with a female Yokai and have kids with her? I mean, it makes a lot more sense if you ask me! But what the heck, at least the approach of stealing human souls is faster than doing the long process of courtship, and stuff related to it.

His method in stealing human souls is kinda neat. I mean, the guy disguise himself as a baby just left by his mother somewhere. If someone approaches the crib, he will just strangle the target and have his/her soul. It's simple and effective, but because of one of the kids that Tsuruhime met off screen, the Kakurangers are kinda aware of a Yokai's existence that is responsible to this one, until finally, they spotted the Yokai, only to be badly beaten up by him. The sad part is that the three stooges, Saizou, Seikai and most especially, Jiraiya didn't beat a single baby face (?) Yokai!

This is when the Kakurangers thought of luring him out of his crib. This method is basically disguising as a baby, hoping that Konaki-jiji will appear. I am not sure how this will work, but I guess the concept is that they will lure the original with the copycat. The idea is simple, and considering that they are fighting a Yokai, I guess I should expect that he is kinda straight forward in this kind of thing. After a game of Ninpo Rock-Paper-Scissors (!), Sasuke lost and thus, he ends up becoming the not so cute baby.

The execution of the plan is... kinda bad. So bad that I wondered what were they thinking when they made this plan. But hey, at least it attracted the attention of Konaki-jiji. Much to my surprise, he actually used the foot soldiers to disguise as soccer players just to distract the Kakurangers so that he can kidnap Sasuke! While one foot soldier is busy with pushing Sasuke's baby cart, the Kakurangers are fighting some foot soldiers. The out of suit fights in this episode continues to be interesting. So yeah, I will not say much about it.

As for Sasuke, he witnessed the birth of Konaki-jiji's family, his kids are kinda vulgar but that's not what this scene all about. This scene showed us that finally, he has his own family that he can call his own; his enthusiasm of having a family picture taken shows that he seriously longed for a complete family. It's both a sad and happy sight to see. Sad because he needs to steal human souls just to have his own family, happy because after years of being alone, he finally has a family that he can call his own.

While Konaki-jiji is busy with his new family, Sasuke contacted his teammates who is about to rescue him. When they finally arrived in the Yokai's hideout, Sasuke is gone and currently, he is inside the baby cart that he used earlier. Konaki-jiji's plan in defeating Sasuke is simple, let him ram on a three drums of explosives! That scene sort of disappointed me for the reason that during the distant shots, we don't see Sasuke inside the crib. Instead we have a dummy with Sasuke's headband, and I guess it also comes with the wishes of the producers that hopefully, no one will notice it. Granted, it's for the actor's safety but why place a dummy instead of a stunt double? At least a stunt double makes a lot more sense than a dummy!

Now that Sasuke's baby cart rammed on the drum of explosives, he thought he finally killed Ninja Red, only to be surprised that he actually escaped from the ropes using an ancient Sarutobi clan rope escape technique! This made me conclude that the Kakurangers who don't have background of their ninja history actually studied their clan's techniques off screen. This made me wish that we will have an episode focused on the Kakurangers trying to learn an old ninja skill.

Aside from Sasuke's new ninja moves, this episode marked the debut of the Kakuranger Ball! The Kakuranger Ball is basically the Goranger Storm less the random magical transformation of the ball, and the finisher having a soccer element in it. The quality of the giant fight in this episode is the same as the previous ones. Ninja X will first fight the Yokai in his Juusho mode before combining with the others to finish it with the Muteki Shogun's finisher. At the end, they were able to defeat Konaki-jiji, ending his newly formed family and saving the civilians caught in this mess. It's kinda sad that the guy only have a family for like 2-5 minutes before it was taken from him.