Ninja Sentai Kakuranger 14 – The Yokai Prince Named Junior

Also, the first appearance of this guy.

In this episode, we have a Yokai doctor, a Yokai prince named Junior and Seikai having a stomach ache because of eating too much! And here I was thinking that he learned his lesson about the consequences of eating too much!

The opening minutes of the episode gave me this episode that this episode is your traditional hilarious filler episode, only to find out later that this episode is actually a buildup on something big. By big, I mean an introduction episode to a new enemy commander. After the hilarious sequence involving the quake doctor and his assistants, we later learned that he is a Yokai whose specialty is to spread disease. Wow, this is quite ironic. The fight scenes in this series continues to impress me due to its creativity and to raise it a bit more, we have a giant fight before the episode reached the halfway mark!

If there is one thing that surprised me in this episode is an early giant fight. For starters, the series aired during the 90's and I have this impression that all 90's Super Sentai shows will not feature a giant fight once the show reaches the 6-minute mark, but nope, they have a giant fight. Granted, Dairanger had it but it is just a continuation of the events that happened in the previous episode. As for the giant fight itself, it's basically the Juusho Fighters doing a lot of amazing stuff as always, that is until a mysterious skull figure saved the Yokai doctor.

He ends up in some old house wherein we saw a punk playing his bad looking electric guitar and to be honest, he looked like those standard looking street punks back in the 90's. He didn't strike me as someone that is threatening, heck, his name is Junior, and to top it all off, he is a prince! To put it simply, I didn't took the guy seriously as a villain, but as a character, he is quite fun to watch. Fun in a sense that he likes hitting his subordinates with an electric guitar ala Kamen Rider Zanki and Todoroki from Kamen Rider Hibiki!

As expected, Professor Yugami is working for Junior. What made it interesting is that he said that he is quite terrifying. Terrifying in what sense? That is if he is connected with the skull monster that saved the Yokai doctor. As ordered by Junior, he is asked to upgrade the Yokai doctor so that he will not be a disgrace to the Yokai. For them to defeat the Kakurangers, Professor Yugami suggested that the best way to defeat them is to defeat the Juusho Fighters. Umm, seriously, why beat these slimmed versions of the Juusho if you can just beat the Juusho? With that they can kill two birds with one stone.

So yeah, the Yokai doctor begins his second wave of attack and Seikai is not part of the group because of his bad stomach. While the Kakurangers are busy fighting the ones on the group, they send their Juusho Fighters to fight the giant enemy. Much to their surprise, he has some upgrades, beating the Juusho Fighters. With that in mind, the Kakurangers decided to step into battle to aide their Juusho Fighters. If there is one thing that caught me off guard is that they actually planned in trapping both the Juusho and the Juusho Fighters to destroy the two groups! Well everything makes sense right now! The reason why they target the Juusho Fighters is to force the Juusho to protect their Juusho Fighters!

Since four Juusho and Juusho Fighters are in danger, there is only one hero around, and that is Seikai. What's surprising about Seikai's appearance is that it showed us that stomach ache will not stop him to save his friends! With that in mind, he was able to save them with his own hands. I am starting slowly like Seikai a bit more. Now that the Juusho are free thanks to Seikai, Sasuke received a message coming from Battle Sarudar to fuse with them. The fusion scene looks kinda bad because I can still see the crop marks coming from the green screen where this scene is likely filmed.

With our heroes inside the Juusho Fighters, they were able to destroy the chains and see our heroes fight inside it. The fight of the Kakurangers inside the Juusho Fighters is basically the Kakurangers with more armor. Our heroes performed the finisher related to the Juusho Fighters and it kinda reminded me of the early Juusho team finishers when it comes to the attack calls. At the end, they were able to the defeat the Yokai doctor but this is not yet over.

Back in the bad guy's place, Doctor Yugami is asking for mercy coming from Junior, only to be sent out by the foot soldiers. What made this scene a bit creepy is that we see Junior play the piano in manner that you feel his anger to one of his subordinates. But what this scene more awesome is his transformation into his Yokai form while playing the piano. As it turns out, he is the skull monster that saved the Yokai doctor earlier in the episode! The way he stares at the audience looks really scary. Though his name sounds like we shouldn't take this guy seriously, his voice and his appearance is quite intimidating that it made me ignore his rather "cute" name and take this guy seriously. If the preview is an indication, he is one tough villain to beat.