Ninja Sentai Kakuranger 28 – Master vs. Student

S*** just got real.

It's now time for Jiraiya to search for his Shinobi Scroll and in this journey, we learn more about his past and his relationship with his master, Gila. But things get interesting when we learned that his master is working for the Yokai! Can he fight his own master?

Since the day Jiraiya made his debut, he is easily my favorite Kakuranger. The fact that he is originally an outcast in the group who later learned how to get along with them is one of the things that I liked about this guy. It's a plus that he speaks fluent English and that his actor does most of his stunts in the series. When the series decided that each Kakuranger will have a quest to find their respective Shinobi Scrolls, I am excited to see what is Jiraiya's quest and boy, I am not disappointed with it.

For starters, Nue, the Yokai from the previous episode is still alive. As it turns out, he was buried alive and is now ordering some of his Yokai to do his work for him. Another thing that's interesting is that there's no Prince Junior interfering the search for the scroll. It's like the guy is confident that Nue can do the job and I am okay with it. I mean, Nue is seriously competent in the previous episode and he is one of the villains that I want to see in action after he made his first debut appearance.

Next is Sasuke who makes an appearance in this episode as he decides to help Jiraiya in his quest for the Shinobi Scroll. At first I hated that he is in the episode because from how I understand it, the quest is also a quest of discovering one's self, which is something that the other four already achieved. Having him here kinda ruins the other intention of this quest. But as the episode went on, the only thing Sasuke did is just aid him in some battles. For most part, he just lets Jiraiya search his Shinobi Scroll and that is a good thing. He still understands the other purpose of this quest.

Now that I am done talking some of the stuff indirectly related to Jiraiya's quest for the Shinobi Scroll, it's now time to talk about him. What's great about the episode is that we now have a better background about the character and how he started his training as a ninja. Those flashback scenes firmly established his relationship with his father and his mentor. Those scenes showed us how close he is with his mentor that at some point, acted like a father figure to him after his father died thanks to the Yokai. What's great about it is that they brought this up; complete with the flashback sequences just to prepare ourselves to one big plot twists.

Turns out that Jiraiya's mentor, Gali is working for the Yokai from the very beginning! He is the man who killed his father is working with Nue just to kill his own student! It's a really sad twist because Jiraiya treated him like his own father. The scene, which features Jiraiya bidding farewell to his master is really touching and just seeing his master step on the memento that he gave to his student makes the scene more tragic. To put it simply, the second half of the episode is basically Jiraiya's master showing us how awesome he is and it didn't help that he easily defeated Ninja Red Sasuke with just his standard equipment!

But there is one thing that bothered me. If Gali is training Jiraiya since day 1 as a Kakuranger and he is working for the Yokai, why didn't he kill Jiraiya during the time he is still at his weakest especially after he killed his father? For me, it doesn't make sense unless it is yet another tragic plot twist, which involves Gali training the man who will eventually kill him because he wants atonement for the sins he committed in the past. If this is Jiraiya's personal quest this entire time, all I have to say is that this is, hands down, the best story arc in this series. But for now, I can't wait to see what will happen next.