Ninja Sentai Kakuranger 12 – Enter, Juusho Fighters!

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Kids are mysterious disappearing, a town with adults who hates kids, especially their children and their ninja friends and a Tengu who wants to be the top Yokai. To put it simply, one sentence can't summarize this awesome episode!

A lot has happened in this episode, aside from the obligatory kids being kidnapped by the bad guys, we meet Doctor Yugami, a Yokai scientist who doesn't look like he has a theme or something related to Japanese demons. He looks more of a mad scientist and I like it, I seriously like it. This franchise needs more mad scientist looking characters! Hiring his services is Tengu, a guy who wants to be on top of Yokai Weekly, a magazine that ranks Yokai. Ignoring the fact that a magazine published by demons is kinda absurd, Tengu currently ranks 3rd in the list, which makes me wonder who is on top of this list.

Because he wants to be on top, the best way to do it is what else, destroy the Kakurangers! This is when Doctor Yugami comes in; his skills in science will help Tengu fulfill this ambition. As for the Kakurangers, they ended up in some town wherein they meet a boy whose parents are not acting right. Wait a minute, a strange town and people not acting properly, this is obviously a plot related to the Yokai and thus, our heroes head to the scene!

When they arrived to the scene, much to their surprise, the citizens are not answering their questions; instead they ended up attacking them! For a group of supposed trained ninjas, they were easily beaten by a group of civilians with everyday household items as weapons. It's ridiculously awesome that I love every bit of it. As for the kid, as expected, he ends up becoming one of the victims of the Yokai. If there is one thing I can't figure out right now is what's the relation between kids and the Yokai in this episode? That is until Tengu and Doctor Yugami appears and showed us his latest invention.

Because the kids are clumped into a single clay rock, and Doctor Yugami poured his liquid invention, the giant clay rock transformed into five Yokai that they defeated. The first thing I noticed is that these guys have some upgrades in the form of bladed weapons and in the case of one, a new cannon weapon. If I will take a page of Akibaranger's book of Super Sentai tropes, it is expected that these revived Yokai are weaker than the originals, but nope, they as strong or if not, stronger than the originals. I mean seriously, the Kakurangers are beaten badly by these revived Yokai individually!

To make matters worse is that during the giant battle, we learned that the revived Yokai are powered by the kids that they kidnapped in this episode! Well that explains the kid side plot! Aside from the revelation, I like the fight choreography in this one; it's really interesting to see five Juusho fighting the Yokai together after their debut episodes. What's interesting is that the Juusho actually have their own weapons! I mean seriously, we barely see them use the weapons because for most of the time, after doing a few punches and kicks, they will transform into Muteki Shogun.

Because of the revelation, the Kakurangers are easily beaten by the giant Tengu. This scene is one of the reasons why I really like Sasuke. He is one hot-blooded ninja that he even encouraged his teammates to stand up and to fight Tengu. What's great about this scene is how Sasuke tells his teammates that they are filled with infinite amounts of ninpo of justice, and that they still have one trick left in their sleeve. Our heroes removed the medals in their Doron Changers and throw them into the air, transforming into Juusho Fighters!

The Juusho Fighters are basically slimmer versions of the five main Juusho. What's great about these five is that the Juusho Fighters are like the Juusho from top to bottom with lesser armor. The best part about these guys is that these fighters utilize more of the animal they are based upon. Perfect examples are Battle Sarudar and Battle Ganma. We see the Battle Sarudar do some monkey-like movements when fighting a revived Yokai. As for the Battle Ganma, we see it do frog-like movements in the form of high kicks. My only disappointment in this fight scene is the Battle Rougan and the Battle Kumado, they just lift the Yokai they faced and throw it somewhere!

Now that the five revived Yokai are weak, it is time to finish this with Muteki Shogun! After performing the finisher, they destroyed the Tengu, releasing the kids out of the revived Yokai bodies. Since they are out of those bodies, it is expected that the revived Yokai are dead. Now that this is all over, Doctor Yugami swore that he will defeat the Kakurangers! Guess this means that this will not be the last time we will see this mad scientist.