I can’t wait for the showdown with
spoiler
the weird little person ninja.
This episode gives us 2 fights: One with what feels like a major character Zai the Shinigami/Reaper, a second powerful ninja whom the ninja boss is withholding from fighting our protagonist for… reasons?
Sounds like an excuse for a final fight…
And the direction and storyboarding have a big problem with this scene: Both ninjas are wearing masks, so we can’t see their mouths moving, so there is some initial confusion as to whom is speaking. And it’s not an artful ambiguity, it’s just just plain confusion.
And then there’s the end of the first fight, somehow the renegade senior ninja pursued by Shinigami fails to notice…
spoiler
he’s been run through his abdomen by a whole sword that’s dripping with his own blood
I mean ninjas are sneaky, but this attack didn’t look that sneaky enough so he wouldn’t notice that.
Okay, blah blah blah is said, and we’re off to the second fight…
Once again, we see our protagonist, now nicknamed Higan, use his many arms ninjutsu again like he did last episode.
Early in the episode, ninja boss is talking about Higan describing him as having “mastered countless fighting techniques” but so far he has only shown us 2.
It’s probable that Higan knows more fighting techniques, but the problem is that there’s a disconnect in the writing and what is shown on screen in the episode.
And then I have a problem with the obnoxious big-headed mini-boss character. Sorry, but physical deformity and homosexuality are not qualifications for villainy these days. Please do better.
The MC may know countless fighting techniques but I guess he’s sticking to the ones that are suitable for the situation. It’s the third episode so I have no expectations for him to be pulling all his tricks out of a bag early on.
The character that controlled the robot that our MC fought, when I watched him I didn’t think he was evil because he was smaller, or because he wants to bone the MC. Villainy comes in all shapes and sizes.
The point of some character saying that is that Higan’s mastery of multiple fighting techniques will appear in the same episode later. Otherwise those words set up expectations that would not be met.
Instead, we got a repeat of a skill he used last episode, and only one skill used, making Higan look like a one trick pony, which seems to directly contradict what was said earlier.
The writer would have been better off having ninja boss say something more general like “(Higan) was one of our strongest and most skillful ninjas”
