Recap: Kamen Rider Shinobi, Episode 2 – Next NinPow!! Volume: Yaminin’s Assassin Plan

Rentarou uses substitution ninpou to escape the shurikens that come flying from a mysterious person behind the trees. Just then, Iroha finds him and wraps her arms around her crush. She says she is definitely getting his LINE. But Rentarou again uses ninpou to slip away, much to Iroha’s annoyance.

Meanwhile, Icchi is shocked that he lost to Shinobi even with the gold gourd. He decides not to reveal his identity until he defeats him.

Rentarou approaches Icchi and tells him about Iroha’s shurikens being bent. Icchi can’t help but admit that he is the culprit and he intentionally sabotaged her. Rentarou asks if her winning would cause trouble. And Icchi says big trouble because the company forbids romance between employees. If she wins, she gets hired.

Icchi actually wants to hire her as his secretary immediately. But anyway, he doesn’t want to take the chance that they can never date.

Rentarou understands now and says it’s pretty crappy that he’d go that far. Icchi regrets what he’s done and calls himself an idiot while sulking away.

Rentarou, however, knows he hit the hooded ninja with his shuriken. But Icchi isn’t hurt, which means it was someone else.

Iroha finds Rentarou to tell him she’s made it through to the final round. She says not to worry about her and to go work instead. But Rentarou wants to focus on finding the mysterious ninja.

Sadly, he stumbles upon dead ninjas and remembers Master Gamano warning him about the Niji no Hebi assassins potentially being on Iroha’s princess trail.

The final round of the tournament is about to begin, so Rentarou hurries over. For this challenge, the ninja holding the scroll after time is up will win. However, if you kill all other participants, you will win even without the scroll.

Icchi is shocked as he had not heard anything about this from Papa.

The referee tosses the scroll to Iroha and the other finalists turn into dark ninjas. The four of them attack Iroha as the spectators run for their lives. Icchi cannot believe Papa has made a decision behind his back once again.

Rentarou arrives and henshins. Iroha wants to help Shinobi battle the dark ninjas. Icchi tries to stop her, saying he wants to protect her. But all of Iroha’s attention is toward Shinobi. This makes Icchi angry at Shinobi.

Rentarou finishes off the ninja finalists and then sees that the referee is the ninja he injured earlier with his shuriken. The ninja transforms into his dark form Yaminin and demands Rentarou explain why he is always around that woman Iroha. What is their relation?

Rentarou realizes they used Iroha to draw him out. Yaminin and Rentarou battle, but Rentarou’s ninjutsu just gets absorbed by the dark powers. Just then, Icchi arrives, henshined as Hattari, saying he will be the one that defeats Shinobi.

Rentarou tries to get Icchi to understand the situation, but Icchi is determined to unmask Shinobi to prove that he is more handsome than whoever is inside the suit. Rentarou is able to knock Icchi off him.

But Yaminin offers to team up with Icchi in order to expose Shinobi. Icchi and Yaminin tag-team Rentarou and forces him to dehenshin.

Rentarou searches around for his gourd so he can henshin. Icchi, still henshined, comes running over. He is shocked to see Rentarou, but doesn’t put two and two together and asks if he’s seen Shinobi. Rentarou points Icchi down the path and his identity is still safe.

Rentarou decides to use the hood he took from Icchi earlier to cover his face. But when he spots his gourd, Yaminin arrives and picks it up first. Yaminin uses dark ninpou to bind Rentarou.

Episode Thoughts

Fun and exciting! You know, I’m not sure how a whole season would play out. But I think I would enjoy 50 episodes like this one. At least, in this short time, they’ve shown that there’s a lot of potential in both the comedy and drama aspects of the Shinobi story.

Like Icchi’s only reason for sabotaging Iroha was because the company forbids office romance. Lol So absurd, but still hilarious. I had forgotten about that, so watching him admit it was a fun surprise here. It also helps to establish Icchi’s character as someone who is quite lovesick and a bit clumsy, but not a bad guy at his core. Potentially seeing him be tempted by the dark ninjas throughout the season only to eventually pair up with his best bro in the end would be a great story to watch play out.

Hideya Tawada again is able to stealthily balance the comedy and drama in his performance. And this episode allowed for more opportunities to see how he and Rentarou can get serious as well.

I will say, I don’t know how we would deal with Iroha unknowingly crushing on her brother all season though lolololol And as we saw in the crossover with Tycoon, it does last all season lol

Overall, another fun episode. It’s fun to watch as if it is actually a series. But a movie treatment with this story would be really great as well.