Ronin Warriors Part 3 Episodes 11-15

The Ronin Warriors are back.  With the help of Mia and Yuli, Ryo, Sage, Cye, Kento and Rowen have been reunited.  Their armor has protected and rejuvenated the five warriors and now theyre stronger than ever before.  Talpa goes on the defensive, locking down his massive fortress and preparing his troops for battle.  This also means making sure his Warlords are ready to take on their rivals…and one of them, Anubis, is faltering in his resolve to serve the Dynasty.  There’s also the matter of the strange Monk who has been aiding the Warriors in small doses across many battles.  Who is he and does he know the true purpose of their magical armor?  The battle for the world heats up as new rivalries ignite and important secrets are revealed.

Well we got the band back together, now what?  It’s time to go straight into enemy territory and kick some ass that’s what.  The first full week of Ronin Warriors closed out with an adnreneline fueled race through a deserted city taking on Warlords, Soldiers galore and even the heroes own self doubts.  Oh and the Ancient One finally got involved but ended up creating just as many problems as he did solutions in the process.

While we did get to see the team finally fight together again, most of this set saw them separated yet again.  Thankfully, they were just divided into small teams across various sections of the city.  So we got to see a lot more interaction with the main cast.  And yet something bugged me.  Besides Ryo, who we’ve spent the most amount of time with out of the five heroes, Kento is the only character who has any real stand out traits and gets some actual growth in this set.  Sage, Cye and Rowen all feel like near carbon copies of one another: cool, calm, collected, strategic.  The only way to truly tell their characters apart is their armor color and weapons.  Still, gotta focus on the positives and that was what Kento had to go through.  You’d think it would be obvious that Talpa and Dais were full of crap telling him that the Armors of the Ronin Warriors and Dark Warlords were all meant for eventual evil.  But that tiny half truth was enough to shake Kento’s resolve so much he couldn’t transform for most of an important battle.  It wasn’t until Yuli, who continues to soar as this shows most unexpected MVP, raced into action despite the danger that Kento got his act together.  These guys might have bad ass armor, weapons and powers, but Yuli might just be the bravest character in the whole show and even he had some sad moments reminiscing about his lost parents.

Anubis also got brought to the forefront of things this time.  Talpa’s successful attempt to turn Anubis back to evil was at first successful and it was kind of awesome watching him play The Terminator as he walked through Ryo, Rowen, Sage and Cye all together while Kento was freaking out over his armor.  It kind of reminded me of the end of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie when Shredder soundly kicked the butts of all four Turtles before Splinter bailed them out.  But once Anubis was freed from evil influence again, he had a lot to think about when the Ancient One laid out Talpa’s endgame for him and the fact that Anubis is actually one of the good guys, he’s just been corrupted for a really long time. That makes me wonder if all of the Dark Warlords will eventually come over to the side of the good guys.  All of them against Talpa, now that would be something to see.

Then there’s the Ancient One.  Sure we got some answers as to Talpa’s true intentions and he managed to give the heroes their opening to Talpa’s castle at the cost of his own life.  But a crap ton of questions emerged as well.  It looks like the Ronin Warriors, who have never met one another before this whole mess started, all know the Ancient One in some way.  Even White Blaze seems to love the guy a ton and his sad cry at his Masters death was tear worthy.  So…how could the guys not know that is was AO who was helping them in their worst possible moments?  Wasn’t Mia carrying around his staff for a bit when they got back to Tokyo, did no one notice it was the Ancient One’s staff?  How come the Ancient One never told the others about each others existence…or ok maybe he did but why didn’t he bring them all together way before now so that, idk, they could get better acquainted and acclimated to fighting the forces of darkness as a team?  I do feel bad for Ryo and the others having lost their mentor…but all of these questions he’s left behind kind of make me mad.  Yeah, yeah, we’re only 15 episodes in but still…some more context and backstory would be nice please.

Well, to offset my Ancient One frustrations, I do think we got some action, which continues to get better and better with each set of episodes.  Cale and Sage had a rematch in a dark red dimension that looked gorgeous and saw some nice swordplay between the two giant blade wielding warriors.  The same dark red color palate was put to good use in Kento’s rematch with Dais, providing some more nightmarish imagery that Dais has become known for.  There was the aforementioned Anubis battle but the best battle yet came afterwards.  Finally, all five Ronin Warriors took on Sekmet, Dais and Cale and it was everything this long awaited brawl had been promised.  These guys are a far cry from the nigh powerless rookies they were at the beginning of the series.  Do I think they might be able to take Talpa…eh probably not, that’d be too easy, but man was this fight cool.

And so we come to the end of Week One of Ronin Warriors and the stage is set for the big battle against Talpa himself.  Funny it’s coming so soon and next week marks the halfway point of the series (not counting the OVAs).  I wonder what stories the show will have to tell if Talpa falls next week.  Maybe we’ll get some character backstories (ESPECIALLY FOR NOT RAIDEN ZORDON…ahem I mean the Ancient One).  Whatever happens, we’ll find out next week as Ronin Warriors gets ready for the (first) big climax.  See ya then.