The casts of the 2014 sentai season, "Ressha Sentai Toqger," and the 2015 season, "Shuriken Sentai Ninninger," join together in this 65-minute movie, SHURIKEN SENTAI NINNINGER VS. TOQGER THE MOVIE: NINJAS IN WONDERLAND (2016), featuring a host of villains from each show as well as some new ones. I watched this in Japanese with no subtitles and I couldn't find an adequate synopsis on the web, so I can't really describe significant plot points, but there are plenty of imaginative action scenes and some unusual settings that made the whole thing worthwhile. There's also a lot of train action, derived from the train theme of Ressha Sentai Toqger (which I think of as Train Rangers), which appeals to me greatly. The film opens with a series of dream sequences courtesy of the sleeping Takaharu (Red Ninninger), who's in a 19th century-style wood-paneled railroad car with the other Ninningers (Ninja Rangers). The first dream has Kinji Takigawa, the gold Ninninger, performing with a rock band before a crowd of screaming fans. The second involves the Ninninger team dressed as "spies" in a shootout at night with Men in Black, rescued by a mysterious figure in a Sherlock Holmes outfit. The third involves a wedding between one of the ninja girls and one of the Toqger boys, interrupted by monsters leading to a ranger fight inside the church. Eventually, they learn that they're all riding the Yokai Ressha (Demon Train) and soon the Red Toqger Ranger rides up in his Rainbow Line special to try to rescue them. There's a big fight in the Demon Train as four of the Rangers (two from one team, two from the other) take on the monster minions from each series, who have joined forces.
The two Red Rangers are separated from the others and Red Ninja winds up in a picturesque samurai village, nestled in the hills, where they're confronted by a new enemy, the laughing, top hat-adorned Dark Doctor Mavro, a remnant of the Shadow Line, the antagonistic force in Ressha Sentai Toqger. The place is an elaborate evil theme park referred to in one sign as Yami Ninja Land, "yami" meaning dark. Mavro conjures up three famous ninjas of the past, Hattori Hanzo, Sarutobi Sasuke, and Fuma Kotaro, who combine to fight the Red Ninja, who puts up a valiant fight but is soon defeated. On the verge of certain death, he's rescued by the Red Toqger Ranger and quickly spirited away. Long story short, the other members of the Ninninger and Toqger teams agree to work together to rescue the two Red Rangers from Yami Ninja Land. The Toqger members are even given temporary ninja powers and ninja outfits. They all converge on Ninja Land and use ninja tactics to infiltrate the place and eventually join the Red Rangers in a massive battle at a quarry.
Meanwhile, on Harumi Island in Tokyo Bay, two of the villains from the different series show up with the Hitokarage, the Ninninger monster soldiers, to terrorize citizens until they are stopped by a new sentai team, Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger, the stars of the 2016 sentai season, making a cameo appearance. It's a massive fight scene filmed on location at a sprawling waterfront plaza adjoining the Harumi Passenger Ship Terminal. Its modernist architecture provides a dramatic backdrop and its wide, open plaza lends itself well to large sentai battle scenes. It's a frequent location for fight scenes in these shows.
Back at Ninja Land, the Rangers' battle with the Yami Aka Ninja results in an uncertain fate for Takaharu, but after some intervention from the afterlife, all twelve Rangers are reunited for a final battle with Mavro and his army of villains at an abandoned mine in the hills. When Mavro pilots his own train monster, the Ninningers and Toqgers combine their zords for a spectacular zord battle under a darkened sky at the mine. It's one of the most impressive such scenes I've yet seen in a sentai movie.
I liked the abundance of historical, ninja and train motifs in the film, as well as the use of actual locations for much of the action, enhanced by various CGI effects, of course. And I was intrigued by the samurai village backlot set, which doesn't appear to be in any studio complex. It's certainly not part of the Toei Kyoto Studio Park, which has a somewhat smaller village on its grounds. I wonder where it is in Japan.
For the record, "Shuriken Sentai Ninninger" forms the basis for the current Power Rangers season in the U.S., "Power Rangers Ninja Steel." Sadly, "Ressha Sentai Toqger" was never used as the basis for a Power Rangers season. For the record, Toqger is pronounced Toe-KYU-jer.
