Ninja Storm: Good but Could have been better

donmccullen-1

For the ninth PR series Ninja Storm (based the Super Sentai counterpart Hurricanger).  The PR crew more/less made to move from the U.S. to New Zealand to shoot the PR.  This is also the very first PR series to be produced entirely by Walt Disney which acquired the Family Channel and PR was part of the deal.

In this series Shane Clark, Tori Hanson, and Dustin Brooks are students at the Wind Ninja Academy.  However they tend to be slackers and their Sensei Kanoi Watanabe chastise them for their lack of commitment.  However when an old student named Lothor return to enact his vengeance on Earth he kidnaps the students of the Wind Academy as well as other ninja schools.  In process he turns Kanoi into a guinea pig  

Shane, Tori, and Dustin miss the action are the only ones left, and because of that they have given Power Morphers to become the Wind Power Rangers. They are assisted by Kanoi's son Cameron who is not happy but the arrangement but still does his job well at Ninja Operations.  However Lothor recruits two students from the Thunder Academy when he sees they were given to ability to become Power Rangers themselves.  He tells them that Kanoi murdered their parents but so learn it's was a lie and eventually the Thunder Rangers side with the Wind Rangers in the fight against Lothor.

Cam wanting a piece of the action and to not just sitting on the sidelines goes back in time to retrieve a pendent that vanished years ago.  He sees his parents in their younger years as well Kanoi's brother Kya.  Cam eventually discovers that Kya would become Lothor.  He also understands why his father held him back from learning the ways of the Ninja.  Cam was to become the Green Samurai Ranger and does get a chance to fight with the rest of the rangers as well provide any weapons as need be.

The first weeks of Ninja Storm are good as the team was being put together. Lots of cliffhangers which make you come back to see what happens.  Sadly when the team finally is completed their is a lack of story arc for a few weeks until the Lothor's Generals come into play.  If their were more story arc's like their were in Wild Force then Ninja Storm could have done better than the previous PR series.

Lothor meanwhile has been made into a Dr. Evil type while some of the Generals that serve him have a darker bend.  Lothor's nieces Kapri and Marah also provide the comic relief but have their moments of darkness and redemption at the very end.  The heroes were great but they had to make Dustin the clown of Rangers.  However he does shine with the rest at the end.  Kanoi unlike Zordon is quick to discipline when the Rangers (and even Cam) get out of line, and it was seen several times during the show.  That does not make Zordon bad, but Kanoi is not afraid to put his foot (or his GP body form) down.  Also the creation of holographic Hip-Hop personality of Cam was a waste of time since he was not used as many hoped we would have been.

Ninja Storm was good but could have been better.

score /10

donmccullen-1 29 February 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0862823/