Unofficial Sentai Ninja Captor

When Gokaiger was airing, a mysterious scan from a vintage magazine was circulating the net that featured Ninja Captor listed amongst the Super Sentai teams. If you were like me, it was sorta irritating how people took it seriously, when...why would Ninja Captor count? You might have a slim case if it aired in '78, when there wasn't a Sentai show on the air at the time, but Ninja Captor ran right as Goranger aired. Goranger! As in THE FIRST, as in, Ninja Captor couldn't possibly qualify when Goranger was still creating the franchise. Why don't we just count Bibyun as a Sentai while we're at it? Voicelugger? Gransazer?

Nobody ever knew where the scan came from, which made some think it might have been a Photoshop'd joke or a mistake by whatever magazine ran it. But, no, as I was going through auction listings for Dynaman, up pops this book -- "The 45 heroes of 8 Great Sentai!" (I tried to highlight in green Ninja Captor's being listed on the cover, but you can clearly see Captor 7 on the back of the book.) So, some nincompoop at Toei did, in fact, at one time think Ninja Captor should be ranked, but it thankfully never stuck, so now it's just one of those curiosities. What's funny, though, is that this book is from '83, when Goranger and JAKQ tended to be left out of this sort of thing. I could see someone at Toei trying to push for the Saburo Hatte-created Ninja Captor as being counted as a Sentai back when the two Ishinomori shows were excluded, but...here they are, all together. Come to think of it...what's with this book including Goranger and JAKQ as "Super Sentai," when Toei didn't officially include them until, like, the time of Ohranger!?! What crazy scheme was Biff Tannen up to this time that this book exists?

All during Gokaiger and Akibaranger, people kept bringing up Ninja Captor. "Wouldn't it be funny if --" No, it wouldn't have been funny. It would just create nerd wars that I probably would have had to fight in. Other than a brief moment in the early '80s where Biff Tannen was trying to push Ninja Captor as a Sentai entry while building his empire in the alternate 1980s timeline, Ninja Captor was never mentioned along with Super Sentai. Nobody remembers that show, and there's probably only two people who have seen that show in its entirety. As neat as it would be to count toku legend Daisuke Ban as a Sentai Red, Ninja Captor ain't a Super Sentai.