Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru: Shichikon no Ryuujinmaru

During a battle against a new evil lord that seeks to take over Mt. Soukai, Ryujinmaru sacrifices himself to save the day. Wataru discovers that Ryujinmaru is still alive, but split into different fragments. To collect the shards, he, Himiko, and Toraou travel into a series of new locations through a reflection of the sacred mountain. A gimmick to this journey is that each world has a different Ryujinmaru and a different Savior that Wataru takes the form of. Usually by getting a costume change. I'm deeply shocked that the overt toy advertisement ONA with shortened episodes is where we get the best version of themain formula. I really expected them to phone it in, but it's obvious that the team that made this really cared about giving Wataru his last hurrah. You should be able to watch this one on its own, but sometimes they show off something from the original series or 2 and you're just supposed to know what or who that is. It never directly impacts the plot, but you're going to be a bit confused about the birdman that pops up for all of 2 minutes, or the one mech they mention by name. This ONA also pretends that Chou never happened, so if you missed that, it's not a problem here. The episodes are shortened down to roughly 17 minutes a piece, so they run a tighter ship than in any of the main series. They usually do this by reducing the total number of gags or by keeping the villains simple. Fortunately, the characters and plots are kept intact. It never feels like we're rushing to squeeze everything into the episode's runtime, but more like we had exactly the length needed to tell that episode. The cast is our typical members, though for starting members, Shibaraku is replaced with Toraou, who finally broke the curse and is allowed to be part of the party from the start. Shibaraku and Umihiko both get added to the party along the way. Even with the limited screentime, pretty much everyone not named Kurama gets a good chance to return with more or less their best versions. I'm actually disappointed it was so short. I would've been happy to see more, but I suppose the magic of this one is that they had to cut everything that wasn't strictly necessary. This leads nicely into the major problem. There are 9 episodes and 7 fragments of Ryujinmaru to find. Most fragments take 2 episodes to collect. They resolve that number problem by CUTTING OUT 2 of the fragments. They never collect the green or orange ones, despite both of those clearly appearing in the last episode. I had to double-check that I didn't miss an episode or two and scrubbed back through. I even read the official episode summaries, and no I did not miss any. In the SEVEN Souls of Ryujinmaru, they collect FIVE and call it a day. The second opening sequence clearly shows the two Watarus and Ryujinmarus we miss. The only reason they would've included them here is because the team wanted to adapt those parts of the manga, but they just didn't have the episode count to cover everything and decided those would be the least worst to cut. That explains why Kurama just sort of shows up at the end - he was probably associated with the orange one. I suppose if they had to cut something, it's good it wasn't the actual ending, but it's a real disappointment. For the Kurama fans (all 1 of you), I'm sorry you were robbed. The much more important sin is that they took Wataru's roller skates away. Again! I know Chou did it first (and it shall not be forgiven), but the real evil here is that they had the GALL to reanimate the ending sequence in the original series without the roller skates. In the ending that spent, like, ITS ENTIRE BUDGET ANIMATING WATARU DANCING IN SKATES. I don't know whose grandma got killed by roller skates, but it's a shame they killed all the fun and joy in retaliation. That gripe aside, I'd strongly recommend this one for anyone that has watched any of the previous series. It's short and sweet and will probably feel very nostalgic with its reuse of the original themes and OSTs. If you've never seen anything associated with Wataru before, you might have fun with it, but I'm less sure that I could recommend it. You'll probably know by the end of the second episode if it's worth finishing.