I saw the rumblings first on Thai-Toku.com- leaked (i.e. super-fuzzy) images of the rangers' new helmets & coloring. The coloring are red, blue, green, yellow, and pink.

Though I can't read any of the boards there, some English words always pop out for whatever reason, and some of the words that kept popping out were "2009" and "ninja".

Then, by chance, I was browsing through Wikipedia's article on Super Sentai on October 11th, and I saw that a new text-only entry had been made at the bottom of the list. It says that in July, Toei Co., LTD (the company that produces the series in long cooperation with design firm PLEX and toy-maker Bandai) had applied for the new title to be recorded in their copyright system in Japan.

The application-name listed on Wikipedia is "侍戦隊シンケンジャー" (both "サムライセンタイシンケンジャー" and "ジセンタイシンケンジャー" are listed as alternatives). (The first title here I have seen on Thai-Toku as well.)

On October 12th, I got a translation of that first title above back from our own webmaster, JoshB. He says that the new series is going to be called "Samurai Squadron Shinkenja"; which, by my guess, will be romanized as "Samurai Sentai Shinkenger".

In Josh's e-mail to me, he clarified the title. According to Wikipedia, a Shinken is:

"...a Japanese term used to describe a Japanese sword that is sharp and used for real cutting or combat, as opposed to those that are blunted for other types of practice. Today, they are primarily used for high level iaido and/or tameshigiri (cutting) practice..."

On the same page is a reference to shinkendo- which, in short, is the practice of swordsmanship among samurai.

. . .

As mentioned above, leaked images of the Shinkenger's helmets have been revealed- appearing as unusually-complicated (for a Super Sentai series) thickly-lined patterns for the all-black visors. Now, this last part is merely speculation on my part, but- in my opinion- they all vaguely seem to resemble insects.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Sentai#The_series_of_Super_Sentai

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