named Nishiwaki (Keizo Kanie) that offered her a place in the Sukeban Deka program, and she accepted in exchange for help to find her disappeared dad. In the process, Yoko would be given the name of her presumably dead predecessor, Saki Asamiya, and a similar yo-yo weapon. Sukeban Deka II contained connections to the first series, as Hiroyuki Nagato returned periodically to his role as the Dark Director, while Nishiwaki was revealed to be a former coworker of Kyoichiro Jin. However, in a departure from both the first series and manga, where Saki worked alone most of the time, Sukeban Deka II added two sidekicks for the main character: Yukino Yajima (Akie Yoshizawa), the refined heiress of a rich family from Kyoto who was also a Japanese martial arts expert, and Kyoko "Marble Okyo" Nakamura (Haruko Sagara), a street-wise Osaka native who excelled at street fighting and the usage of marbles as weapons. Despite those changes, the series actually surpassed the first in popularity, lasting 42 episodes and bringing the possibility of a third installment. After the closure of the second season, Toei conceived an independent spin-off named to air before Sukeban Deka III. It would be based around ninjas, taking inspiration from Sho Kosugi's ninja cinema and Shinji Wada's own manga Ninja Flight, as well as from Star Wars. However, early into production it was decided to merge both Ninpucho and III into a single series. The result was the official third season, . Launched in October 1986, it starred Yui Asaka as another original character after Minamino declined to return. Yui Kazama, a country girl from Kyushu who was recruited by the Dark Director and given the role of the third Saki Asamiya. In the story, Yui was sent to Tokyo to meet up with her long lost sisters, Yuka (Yuka Onishi) and Yuma (), and they inherited the family's ninja art in order to solve the menace of a psychic terrorist known as the Emperor. Now turned into a trio of kunoichi, they would battle the villain and his army, helped by their mentor Kazuya Yoda (Nagare Hagiwara) and the agents Reia Kido (Satomi Fukunaga) and Obiwan Osho (Hiroyuki Tanaka). At the end, it would be discovered that the Emperor was the father of the sisters and that Yui had a brainwashed twin sister. Yui herself rarely used the Saki Asamiya moniker and showed a very different