Ranking of Kings #23 — Revenge of the… Who Are You Again?
March 24th, 2022
Boy, did this show fall apart in the second half.
Impressions:
Man, anybody who thought that this would at any point address the titular ranking of kings or resolve Ouken's whole deal must be feeling pretty silly right about now. Same as the entire speech about how Miranjo suffered, which makes it okay for her to murder thousands over some twenty odd years of unrepentent mayhem. Pretty sure that's the exact opposite of most revenge speeches. Having an injustice done to you is not carte blanche to do the same to everybody who gets in your way. I also have to note once again that literally none of her plan made an iota of sense. Usurp the throne to abandon the throne. Just… just leave? And why on Earth is everybody forgiving her? You cut off their limbs and permanently maimed them like… an hour ago. They didn't get to see your tragic backstory. All they know is that you're some kind of witch who corrupted a child, who the child now is slavishly devoted to. Literally every one of you should be assuming he's under another spell, goddamnit.
I have to note this because it was basically a victory lap episode where everybody just sat around and remarked on what a great leader Bojji had become. No idea how or why. The magical powers arbitrarily bestowed on him, I guess? Also, that one 'dead' evil king guy came back, freed Ouken, cut off his head, and threw it in a lake where a fish ate it. Which is… certainly a scene that happened that was different from… just doing nothing. Seriously, airing two minutes of blank space would have been an improvement over that. Who was asking for this dude to come back? Who thought that mad tortured stuffed-in-a-rock guy's final moment of the show should be having a throwaway stooge run up, teabag him, and cavort off cackling? If you considered Ouken a tragic figure, this is just spitting in your face. Or if this was one of the few dangling threads, this is a pie and fart in the face. Then, of course, we cry over friendship, because that's the shortcut in this show to try to pretend like there's any depth or emotion to it that we could have been creating in the time we spent turning two month villains into gag fodder. What a way to end it.
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I’d like to assume that Miranjo can be forgiven easily because it’s not like she had any majorly negative effect on any of them. Absolutely nobody in present time in this story died. One guy lost his eye. That’s the extent to which the entire villain action went.
Kingbo coming back wasn’t unexpected albeit done so arbitrarily at the end it was hilarious. “Throw Ouken’s head 20 kilometres away because apparently you can” was certainly a way to defeat him within twenty seconds that clearly nobody else could have thought of which is why we got six episodes of fighting him instead.
I’m also not entirely sure what lesson we were supposed to have learned from this other than forgiving and being friends. You’d think the protagonist would at some point have done something big but he kind of didn’t. Heck, the one guy who resolved the entire mess was Despa’s main guard who chopped off the demon’s head (yet another side character clearing an entire big subplot by beheading just like that) so someone could make a wish. I loathe shows where only the protagonist gets to solve all issues but what did Bojji actually do in this show?
Daida, despite having a fraction of the screentime, essentially got all the character development. Bojji went from “lovable and flawless apart from being weak” to “beloved and flawless, now also strong” on the virtue of… having leveled up in a training room. Offscreen.
I don’t think that made him better at being forgiving and friends with everyone, which, once again, is what this entire show was about but he clearly had no place in the Daida/Miranjo/Bosse/Demon main story apart from being vaguely or literally related to them. Which is ironic, considering Ousama Ranking wants you to believe that being a king is not about connections or blood relations but the true spirit within or something.
And if we consider the main story to be the kings’ ranking game and the political intrigue as well as Bojji’s journey across the lands… well, that’s been on a hold-up one third into the show.
Until the sequel barges in, many years later. Hooray for that.