Ranking of Kings is one of the first anime with a score higher than 8.5 that was a complete disappointment for me. And I will explain why considering what was the anime's main purpose and what it really became after everything ended.
The purpose: Ranking of Kings was supposed to be a different fantasy story. It shows a little prince called Bojji, a deaf and mute boy that expects to be the king of his kingdom, but is ignored and despised due to his physical conditions. Nor the people of the king and not even his relatives trust him to be the future king when
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King Bosse, his father and very strong king dies, but he still believes to do so.
Ranking of Kings starts well. It presents us the main character, his desires, and after shows another characters and develops them with flashbacks. Even the least important characters have some story to tell. But this is not good news for you. In not a distant past, people criticized Naruto, one of the most known anime, for not developing its secondary characters. A lot of characters were forgotten and simply wasted. I don't know if the author of Ousama Ranking listened about it, but his idea of developing everyone went really bad. There are almost no connections among them. Nothing. Ranking of Kings spent a lot of time simply throwing flashbacks with no connection among them to "develop" its characters, but did nothing with them. They became useless stories that happened in a distant place and have no relation with the current time, but the character presence. Where is the kingdom that killed the shadow clan? Where are the gods of Miranjo backstory? Why the anime is called Ranking of Kings if the ranking itself is mentioned only a couple of times in the anime? Not even Black Clover and Naruto, animes that are famous for developing characters with flashbacks, do a so horrible work with it. And the problems are not only these.
I said before Ranking of Kings wanted to be a different anime. But it isn't. Have you ever seen a main character that wants to become a king of a whole people before to get "recognition" from them? Have you ever watched an anime where all the main villains are forgiven for no reason and with no fair redemption before? You may have watched them trying something better than what this author did in Ranking of Kings. One of the kingdom's bodyguards betrayed Bojji and tried to kill him. He simplely cried at Bojji's feet and got forgiven. Nothing was done. Has this author thought that the character he created tried to take a kid's life? If so, why did he try to force Bojji to forgive him in the first time they met again? This a typical cliche of shonen anime. And it's not the only, since there are lots of them broadcasted in the anime, such as the training sessions with a master and the fact that nobody dies, no matter how hurt they are.
The worst thing that appeared in Ranking of Kings is the villain called Miranjo and her backstory. The anime tries to call its fans dumb. Their biggest villain is the main responsible for most of the current problems of the kingdom. The King Bosse came to back to life, Daida was trapped in a dark place and forced to give his body to Bosse. Bojji's mother was killed in the past. Miranjo killed lots of innocent people and freed some bandits of other kingdom to attack the kingdom in order to get her life with King Bosse. What happened to her? She was forgiven. The author created a "sad" flashback and showed it to the characters. They felt sorry for Miranjo and forgave her without any punishment, Someone thought that it would be enough to say that she suffered in the past to justify this absurd. She wasn't only forgiven, she even received a marriage offer from the person who suffered the most due to her actions. Daida didn't have mercy even of his older brother, but easily forgave the woman that most made him suffer in the World.
To complete the entire disaster, there is Miranjo's backstory. After all this appaling sequence, the only way the anime could become even worse is showing us a terrible backstory. Well, congratulations for the author, that's exactly what he did. Sosuke Toka recreated the japanese colonization of Korea, from his point of view, in the anime and handled it as Miranjo backstory. Being more accurate, he used the flashback to tell what he thinks about the history. He created a kingdom called Homura, representing Japan, that was full of kind people that helped the other kingdom to strengthen a future ally in the fight against "gods" that didn't even appear in the anime before. These gods were the metaphor to the western countries, that were advancing over Asian and wanted to increase their influence to China, Japan and Korea. The other kingdom, Gyakuza, is representing Korea. a backward country full of ignorant people. Homura one-sidedly helped to develop Gyakuza, that responded torturing and mutilating Homura's people, including Miranjo and her mom. That's what the author of this thinks and what he wanted to show us, not Miranjo backstory. This was supposed to be enough reason for us to forgive Miranjo.
The despicable intention of using Miranjo to retell Japan's invasion to other country became a problem to the anime. During all the time they told us that we should forgive the other people because they were not evil in fact. Even without a proper redemption. But now the anime showed to the watchers a kingdom of evil people, of black eyes that had no depth or development. No mercy or redemption is waiting them, they are just evil people. It's a complete contradiction with the whole development that Ranking of Kings created. It was able to be wrong presenting both, good villains and evil villains, an absolute failure for the story. The author was so lost that he did not even know what to do wit h King Bosse. He appeared and defeated Ouken, the enemy controlled by Miranjo for no reason and after got defeated by Bojji, who couldn't defeat Ouken. We don't know what Bosse was doing, can't comprehend why he wanted to be strong or why Miranjo sacrified herself to grant him power. In the end, Bojji got to be the king and gave up in a month, nobody cares about the kingdom people and not even what they think about it. The story ends with Bojji deciding to create a new kingdom with Kage, his mouthpiece, for no reason. As you can see, the author destroyed completely the rest of the story he had created in favor to tell us his "positive" point of view of the event where Japan invaded Korea, arguing that it was good to Korea because they developed their infrastructure (to explore their natural resources), despite all the tragedy and violence they brought.
Final messages: Forgive every beautiful girl that does cruel things to you, no matter how terrible her actions were. And according to the author, Korea is an ungrateful country for refusing Japan's kind help, and doesn't deserve mercy for it. Japan's colonization wasn't violent, nor reprehensible, the guilty is Korea, a people with "bad culture", in the words of the anime.
May 20, 2022
Ousama Ranking
(Anime)
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Ranking of Kings is one of the first anime with a score higher than 8.5 that was a complete disappointment for me. And I will explain why considering what was the anime's main purpose and what it really became after everything ended.
The purpose: Ranking of Kings was supposed to be a different fantasy story. It shows a little prince called Bojji, a deaf and mute boy that expects to be the king of his kingdom, but is ignored and despised due to his physical conditions. Nor the people of the king and not even his relatives trust him to be the future king when ... Sep 20, 2021
Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid
(Anime)
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Shinigami Bocchan is basically a mix of the ideas of two sucessful anime in romance genre: The Teasing Master Takagi-san and High Score Girl. It reminds the first because of the relation between the two main protagonists: the Duke and Alice, who is constantly teasing him, mostly sexually (no fanservice). But it is also similar to High Score Girl because of the characters' design and the use of CGI use, that is the most important thing to talk about here.
The CGI is perfectly used in Shinigami Bocchan and I will explain why. What's the most important thing in a romance show? The feelings. ... Mar 15, 2021
Kanojo, Okarishimasu
(Manga)
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I have written few reviews so I will try to analize this the way I can until the most recent chapter to this date.
First, this is a manga of the harem genre, so it's typical not having such a great history and the fanbase being more focused in the enjoyment without rigid technical aspects. Kanojo, Okarishimasu is a manga that doesn't struggle against the Nisekoi's pattern for harem, but that is also good enough to have an identity despite this fact. About the advantages, I can mention that the manga has few cliche situations, like the fireworks festival and the bath in ... Mar 15, 2021
Tsurezure Children
(Anime)
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Tsurezure Children is a basic and simple romcom anime that has as its only purpose the existence of several couples, in the same school, developing their romance relationships. When I watched this, I really hoped to watch something that would use the fact of being simple to create something well made, or at least, enjoyable, somehow like Seiren and Amagami, two anime with similar purpose did, but it did not happen.
First of all, the anime has like ten couples and each episode has only 12 minutes, so obviously the anime did not have enough time to develop the characters and their relationships, which made ... |