DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME ActionSentai Daishikkaku
MANGA ActionSentai Daishikkaku

REVIEWS

• 

  RandomPerson9348

  50/100
  How The Mighty Have Fallen

  __-Spoilers for all of Season 2- __

  Loser Ranger was one of the absolute stand-outs of Spring 2024. A slickly animated and stylized first episode that instantly grabbed you with its ‘Power Rangers meets The Boys’ aesthetic and did not let go for a while. Sure, the second half slowed down and dragged just a little - but you still got some insane payoff by the end. Not to mention the absolute banger of an opening by Tatsuya Kitani that was the cherry on the top.

  So, it was only logical to look forward to something that would be even better than that when Season 2 rolled around. The first episode pulls you right back into the world and its craziness, even if the distinct style and tone it had back in its first season is gone. No more interrupting texts, no more fourth-wall breaking humor that genuinely works, no more gorgeous animation. But at the very least the story was still as strong. For…right about three or so episodes.

  The school time loop arc starts showing the major cracks in the adaptation of this season with the middling direction and less than acceptable editing. Even if it has some really good set pieces and visual ideas, the issues are so jarring that it is difficult to digest. For example - take a look at the scene where Fighter D starts realizing who the real boss monster is. It plays with the whole trope of repeating a few seconds over and over again to slowly build up to the reveal. But the completely tone deaf cuts probably make it the worst version of such a scene I have ever seen. It goes on forever, does not put you in the mind of the character and has zero build up of momentum as it goes on.

  Once that comes to an end, however, you are in for something worse. The next episode ends with Green Keeper finding out that Fighter D is Sakurama. And then instead of building up on that for even a second, the next one jumps to a completely different plot line with the Red Keeper “dying” for absolutely no reason (like, seriously, that is never brought up again and has no actual effect on the plot). What follows is an actual fever dream.

  The Ranger Force loses trust, gains trust, loses trust and then gains trust again as the Monster Protection Society rises. And, oh, did I mention Usukubo is the daughter of its head, and that they are planning on becoming monsters? Oh, and Hwalipon is helping them. Oh, no nevermind, Hwalipon is an evil boss monster. Oh, Daddy Usukubo pulled a Euphy and turned a stadium of humans into monsters. And now regular members can turn into monsters. And some of them can turn into boss monsters. And here’s lore for the Dragon Weapons. And Suzukiri is a Dragon Priestess. And there are a million Suzukiris. And now she has formed a Suzukiri cult. And Hisui is…what is she even doing, honestly? XX is with Peltrola? No, she is now against him. Sakurama (real) is a good guy? No, he is kinda ambiguous now. The Rangers are the enemies? No, we’re cool now. Sakurama dies? No, his sister dies. No, wait, she does not die either and is fine despite having her neck slashed. Fighter D is fighting the monsters, then he is fighting Tokita, then he is fighting Usukubo, then he is fighting the tiny Blue Squadron girl. Oh, now he is teaming up with Hisui to fight the big bad. And now…Usukubo loves him?

  Did that give you a headache? Well, I’m sorry if it did. But that is exactly what watching the season felt like.

  There is zero cohesion to any of these plot lines. Things just happen because they need to, not because they are correlated to each other. Season 1 had points like these as well, but they were used sparingly, and rather cleverly to maintain a certain uncertainty that increased the threat and horror brought by the Dragon Keepers. But because of how easily they appear in Season 2, they seem to carry no weight any more. The Red Keeper goes from being the Homelander of the show to an actual joke who takes the tension away from a scene instead of bringing more in - without any character development.

  The many, many random flashbacks of random characters really want you to feel the emotions they are feeling at that given moment, but it is not easy to pull that off. And the show never does pull it off. It is a jumble of storytelling that wants to tell the tale of a minor apocalypse caused by the savior complex of a human driven mad by love, but never ends up achieving it because of how little connection you have to these characters. Seeing the Keepers be the villains for most of the show, and then slowly building them up to demonstrate their individual strengths and stories could have made the final sequence where they come together to actually save the world for once an incredible payoff, but we get a mostly-boring action sequence with slightly better animation and zero actual emotion instead.

  I could go on and on about just how much of a misstep in terms of pacing this season is, but I’ll probably end up repeating myself over and over. The main point, I think, has been put across. There is nothing holding the second half of this story together. Nothing that you can actually see progress and develop, paired with characters who are more like two-dimensional caricatures being forced to be at points of mental development with no buildup. It is nothing less than chaos, and not in a good way.

  It is an absolute shame that this is how this is where the trajectory of this story took it. A lot of potential squandered because of a rushed arc that had no place so early on this show’s life cycle. I’ll watch Season 3 if they decide to make it, but with tempered expectations. All is not lost, since the soft reset at the end of 2 can give time to course correct and start over. All we can do is hope that lessons are learnt and mistakes not repeated.

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• 

  MegaTheRealOne

  70/100
  "The Boys Meets The Power Rangers" Without Either Parts of That Combination Most of the Time (Spoilers in Review)

  (Originally Reviewed on Serializd)

  If you were one who ever watched any of the many different Power Rangers series that came out over the years and thought to yourself "Man, you know what, I wish there was more blood, proper death and fucked up things going on in here", then luckily for you, Japan managed to give you what you were seeking with Go! Go! Loser Ranger!, a show that takes Power Rangers and mixes it with the brutal nature of something like The Boys to...... mixed results. When it comes to the first season of the show, it was good for what it was, having an interesting enough story that unfortunately takes many different generic routes for it to be too interesting, a set of mostly alright characters all supported by some pretty good voice acting, animation that wasn't anything too particularly special, but still decent enough to keep my attention and keep me watching, and humor that didn't always land, but still managed to make me laugh enough from time to time. If there was one thing that I think kept me from liking the show too much though back when I first watched it was due to the fact that it didn't take advantage of its initial premise, being that this one guy was gonna go and pretty much murder every single one of the Dragon Keepers here one by one, in a similar style to that of The Boys, which would've been amazing to see, but obviously it didn't do that, making it so that I only ended up just liking the show enough and nothing more. Either way though, just one month after I had initially watched the show, we ended up getting ourselves a second season of it, where it would then continue to go on and somewhat properly conclude the story, while also making the wise decision of........ not taking advantage of its premise again, but there is a catch to that that we will get to eventually, alright?

  In terms of changes that were made to this season, we didn't really get to see too many new characters this time around that the show gives focus to, aside from a few that do lean into some spoiler territory that I won't go that much further into, but the one big thing that has changed about this season is that the situation has now changed. Season 1 primarily focused on Fighter D trying to find a way to murder all of the Dragon Keepers by getting through the Ranger Force and posing as one of the students in said force, and Season 2 naturally follows that up, where Fighter D is now part of the Green Ranger Force in full disguise, helping his fellow rangers take down boss monsters and blending in while he plans to get the drop on the other Dragon Keepers at some point. Not only that, but we do get several other ideas and arcs in the season that do expand the world slightly and make things a tad more interesting, such as the Monster Protection Society, a society which does pretty much exactly what you think it does that gets a lot of attention during the second half of the season, along with the inner workings and progression for the Dragon Keepers themselves, with a lot more being revealed about them and how they work, along with them even at one point getting called out for their bullshit and being exposed to the entire world, to where the entire world hates them for a brief period of time, which was great to see. That's something that even The Boys couldn't do with its general premise, even after four seasons! But anyway, all of this leads together to make for a second season that is....... kind of an enigma in terms of quality. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty in here that one can really like about this season when compared to the first one, but there are also some pretty annoying elements that did take me out of the whole thing too, which is all paired up with the fact that all of the general elements of the show still remain at their base and typical level of quality, making for a season that I can't decide is better or worse then that of Season 1, even if it just barely edges off on both sides depending on what I choose.

  Once again, there isn't that much to say when it comes to the basics of the show: everything from the story (for the most part) to the characters, voice acting, animation and what have you is all on the same level of quality that you saw from Season 1, which may or may not be a good thing depending on who you ask, to where if you loved the first season, you will love this one too, but if you hated the first season, this one won't change your mind on that. The real main differences and signs of the show progressing forward can be with both the story and the themes that the show tackles, which may not be that creative or new and are in your face a lot of the time, but they are interesting to see nonetheless. From the beginning, the show has always touched upon the concept of racism, with the very foundation of the show being based around the fact that the Dragon Keepers pretty much power over the monsters and Fighters of the world in just about every way, to the point where they become essentially their slaves that can't run away or fend for themselves without the fear of dying, which leads to Fighter D going on his journey to take them all out in the first place. These themes are further continued and pushed here in this season, primarily with the introduction of the previously mentioned Monster Protection Society, with the second half of the season primarily focusing on them and their cruel and unusual methods that they plan to use to achieve this goal, with this all even leading to the creation of Deathmecia, the "main villain" of the season that aims to finally bring monsters and humans together in harmony in the most brutal way possible. This highlights one of the seasons major improvements over the first one in my opinion (for the most part), with that improvement being that the season is always progressing things forward, taking themes and plotlines that were introduced in Season 1 and further developing them, reaching new heights with them, and even sometimes providing conclusions and dramatic moments with these storylines that makes you want to see them all play out and how they will effect the world by the end of the season. Sure, none of this is exactly groundbreaking stuff for TV shows, nor are any of the storylines here really that interesting in comparison to many other shows, not just anime, out there, but they could've easily taken the route that The Boys often takes of just sitting around and twiddling its thumbs while pretending to tell a story, which they didn't do, and that is much appreciated. Although, kinda iffy on the fact that the season does end on a cliffhanger essentially, meaning that we could potentially get a Season 3 in the future, but we sure don't know when that will happen. I guess we shall see.

  What I am also iffy on though is what is undeniably my biggest gripe with this entire season, with that being its complete lack of focus. I know I mentioned earlier how the season does continue and further expand upon the storylines that started in Season 1, which it does do relatively well and keeps you entertained, but most of that can only be said for the second half of the season, whereas with the first half of the season, they focus on something COMPLETELY different that almost completely took me out of the entire show. The something in question particularly starts with the episode "For This School, in This Moment" which has Fighter D and several of the other members of the Green Ranger Force go to investigate a monster sighting at this seemingly abandoned school, where after meeting up with the people who like to hang out at this school, they then end up getting themselves stuck inside of a time loop inside of the school. From there, they have to figure out how to get out of the school and figure out what is really going on all while abiding to the school rules so that the day doesn't automatically get reset, which all sounds like it would make for a pretty good episode, doesn't it? Yeah, I think so too.......... too bad though that this makes up FOUR different episodes instead of just one. From the second episode of the season all the way up to Episode 4, "Green Descends ~The Maji Tsuyo Force~, it follows along this same story arc, with almost nothing from the main story being progressed in the process and them retreading over a lot of the same things in this same storyline over and over again, and it is HORRENDOUSLY dull. I wouldn't quite say that it is anything that bad, don't get me wrong, but again, this shit is stretched out for four episodes when it really shouldn't be, making it all the more clear that the people behind this show didn't know how to properly space out the season while still getting the 12 episodes they want to get, which led to this as a result. And that's not to say that the rest of the episodes in the first half are much better either, as the first episode, "Behold! Dragon Keepers!", is primarily just an introductory episode to catch people up on this show and what's going on now, along with Episode 6, "Lost in Confusion... Seriously", goes about the main route that most people came to the show in the first place for, which may sound like a good thing until you get to the other 6 episodes of the season that go away from this plotline almost completely. Of course, it needs to be reiterated that this doesn't make any of the first six episodes in this season bad: there are still plenty of admirable elements and cool action scenes to be had, and I am also aware of the fact that pacing and dragging things out like this is a common trope when it comes to anime, but that doesn't most of it it from being incredibly dull, and I wouldn't be surprised if anyone dropped this season during these episodes due to how things generally just don't go anywhere.

  But overall, despite having a pretty lackluster first half and not doing too much to improve the base elements of the show that definitely needed a good tweaking here or there, Season 2 of Go! Go! Loser Ranger was still what I would consider a decent enough follow-up to that of Season 1, properly following up on a lot of the same story elements and plotlines that we had seen from that first season, introducing plenty of new elements to make the world feel more alive and to further enhance previously mentioned story beats and themes, while also still retaining onto a lot of the great aspects of the first season, some of which are even slightly expanded upon here, to make for an imperfect, albeit still decent enough follow-up that I was glad to catch every single week when it was airing. I would recommend it for those that did really enjoy the first season, as well as those who are big fans of these kinds of anime or shows in general, as while it definitely is gonna have some flaws that will be easy to notice upon watching it for yourself, there is also enough here that can keep you watching, cheering, and being entertained for all of the characters, what they go through in the show, and for some of the more intense and exciting moments, which is good enough for me. Let's just hope that they actually do follow up on that cliffhanger that they made at the end with a Season 3 at some point, cause that would be disappointing if they don't............ then again, I wouldn't be too upset about it. I got other things to keep me occupied, and I don't need to keep wondering how many more episodes we will need for Fighter D to actually murder another Dragon Keeper, because the answer would probably be in the hundreds, and that scares me.

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• 

  patkarunungan

  30/100
  A promising anime marred not just by a bungled adaptation but also by its own contradictory premise.

  Crossposted in MAL

  Spoilers alert

  'Go! Go! Loser Ranger! Season 2' is supposed to provide clarity for Season 1, which, whilst promising in its premise, is ultimately riddled with ambiguity because the characters are morally grey. They have competing motivations that cannot be pigeonholed into simple good or evil, and that's why, even after several episodes, you are still lost on whom to support or where the direction the story is going.

  I gave Season 1 the benefit of the doubt and gave it a 6, but Season 2 left me seething with anger. Much of the negativity stems from how the anime rushed in its adaptation of the second half of the season. More specifically, after the school arc, it is widely believed that it has turned to something unflattering. And that's why some even recommend that you drop the anime at this point and start reading the manga.

  It's a fairly reasonable critique, and it is infuriating if you find the source material excellent only to be butchered by the anime adaptation.

  In this review, I will focus on two phases of the anime: 1) during the school arc, and how even then, I am less than thrilled with what's happening; and 2) post-school arc, where everything has become a turd and undermined the message of Season 1.

  ---

  § School Arc - Overview

  This is where Fighter D, who is disguised as Sakurama Hibiki, joins Hisui Kanon and others to investigate the disappearance of certain individuals and whether this is connected with a boss monster.

  ---

  § School Arc - Notes

  Whilst this arc is dull, everything about it is still consistent with Fighter D as an undercover. The one thing I found good with this arc is the backstory of Hisui Kanon, who came across as constantly angry in Season 1 and thus unlikable.

  As I said in my review for Season 1, this anime doesn't explicitly identify who the enemy is. Even the boss monsters, who have long lost contact with and should be on the side of the monster army (of which Fighter D belongs), have an agenda that might also be inimical, even to the monster army itself. That's why whomever Fighter D sides with is quite fluid.

  This ambiguity can be both its strength and weakness. It's a strength because of how this anime/manga deconstructs the sentai/Power Rangers genre, so that it's different. Instead of heroes, the rangers here, known as Dragon Keepers, seemed to be the villain and represents any government, especially an evil government, engaged in propaganda and blinding the citizens to what the world actually is.

  On the other hand, it's also a weakness because you're still on the fence about who to support. Of course, the viewers should side with Fighter D as we see him as that character with agency and a rebellious spirit, but you can't be sure who he should side with. Unfortunately, this weakness is made manifest in the second half, where it reportedly deviates from the source material.

  ---

  § Monster Protection Society Arc - Overview

  The Monster Protection Society aka Invader Rights Association, seemed to be on the good side as the people behind at are against how the Dragon Keepers have actually won against the monster army and that they are actually oppressing these monsters in a sham show every weekend. (It's like how certain governments don't totally eradicate their rebels, but keep some or even fund them so that there's an endless budget for maintenance and even acquisition of new equipment for the military. It goes without saying that taxpayers continually fund this sham, and we're not even mentioning the casualties in this conflict.)

  Their publick aim is to have a peace treaty between the Dragon Keepers and the monster arm, but their private aim is much more sinister. They want humanity to feel the pain of monsters by turning them into monsters themselves.

  ---

  § Monster Protection Society Arc - Notes

  One character whose arc is wasted is Suzukiri Yumeko. Her seiyuu made it sound as though she is borderline psychotick and might become an anti-heroine as she gathered divine artefacts of the Dragon Keepers. She had an ulterior motive, or it seemed to be so, and Season 1 hinted at this possibility.

  Instead, she became a forgettable character in Season 2. Her promising role in the narrative only ended on a broken promise. How she was barely given screentime is not even cited as one of the tragedies in this omnishambles. Of the few times she was given screentime, her potential as a major character was dashed. Perhaps she will have a bigger role in the manga, but the fact that Season 3 is unlikely to happen makes it truly tragick.

  Anyway, the biggest blunder that this Season does is how contradictory its message is. The Dragon Keepers were initially presented as the bad guys, an allegory of how evil the government is, as well as the media as an ideologickal arm of the state. Although they were revealed to the publick as arseholes, you can't help but be disappointed at how Season 2 presented them as a necessary evil, that they are only preserving order.

  This idea of keeping the publick in the dark regarding the existence of boss monsters and how they oppressed the monster army for their weekly charades is a form of paternalism. Worse yet, it is consistent with the detestable ideology of neoconservatism. It's possible that the mangaka did not have these in mind, but that is the implication, making me infuriated.

  Even worse, Fighter D became complicit in the maintenance of the status quo.

  ---

  § Conclusion

  'Go! Go! Loser Ranger! is a promising anime because of its deconstruction of the Power Rangers / super sentai genre, and it seems to also be critiquing people's sense of hero worshing. Alas, this promise has been broken by Season 2. This is why I am giving this a score of 3 out of 10 and marking it as not recommended.

  NOTA BENE: A grade of 3 out of 10 (or 30 out of 100 in anilist) means that I did not enjoy watching this anime despite being either well-regarded or at least popular, or perhaps I happened to rank them below my 4's but above my 2's.

  My enjoyment spectrum lies from 4 to 10. If I have scored an anime below 4, I actively dislike it.

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