About Me

Hey y'all, this is my second review on anilist, so it probably won't be all that good either, but I really want to say some shit about this anime. I'll say some stuff about me first so feel free to just skip this part if you're only interested in the actual review portion of this. I'm 17 years old and started actually watching anime in 2020 with classic Naruto, even tho I have watched Death Note, Tokyo Ghoul and One Punch Man before, Naruto is the first big anime that I finished and the show that got me into anime. My favorite animanga are Dragon Ball (classic and Z) and Berserk. You probably might think that I don't have the bag to talk about any anime since I started watching it so late, and you might be right, but I'm here anyways. I also think it's important to share how I rate the shows that I watch, which is by personal enjoyment, that's how a show like Nagatoro-san is the same rating as the second season of Attack on Titan, that being said, if the story of the show is bad, the score will go down, because I didn't like the story, same thing as if the animation is bad, it will affect how I enjoy the show. Basically, if a show is below a 5, I didn't like it, and mostly wouldn't recommend it, if a show above a 5, that means I liked it, and would recommend it. If you read my first review or saw my profile at the time I wrote my first review you'll notice that some ratings have changed, and thats cause I moved from a 10 point system to a 10 point decimal system, since I feel like decimal values give more options when rating shows. I use the decimals by .4 each, meaning my ratings go like this: 0; 0.4; 0.8 [...] 9.2; 9.6; 10 (I hope y'all were able to understand it cause I suck at explaining this stuff I'm sorry). I'm a bit late to the Ousama Ranking party aswell, but whatever, I just finished it and need to talk about it. That's all! Let's go to the review!

___ WARNING!!!
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS UNMARKED SPOILERS FROM OUSAMA RANKING ___ # Preface I'll start by saying that I had really high hopes for this show, the first 5 or so episodes made me think that this anime was about to be one of the few 10/10s I would have on my profile. Unfortunately the show fell off a bit midway through it, so let's talk about why I think that is the case. ___ # Animation & Direction At the beginning of the show, the animation was one of the highlights of the show for me, beautiful, alive and colorful. Though as the show progresses the animation started to feel kinda lifeless and bland, halfway thoughtout the show is where a feel like there was a drop in animation quality, and if I'm not mistaken the animation director did change from the first one at the beginning, and you can tell. Even with the overall quality dropping, it still wasn't bad animation, but compared to the one that we saw at the start of the show it's for sure a dropoff. Fortunately, nearing the end of the show the animation did get a upgrade once again, the final 2 fights were pretty well animated and directed, especially Bojji vs Bosse. To close out this segment, the animation was overall good, with some really good highlights, but also some moments where the animation was not engaging at all making the scenes feel a lil bit stall. ___ # Plot & Script This is where this show really confuses me, because at the beginning of the show, the plot felt really simple, deaf-mute prince meets a slick bandit that tries to take advantage of the prince, but ends up becoming his friend and both of them go out to have adventures and build a kingdom themselves, right? Wrong. For some reason the creator decided to introduce some big politics shit in the middle of this kids anime, like I can understand mixing politics into Attack on Titan cause that is a more mature show and the way that the plot is made calls for it, but for a show like Ousama Ranking? I don't really think it needed that kinda of content, it's kinda trying to mix politics on classic Dragon Ball, it doesn't really make sense, just make a wholesome kids show where kids have adventures. I also think that the creator must love Game of Thrones, not only because the show has kinda of a Game of Thrones feeling, with characters that felt important dying(or almost dying) and the politics, but also the gigantic and enormous amount of plot twists. For what real reason this show needed that amount of plot twists? Don't get me wrong I like a good plot twist, but it got to a point where you couldn't tell wtf was going on because every character changed sides each episode. The snake guy went from being a bad guy to a good guy to a bad guy to a good guy again, Bojji's sword coach dude was a good guy that went bad and then went good again, the lancer went from good guy to bad to good guy at the end, Hilling went from being bad to good to bad and then good again, you get the idea, these were only a couple of examples but there are quite a few of other characters that are structured that way, even Bosse has the same treatment. Why? Why does a show like this needs to try so hard to be complex, and completely fails at that. If you want to put this amount of plot twists you gots to be an amazing writer, because otherwise, the plot will feel messy and not planned at all, which is the feeling that this show gives me, at some point it felt like the creator didn't want us to have any negative feelings towards any character, what the creator doesn't realize though is that when you have that many plot twists it's hard for you to grow attachment to the characters, since even if you like then in one episode, they might change at very next, there are exceptions to that obviously, like Bojji and Despa, but other than that what you gon get from the characters is like a box of chocolates. ___ # Miranjo's Character Yes, she's getting a whole paragraph, because whole fuck this was a bad character. The first time we get introduced to her character we didn't even know she had a name, she was just a talking mirror that gave guidance to Daida, as the story progresses you realize that actually she is doing a lot of shit under the table, and ordered MULTIPLE people to be murdered, matter fact, if it wasn't for Kage, Bojji was going to be killed throught Miranjo orders, so the fact that the creator wanted to humanize and make us feel bad for her is bizarre to me, cause if her plan had worked she would've killed: Bojji, Hilling, Dorshe, Apeas and Daida (which would pretty much be forgotten since he would be stuck inside Bosse's mind). Since I've mentioned Apeas let me talk about the plot hole that is their relationship, because we see in a flashback that Apeas has big respect for Miranjo, and so does Miranjo for him, but if that's the case why would Miranjo manipulate Daida into killing Apeas, it could be a intricate plan where she kills him to make Daida a feared king but why him? I mean yea he did vote against Daida to become king but also why woulnd't she talk with Apeas and say the she was stuck in the mirror if they really were friends, idk I might've not understand this part but this whole thing feels like really sloppy writing. But by far the thing that I most hate about her character is the fact that literally EVERYBODY forgives her at the end, and Daida MARRIES her, she's a criminal, a literal sociopath, and some of those people know it, and they just say fuck it, idk if this was the message that the creator wanted to give but to forgive this kind of people(by this kind of people I mean people that tried to KILL you and your family) is not a sign of strength, I would say it's just foolish, I know that Bojji for example has no ideia that Miranjo tried to kill him and actually killed his mother, but the fact that the audience knows it and the creator tries clean her up is flatout disrespectful, it's like the creator showed us that she killed and manipulated multiple people but hey, she's had a very difficult childhood ok? She tried to kill herself ok? So please feel bad for her. No, fuck you. Talking about the Daida and Miranjo marriage now, I still can't comprehend why would Daida do that, he says that "she helped him in the darkness" or sum like that, but realistically wtf did she actually do? Honestly? When he was trapped inside his own body she wasn't even there, he was just seeing her memories, she didn't do shit to him, and you can tell because even her is surprised when Daida offers to marry her, cause she knows it doesn't make sense, but why would she refuse it, I mean she should be in prison but now she is marrying king? Fuck yea for her. And when you think about it his decision to marry her might as well kill people, because originally Despa would ask to the demon to make his brother mortal again, which in the middle of it Daida appeared outta nowhere to ressurect her, so the fact that his Despa's brother is alive and now freed might cause the death of a lot of people, also it forced Desha to take the number 1 spot on the ranking which will more likely than not make some people die and the his kingdom to fall because as said at the beginning of the show, every king that takes the number 1 spot becomes crazy. And they still try to make us feel bad for Miranjo. Despa should've just slapped the shit out of Daida for getting in the middle of his wish, cause now a lotta of people are going to suffer because Daida was horny. Also since Daida made a wish shouldn't he get a curse too? Miranjo's realtionship with Bosse also is pretty weird, and it's 100% the scripts fault, like the big realization of Miranjo's character is the fact that Bosse might've not wanted to be invicible and immortal in the first place, and I mean ok this can be a cool discussion, but we already had that with Despa's and Desha's brother, about how being immortal is actually a bad thing that makes you go crazy, so this plot point is already used and dead. Also wouldn't you think that Bosse would've at least expressed to Miranjo that he didn't want any of that? LIke he didn't want to have to kill his children to be immortal and shit like that? At least a little talk yk. And if Bosse is sorry of his actions like he showed at the end when he was dying, why was he so cool with fighting people when he was on Daida's body? It feels weird. ___ # Positive Stuff Ok, I know that it looks like I hate the show, but you know, it's only the human nature to focus more on the bad stuff than the shit that is actually good, so let me say some good stuff about this show because definately there are a lot of it. I would say that the initial concept of a deaf-mute prince trying to become a king is such a great ideia, and I don't think I've ever seen or heard about anything like it in any other animanga. Bojji's and Kage relationship is also pretty wholesome and feels organic, especially in the beginning of the show. A lot of the discussions brought up in the show were also really interesting and well done, Kage's backstory is a great social commentary on racism/xenophobia, Bojji's character also has a handful of great discussions, the two most prominent are the "you imperfections make you perfect" and the "make your strengths out of your weaknesses", which are really wholesome and well done. Even tho in a lot of moments the animation can be lacking overall it fits the show really well and when the studio tried it's just amazing animation and direction, also loved the fights choreographies. ___ # Additional Thoughts A friend of mine said it best when he said that this anime has a little bit of everything, it has fights, romance, good animation, sad moments, wholesome moments, hype moments and an interesting plot, and I would like to add that I think this is one of the best anime to recommend to people that are getting into anime, because my friend is 100% right, this show has something for everyone. I think that this anime also made me feel one of the most important things for a studio that's adapting a manga: it made me want to read the original content. I don't know if Ousama Ranking is getting a second season but I would love if it did, I really hope this isn't one of those anime that ends up being only an ad to it's original content, because I feel like this season just ended where I was most excited about the story: the adventure. This Dragon Ball feeling of just travelling through the world with your friends and living a bunch of adventures, actually this is what I really wanted this whole anime to be, ever since Bojji went on his adventure earlier in the show, unfortunately we are only getting that in the next season if it does happen. Since I haven't really talked about some characters earlier in the review, I would like to add that overall I really enjoyed the character design and apart from the constant plot twists that made the characters change sides all the time they were pretty decent. Matterfact I didn't really enjoyed how Kage was treated later on the show, he went from a character full of personality to just a crybaby and overall just a passive character to the story. You probably noticed that I used the words "at the beginning of the show" a lot, and that's due to the fact that I really don't think that the script was planned very well, I feel like a lot of ideas from the beginning of the show ended up being dropped and in order to make the show more "complex", they decided to expand a lot of smaller plots at the same time but it just came out really messy and sloppy, as if the show was always trying to catch itself and putting the cart before the horse. But, I still really enjoyed this show, and I look forward to the next seasons if they come to exist. ___ # Conclusion/TL;DR
Ousama Ranking is a jack of all trades, master of none, except sloppy writing. ___ # Notes From the Author
Hey! Thanks for reading my review, I put a lot of time into this(around 3 hours and around 2500 words). As my second review I feel like I was a lot more prepared writing the review, and I would say it's a better product than my first one, I'm really happy with the way this one turned out. I would appreciate a like(or a dislike) if you would be kind to leave one. Thank you so much. -nadish