Haruba Negi, the well-known author and artist of the manga The Quintessential Quintuplets, started the serialization of this manga by the beginning of February in 2021.
The Japanese name is Sentai Daishikkaku, the official name of distribution is Go Go Loser Ranger! , but in my opinion the best name is the one that the fandom provided: Ranger Reject.
The series is set in Milky Way City, where thirteen years ago a giant fortress appeared from nowhere in mid-air, inside this castle of darkness we find the evil invaders; their long-term objective is the world domination for their masters, the executives.
But as there is evil, there is always an opposite reaction from the other side, fighting for the human race, the last bastion that prevents the world from the invaders we have the Divine Dragon Keepers and their underlings, the Guardians.
The Footsoldiers, the faithful warriors of the executives, were created in a way that even when they die from mortal wounds they still reconstruct after the attacks, they are immortal!
For that reason it was expected they became into a fierce power capable of facing the Dragon Keepers, till here this would have been the typical Power Ranger plot, but things twisted a bit during the war… After only two years the Dragon Keepers took over the giant fortress, slayed some of the executives and killed a considerable number of the immortal Footsoldiers using powerful weapons called Divine Tools; as it turned out the helpless Footsoldiers had to surrender and became into slaves.
During the following eleven years the whole war thing was only a con, yet general public was convinced the war continued without knowing the Dragon Keepers ordered the invaders to only come to the surface for Sunday´s Battles, which consists basically in them, the Dragon Keepers and the Footsoldiers, having fake fights in front of the crowds; that way the people would see the heroes of justice having bad times (acting) facing the inhuman and cruel invaders and at the same time support the politics of the Guardians.
This would be the introduction to this series if the synopsis didn´t catch your attention, going back to the main point, Ranger Reject revolves around the actions of a renegade invader, Footsoldier D, as he escapes to the surface disguised as a human with the objective of eliminating the hateful Dragon Keepers for beating the crap out and laughing of them during the past eleven years.
The series at first presents two interesting human beings, both Guardians, as D enters in the city and met them immediately, Hibiki Sakurama, a colourless recruit, and Yumeko Suzukiri, a high ranked ranger.
This encounter had a big impact in his short life, both of them discover at different times he is an invader, and both have contrary propositions to him:
A complete mess from the start line to our unfortunate MC, which also brings in different circumstances a touch of comedy.
The mystery tag is more about unanswered questions as the chapters go one after another, which makes you starve for more content so you can put all the pieces together, the action scenes might not satisfy to usual shounen readers but Negi tries his best and that is more than enough (quite indulgent, am I right?), D´s mentality is one of the key factors that most of the times brings some unexpected laughs in the audience, and more facts you´ll find interesting as you keep reading (there are some characters you will probably love and many others you´ll come to hate).
Now, the main reason why I follow this manga since more or less two years, it´s D character itself what mostly attracts me, his growth as character.
From the beginning he was close-minded about some aspects, nonetheless as he spends time with different people he doesn’t realize that his original self is slowly changing, doing things a normal Footsoldier wouldn't do are some examples, what I´m trying to express is that I simply love to watch how he becomes more human than he could ever believed.
All in all I think this is a story worth reading, you might think that is too childish for your taste as there are power rangers and all that stuff, but believe in me when I tell you this, by that time, when I didn´t know anything about this manga nor its existence, I immediately got hooked, I was wondering all the time about the next chapter and when it would come out. Seems odd, doesn´t it? Considering that it isn´t nearly as popular as many other series you wouldn´t expect to hear someone rambling in such a way for a random manga, but at least to me reading this manga was like finding exactly what I was looking for a long time, I didn´t even notice I was looking for something to begin with.
So, please give it a shot, just the first six or seven chapters, and if that didn´t convince you to keep reading then I am more than grateful if you tried.
Thanks for reading all this review (which I highly believe unlikely).
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