I did not expect to be particularly into Loser Ranger when the first episode aired. Sure, the prospect of an edgy super sentai show by the same author as The Quintessential Quintuplets is very funny to me and every time someone says “this is the X story of X media”, in this case the “The Boys of Anime” I instinctively remember all the dozens of times someone in the internet called anything “the Game of Thrones of whatever” or “the Dark Souls of insert video game genre here” and I roll my eyes.

So I watched the first episode and then the second one and I kept going. My take on it at the time was that it was just an okay show. I liked the idea of an anime that harkens back to my childhood days watching Power Rangers on brazilian television, though I was never particularly a fan of super sentai and I entirely left it behind during adolescence, I was still a kid that watched kid’s shows. I liked the corny action and the stupid arguing when it came to deciding who gets to be which ranger when playing with other kids.

Subverting a structure where conventionally the good guys are fighting the monsters to make the monster be the good guys could just as well be nothing more than a gimmick. I mean, it is something, but it is not groundbreaking by any means. The anime also doesn’t look particularly good, though the OP is pretty fun. Was I surprised to see that the studio who created Arknights, the only actually good gacha game, was animating it? Sure. Does that mean jack-shit about the quality? No. Why am I even talking about this? Hey shut up it's my script.

All of this to say that things changed once I reached episode five, in the process thinking that the blonde girl called Hisui looks kinda cool and I wanted to see how the ongoing fight concluded so I read the manga, only to be immediately hit by that pathological girlfailure looking cooler by the chapter, then proceeded to find out that after an okay introduction it has a good first arc then there is a HUGE quality spike with the School Life Arc and it doesn’t drop the ball after that (except for one little thing but we don’t talk about that), PLUS, now Hisui lives rent-free in my head.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Thirteen years ago a giant fortress appeared over Milky Way City in Japan. The residents of that fortress started invading the surface and humanity fought back, forming the Rangers and retaliating. Every Sunday they come to the ground and are fought by the Keepers — the five main Rangers — in a stadium, with an audience in a televised event. If it sounds dumb and artificial that’s because it is. The Invaders are shapeshifters who were forced by the Rangers to take on this acting role after their overlords, the Executives, were all defeated in the very first year of the war, thus making them slaves to a bunch of sociopathic celebrities.

Enter Footsoldier D, an invader who is fed up with their situation and decides he is going to take matters into his own hands and get revenge on all the Keepers. Things start spiraling out of control almost immediately though D doesn’t know it yet, as he meets two rangers called Suzukiri and Hibiki. One who offers to help him take down the big five by stealing their weapons and another who wants to change the Ranger association from the inside out as he believes humans and Invaders can coexist. One of the reasons why this manga eventually becomes so entertaining has its beginning here, as this is one of those stories where there are plots within plots, lies within lies and everyone has something in particular they want to protect or achieve even if that means coming into conflict with both sides of the war. After some shenanigans Footsoldier D takes Hibiki’s place to infiltrate the Ranger Association with both of them vying to do their best to achieve their goals first, having just exchanged places.

This is where it starts going from decent to good as the mysteries begin piling on pretty thick. What are the so-called Divine Artifacts — the Keeper’s weapons — and why do they not look like something that was constructed but organic? Why does Suzukuri want to collect them? Why is there another invader living inside Hibiki’s closet? Why do the Rangers have such a lackadaisical approach to their leader being a murderer? How is D ever going to have any shot at killing these monsters when we see so clearly how much more powerful they are and his training is so basic? You might be thinking that I’m dumb and that the answer is powerscaling, but this is actually the action manga with the least amount of powerscaling I have seen yet. Character’s stay at roughly the same power level they are introduced in for several arcs and only manage to get things done by being smart about it and working together. Every conflict going forward is going to be multiple chapters long and feature a dozen different characters that all bounce off of each other. Essentially everyone in this story would be dead by the end of the second arc if they didn’t fight in groups 90% of the time.

What I have been calling the good first arc is basically the chunin exam of this manga. When you join the Rangers you do so as a filthy colorless and have to train until you are eligible for a test. Judging the results of said test you will be assigned a squadron based on each Keeper’s color or remain a lowly colorless fuck.

The circumstances under which this plays out are actually very engaging. D is posing as Hibiki taking the test, which means there is a lot about the Rangers he doesn’t know and he has to be careful about not getting hurt as it would immediately expose him as an Invader. He has to take care of XX despite that not actually being his responsibility, except that he also has a big sister now which is the Pink Keeper herself. Under these circumstances he has to compete against people who have totally genuine reasons for wanting to become Rangers, such as Shion who wants to get revenge on the Invaders for killing his brother who was himself a Ranger, but since both of them want to join the Red Squadron and they are in the same test only one of them can pass despite both having perfectly understandable reasons for wanting it. All of this further escalates as characters who are all easily distinguishable betray each other for their own gain, giving a hint as to why this organization is so fucked to begin with when they advocate for so much competition between their new members, who then get involved in a real battle with one of the Executives who was supposed to be dead and before you know it one of the big bad raidbosses is dead by the end of the first arc — which ends in CHAPTER FIFTY ONE — and even manages to be kind of a badass while doing it?

Every issue the characters have to face feel like a massive undertaking that, if you get into the story like how I did, will really surprise you because you were likely expecting something different when the first few chapters establish a conflict that is entirely artificial and unchanging with a main character that is literally immortal as long as he doesn’t go against a Keeper face to face specifically while they are wielding a Divine Tool. The actual mechanics of the fight might seem underwhelming, with most of the cast only having access to a basic-ass weapon for a good while, but the dynamics of each step along the way not only keeps it entertaining in a moment-to-moment basis, but also quickly builds so much of it there is enough foreshadowing, unresolved beefs and characters to cycle through for a story of near epic proportions. There is some sort of twist happening every other chapter, there are always characters making unexpected decisions, convincing one another to form truces or just committing mistakes, sometimes doing nothing more than being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

As the story goes forward it does a honestly very above average job of building on what came before. Though D is too dense to notice half of it and too prideful to admit the other half, he already gets everything he needs to start questioning his own goals and worldviews from this first arc, this is then brought to the forefront as the story pulls another twist, placing D not in the Red Battalion but in the Green one, bringing Kanon Hisui, the coolest motherfucker alive to the forefront. She is also my daughter. Look it up. It’s real.

I am infatuated by this character, everything she does for the story, her design and her personality. Through her, D is presented the harsh reality of a Battalion that is dedicated to dealing with the powerful Executives, which means that they are often being killed and replaced and the heroism necessary to walk through that to the other side, as well as the emotional damage and ruthlessness such an environment will instill. First we as the audience — but later D through his interactions with Hisui — get to understand that there is nothing inherently good or bad about any of these groups. That they are both made up of tyrants and their victims, people who were met with untimely tragedy, lost loved ones and parts of them along the way.

This arc takes place inside a school as an analogy to the lost youth and opportunities of everyone involved. Of the lives they were denied and will never get to live. Hisui is always wearing a middle-schooler uniform despite having no need for one as a way to maintain in the audience’s mind the fact that she doesn’t fit, that she is unwilling to let go of the concept of living the life she deserved despite that not being the material reality in front of her. D was quite literally bred for war and like the people who hate Invaders for the damage they caused them and their people, also hates the Rangers because of what the Keepers did to his peers which although fair, doesn’t take into account that he doesn’t know them. The Keepers aren’t the Rangers and the Rangers aren't humanity. They are both fighting in a makeshift war they were thrusted upon without their consent, are thematically brought closer by sharing in what was taken from them under the guise of a school life which is literally an in-universe dream; to then having to come to terms with the realization that they are one and the same; victims of a game played by rulers who are equally as vile, both of which should be dealt with. Geez, I wonder if the giant fucking chain casting its shadow over the city is meant to symbolize something.

Of course, they still hold slightly different allegiances, as D doesn’t let go of his plans to kill the Keepers but instead achieves a fuller understanding of his situation, and a lot of this is only going to get its payoff by the end of the next big arc, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Building upon the reaction of “Hey this guy wasn’t so bad after all” of the Blue Keeper’s conclusion, the manga now first gets you used to a character before revealing their identity as a Keeper, instilling in you the question of whether or not we should even be rooting for D to kill this guy. Sure, he still played a part in the oppressing of the Footsoldiers, but we don’t even know exactly what led to that to begin with. Also, we did actually kill Blue Keeper, but they just went ahead and substituted him. Gotta kill the fucker again.

Remember what I said about the constant escalating of circumstances? This is what I’m talking about. This structure makes it so that the next question the characters have to deal with both feel like the natural next thing to happen while also being just unpredictable enough to have all the twists it wants, and the answer to that question is laid upon so many conflicts with potential ramification that it manages to be, I kid you not, morally gray. Yes, the edgy manga from the author of the quintuplets harem is genuinely morally gray to an impressive extent—for what it is, not in the grand scheme of literature. Fucking bananas am I right? This is going to sound absurd, but I don’t think I have seen a more organically built-up shounen since Hunter x Hunter.

Something else that the School Life arc has over the previous one is that this time the actual mechanics of the conflict are a lot more interesting, likely as a result of having the benefit of working with previously established powers and characters. The premise of a job that constantly kills its workers and the existence of an alternate reality inside a building that breaks physical laws also feels very Chainsaw Man, which I appreciate as that is one of my favorites.

Just like the Footsoldiers back in the fortress, these characters now have a set of rules they have to obey, this time in order to keep the school world from constantly resetting. A premise that is particularly interesting once you consider that these are all people who didn’t get to lead a normal life and that their reaction isn’t to simply accept them but to find ways to work around those rules, their obedience being just a facade. In a literalization of the metaphor, fully giving in to the dream world signifies a character’s loss, which appeals to them precisely because it promises to right the wrongdoings of their past.

The story recognizes this with the students that criticize them after being released from the illusion because that was their way to cope with their own injustices. It is sensible enough to not treat these people as simply stupid, after all we spent a whole arc seeing the reasons that a dream like that could be appealing through Hisui’s perspective, but the arc concludes with the recognition that while the path they are choosing is the harder one, it is also the only one that gives them a chance of standing up for themselves, as the illusion was always a seductive lie. The antagonist is also an Executive with the body of a Ranger to approximate the two and remind you that they can be one and the same. As Hisui puts it, “I’m sorry that your perfect world couldn’t exist”; as I’ve said before, there are tyrants on both sides; and as Steven Erikson once said, “The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes.”

Narrative arcs that deal with the lost youth and what-could-have-been scenarios tend to get me because I relate to that shit hard. I didn’t get a chance to live my adolescence the way I wanted because I hadn’t even come into my own identity as a woman, and that disconnect kept me from acting the way I wanted while also making me feel that the things I actually did were fake because I was simply going along with the preconceived notion that we are we and that they are they. Just like the students in this arc, I have had to accept that while there is solace to be found in basking in the idealized youth I could have had, I can’t refuse the material reality that that simply isn’t going to happen and any amount of time I spend longing for it is stopping me from actually getting shit done in the life I do have. The blending of themes and technicality of this arc is simply marvelous.

I am particularly fond of Hisui’s message that there are no requirements for heroism, you simply have to take that first step. Not because I believe in the idea of a hero we were taught about when we were kids, but because no matter what happens, nothing will ever change if you don’t take that first step to begin with.

I have briefly talked about how a lot of anime and manga focus their themes in an attitude the story is advocating for in my Sonny Boy analysis and it is actually kind of funny how many similar things I got from these two wildly different stories. If you don’t remember or haven’t watched it, the first episode of that show also takes place in a school that defies physics, has laws that can be enforced by the people living in it, ends with a character taking that first step and the rest of the story is, in a gross oversimplification of it, about everyone else trying to catch up to her.

Also, the fuck do you mean this arc is only 18 chapters long? Each of them is so dense I was under the impression it lasted for about 30.

Everything I just talked about proceeds to permeate the next big arc, that of the Invaders Rights Association, or IRA for short. A long arc that simultaneously feels like a bunch of shounen bullshit and a natural development going forward. We spent the whole series with a wronged Footsoldier, having met Hibiki all the way in the beginning who thinks they can coexist, so it stands to reason that that could eventually take a front seat in one of the story’s arcs. This arc is going to complete the change in worldview D has been going through all along, because as it expectedly turns out, the IRA is a villainous association born out of a genuine desire that was then bastardized.

D’s World Domination plot isn’t exactly a world domination, he’s thinking about it more in the lines of freedom. World domination is simply the ideal that was instilled into him from the moment he was born. Prideful though he may be, this man spent the first section of the story having to learn that he can’t get shit done alone, then using other people to achieve those things, and now he is going to learn that there are people willing to help him even if they find out who he really is. We know for a fact he didn’t fight just for his own sake back in the school.

There has always been a meta element to Loser Ranger as it deals with the existence of heroes from super sentai, has a super sentai show in-universe and the Keepers are just celebrities. In the IRA arc that then becomes part of the core conflict, building to some revelations that evidently will be properly explored in the next big arc as it has been doing so far. It isn’t as if the meta aspects are mindblowingly awesome, but they serve as an interesting way to frame this section of the story that keeps it fresh. I am particularly fond of the “This has been foreshadowed” gag.

I find that all of the big arcs so far are memorable because of this combination of framing and setting: starting with a classic exam arc in an underground base where the protagonist has to survive to reach the surface of the human world, to a more intimate character exploration in a school environment and now arriving at a meta narrative in a big castle, filled with cameras, TV broadcasts, YouTube livestreams and a VHS tape or two. Every arc has a distinct look and feel to it while still being brought together by the same narrative conflicts.

Shaking up the narrative structure by taking advantage of the fact D had to work from the shadows and rely on subterfuge all this time, the IRA arc introduces a group that actually has enough power to expose the Keepers as the liars they are and go face to face against them following that. It seems to me that this author is very smart about when to bring things into focus. Usukubo, for instance, was introduced all the way in the beginning, but did pretty much nothing in the second arc while Hisui became a main character. That is then balanced by having their positions switched in the IRA arc as Usukubo’s character is fully unveiled and Hisui spends half the arc bidding her time. Having someone we know serve as a stand-in for the audience inside the IRA eases the friction of suddenly introducing so many new characters. There are plenty of secondary and tertiary characters from past arcs who are weaved into the story again, these not requiring that much page time to have a role to play as we already know them and a flashback here and there is all that is necessary to give us more context into their backgrounds. Pink Ranger’s in particular is the stand-out as it gives us a reason to care, has that one panel in particular of her body falling back in a splash of blood that hits when you turn the page and sets Hibiki in an unexpected path.

Since you have read it this far I am assuming you care about what I have to say, so allow me to go on a brief tangent to give you some writing advice: if you come up with a structure, don’t overuse it, and if you have to, then come up with ways to keep it fresh. There are a lot of flashback sequences in Loser Ranger, but they come in different kinds. Some are interrupted by D saying he doesn’t care, some are kept very short, some are broken up in more than one part and the bigger ones are reserved for moments where they provide much needed specific information and only when they directly relate to what is going on. The immediate outcome isn’t always the same either, these flashbacks don’t always happen right in the last moment of a fight nor are they all preceded by the central character of those scenes dying. In essence, there are reasons why structures used in a bunch of different stories work, but don’t just throw a sad backstory in at the precise moment a character is going to be defeated every single time. It will get boring fast.

Thematically, I don’t have that much to say about the IRA arc, and frankly I don’t think the arc was shooting for that. The most emotionally interesting the series has been to me so far was with the School Life arc and I would argue that is very much by design. That does not mean that the IRA arc is lacking, as it is the most action-filled and violent arc so far and rescues a lot of scenes from previous chapters, making it feel as if we have really come a long way.

Just like it has been the case for the past arcs, a lot is established around this arc that we are yet to see the ramifications of. There is for sure more to be said about the Suzukiri Clan, the Neo-Rangers weren’t created just for the sake of it, the horrifying inventions of the Yellow Battalion haven’t been fully explained yet and the new position the Red Keeper is in is the “storm” the narration said D had unleashed — which unfortunately is something I don’t like, the first big narrative gripe I have with the story so far is this, as I don’t buy it at all that the Ranger Association wouldn’t have checked for his body, but hey, a single big issue in 139 chapters is a great relation.

So as to not end on a low note, let me conclude. Negi Haruba wrote a harem manga about quintuplets, made a ton of money (conjecture), then decided it was about time to cook up a killer action series. I am not nearly as much of a manga reader as I am an anime watcher, so I can’t say much on how it relates to the overall state of shounen manga, but I would bet that Loser Ranger is going to feel like a breath of fresh air to most people, whether or not you like it as much as I did notwithstanding. The very beginning is kinda mid, I know, but if anything of what I said sounds interesting to you, then hang in there, give it a couple more chapters. The artwork is sleek, it’s super bingeable, it’s slowly getting more violent with each arc (I hope it gets way more), the plot can be a case study with how organic it is and I need to get a Hisui tattoo.

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