'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.
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§ 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.
§ 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.
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.
§ 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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