Neo Ranga

Yeah, I can see why this doesn't get much fanfare after seeing it years later when I bought it for my collection. Pretty much, Neo Ranga is focused on how the presence of Ranga makes the lives of the Shimabara sisters turn upside-down when they inherit a kingdom from their dead brother. The first half of the series is mostly a mix of social satire and slice-of-life comedy focused on how Ranga's presence effects the neighborhood in which the Shimabaras live in and how this invites figures like crooked politicians, the mass media, yakuza and the military to get entangled in the hijinks. From how ... I interpreted things, Neo Ranga was apparently poking fun of the cultural divide between those embracing Western influences and those trying to uphold the older traditions of Japan's past. While the humor was a bit hit or miss for me, the show's first half was structured well enough where it knew what it wished to focus on and things appeared to be getting interesting when the secret society called the Kyoshin Council made their move to gain influence in Japan.

Sadly, the second half to Neo Ranga takes a big hit in quality as the show got too experimental for its own good in what it wanted to focus on. The focus seemed to have shifted on the tensions between the Shimabaras and the Kyoshin Council at first, but the series decided to return to its slice-of-life/ social satire mix for a bit with the addition of "monster of the day" plot setups compliments of the Kyoshin Council as this mixture was a bit of a miss. Some of the themes focused on with Christmas and filming for TV specials were quite outlandish compared to the first half's focus on poking fun of more influential elements of Japanese society. The series then decides to go back to being more serious for the show's final episodes with the actions of the Kyoshin Council, a third faction that gets poorly introduced and hardly any depth and attempting to philosophize the worth of freedom and worship of gods. However with the sloppy handling of these developments and not being consistent with the tone of Neo Ranga's first half, these elements for the show's finale lack the punch they could have delivered if consistently delivered throughout the title's complete run.

Another area that Neo Ranga tends to be weak in is character depth. The series tacked on many of its prominent character with simple personalities such as Yuuhi being rebellious and pampered, Ushio being the heroic tomboy and Minami their stressed-out surrogate mother/ sister. While the simplicity was fine for much of the show's first half, Neo Ranga's attempts to incorporate more serious plot development and complex themes required more depth for these characters introduced. With exception to a few notable characters whose roles are expanded upon from the first half, the Shimabara sisters and most other characters don't get much depth given to their characters and their characters don't evolve too much throughout the show's run.

Visual-wise, Neo Ranga does make use of cel-shaded animation in the designs of scenery and character designs which looked solid to a great extent throughout the show's run as many shots featured a great amount of detail put into the designs of scenery and monster designs. The animation isn't the title's best highlight, but it gets the job done in depicting character movement and battle scenes.

Overall, I'm not really sure what drew my mind to come back to this show when I put it on hold years ago. Neo Ranga was seemingly experimenting with differing ways in which to explore its themes as its first half had a solid focus with its mix of slice-of-life and social satire while the second half became quite a mess in its overall focus. While it explores some interesting themes related to Japanese society at large, the series didn't seem to be sure how it wanted to implement them effectively while maintaining a consistent focus and tone. I suppose your mileage could vary on how well you enjoy Neo Ranga.

This anime is slow and has a lot of fluff, but it is moderately interesting. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how insightful and interesting the last couple of disks were. This series gets much better towards the end if you can make it through the middle. Character development leaves something to be desired, but I'll admit they made an attempt. The music however, is just terrible.

First season (24 episodes) are great. Second season (24 episodes), well, it's hit and miss with more misses than hits. The attempts at humor go up a few notches during the 2nd half, and that is to the show's detriment. Which is why it managed to become a relief when the over-the-top final act of the show begins, even if it is rushed and confusing as hell. Then the last 2 episodes caused me to change my opinion; there is such a thing as too over-the-top, especially in anime (as many of these shows are prone to do; they're almost never ... subtle).

The show is at it's best when it tackles how government and organization react to the appearance of the Ranga kaiju. How it evolves from national to international incidents, the political maneuvers, the responsibility of those in power (including the 3 girls who can control Ranga). Those moments that critique society and governments are great stuff, but it becomes too heavy-handed once those red fist people show up during the 2nd season.

The 2nd season still has some of that critique, but it's overshadowed by this lame "monster of the week" formula that just doesn't work. It could've worked, if it had more emphasis on world governments trying to get their own kaiju and control it and thus fight Ranga with it to have a stronger presence in the world; but the execution was lame. Not to mention there are moments I'm thinking it starts to retcon itself.

If only it was longer, slower-paced, and more reigned in. It was nice that the series didn't pad out the majority of scenes, as most anime shows do (due to each episode being 15 minutes long, including intro and outro, which basically makes each episode 10 minutes). But there were times where this was to the show's detriment, as some moments did need more room to breathe.

The second half, especially during the last 2 episodes, does wind up harming the series too much for me to ignore it. If only the whole series was more like the first half, and more reigned in... then it would be a masterpiece.

PS: A little too much girl-power involved too, considering how virtually every male character turns out by the end.