There are also some badly injected takes on real world events concerning Japan and Korea that paint Korea as one-sidedly evil. The politics do not apply to most viewers; however, they are concerning when viewed in a vacuum.
The art style invokes that of a clean looking storybook fantasy and holds up for the most part. The opening and ending songs and visuals are stellar throughout the run of the show as well.
I don't normally watch shows as they air, but Ousama Ranking's first half had me gripped to the point where I wanted to see everything that followed as it unfolded. What I got was disappointment. Below is a much more in depth look at why I feel this way. Spoilers are present to fully explain why I gave this show a 5.
------------Story and Characters - 5------------
What initially drew me to Ranking of Kings, the story, starts out with immense promise. Two competing sons for the right to the throne; Bojji, the designated successor yet crippled from birth as well as kindhearted and talented in his own right. The other Daida, a younger stronger and much more arrogant prince. The first few episodes of the show revolve around who supports which prince, with each character having various stated and unstated reasons for doing so. Characters with development at this point were multilayered and had compelling individual struggles.
The protagonist Bojji struggles to fit in because he is weak, small, gullibly kind, deaf, and mute. He finds a friend in Kage who recognizes his will and talent in combination with his kindness as something great. The sword master in charge of Bojji struggles between loyalty to his master and the potential he saw in another. Queen Hilling was shown at first to be harsh towards Bojji for his gullible demeanor and fully supported Daida over him, yet it is also shown how much she truly cares for him as her son. The mysterious Spear Master and Snake Charmer had their own reasons for being loyal to Bojji and Daida respectfully with each showing potential for further development. Daida himself is power hungry and craves to be as strong and as great as his father. Together with a magic mirror giving advice, Daida was willing to do anything to cement his rule. When first watching the show, I was not sure what to expect from any of the characters and I found myself pleasantly surprised at the quality of writing despite the simplicity of the premise. Eventually, the contention between the two princes is put on hold and the rest of the show starts to slowly falter.
There are many debates as to whether or not the second half of the show is worse or not. Some say the quality is the same, some say it is not. I'd say the second 2/3rds of the show start to show significant problems and do not hold up overall. There are a handful of reasons for this being the character developments, the plot as a whole, pacing, the political allegory, and the tropes used.
-----SPOILERS------
Starting with minor complaints, some segments of the show focused one-sidedly on either Bojji and Kage or people living in the kingdom. Some episode plots were paced weirdly and going up to two episodes with barely any development for Bojji's plot thread felt weird after seeing him every episode. Similarly, suddenly cutting to the kingdom which had been irrelevant for several episodes was also jarring at times. There are also multiple unresolved plot threads and characters introduced that go nowhere or are irrelevant. The source material is a web manga currently being published so I hope they eventually go somewhere meaningful.
As far as characters go, everyone from the underworld remains fine as a character, the spearman is the most compelling of the four knights and Hilling is fine aside from one aspect. The rest of the cast did not fare well in terms of development. The biggest aggressor to this is Kage, who started out as gruff yet supportive and ultimately ended up as nothing but a mouthpiece for Bojji. His troubled past led to a sour demeanor that eventually changed when he decided to support Bojji, which he did by protecting his life and paying for his training. After this, Kage does not do anything of note except talk for Bojji because he is mute, give play by play commentary during fights and altercations, and cry. Kage hardly ever shows off his once gruff personality, instead it feels as if he was created to serve as a way for the viewer to understand Bojji's every mumbled word. In particular, his emotional crying is overused to a ridiculous degree.
The swordsman tries to kill Bojji in episode 5 and then spends the next 18 episodes wallowing in pity over the fact that he betrayed his master. He went from driven and experienced to being lectured by every character in the show and being treated like a child. His student, a supporter of Bojji from the beginning, is portrayed as inexperienced and naive yet he is shown in a more mature and knowledgeable light than the swordsman on multiple occasions. In addition to this, the swordsman resorts to comical levels of self harm and pity on multiple occasions. Even after swearing newfound loyalty to Bojji, he constantly looks for ways to get himself killed in atonement even after multiple characters tell him he is wrong for doing so. What started out as an experienced tutor who questioned loyalty over potential was reduced to a bumbling sob story who can't decide between loyally serving, killing himself for redemption, or crying on the floor for forgiveness. In particular, his crying is overused to a ridiculous degree.
The spearman is the most compelling of the initially introduced knight cast, struggling between two factions of loyalty. This isn't particularly groundbreaking and his hypocrisy and wishy washy nature is even frustrating at times, but, comparing him to other cast members he oddly stands as one of the few mildly decently handled characters. Like others, he still breaks down and cries but not to the point of significant overuse.
The snake charmer does not get any character development aside from a handful of lines and scenes that show he is kind but pretends to be mean as a facade. He doesn't cry which makes him alright.
Last of the knights is the big muscleman in charge of protecting Hilling, he does just that and is one of the few characters to actually suffer consequences from being attacked. You could easily argue that this makes him the best character between the four knights which I find sad considering he barely has any nuance in his personality.
Overall, each of the knights showed promise at the beginning and by the end two were barely developed. One was bastardized from a multilayered man with ambition and drive into a devout Bojji afficionado who can't control his suicidal impulses or his waterworks, and only one of them ended up being passable as a character. An additional small gripe I have with all of them is that they decide to support Bojji over their king in the end. Even the Snake Charmer who was entirely in support of Daida and Bosse decides to support Bojji.
Speaking of Bojji, some find issue with the fact he went from essentially powerless to potently strong in a 4-episode training arc. Personally, I don't have issue with it because the logic behind why it worked flowed well. Bojji was initially already very swift, he was just taught how to take advantage of that. I don't have many issues with Bojji as a protagonist, but he does cry too much for emotional scenes to feel effective.
I do take issue with the fact that nearly every single one of his doubters form the beginning changes their tune with ease. Bojji went from misunderstood as stupid and naive to being seen as a driven saint compared to everyone else. I wish that other characters were not as quick to immediately fall head over heels for the newly strong Bojji.
Daida is betrayed by the mirror and locked away and his consciousness in his body is replaced by Bosse. During this confinement Daida has a complete change of heart from entirely ruthless to sobbing over the misfortune of the brother he ordered executed. The Mirror, a woman named Miranjo. becomes the primary antagonist. Bosse is left ambiguous for most of the show, all that was known about him was that he was a strong king. Through flashbacks, we find out that Bosse one dimensionally cared about strength and the relationships he developed aside from Miranjo were all superficial. There isn't anything inherently wrong with this development, however the writing concerning the events and how Bosse developed as a character leave much to be desired. All the loyalty and trust he inspired as well as the loving relationships he had feel hollow and pointless in the grand scheme of things. He claims to love Hilling and his sons yet could care less about their deaths. Bosse cried at least 4 times about Miranjo, yet he did not have a single emotional crying scene for either of his sons or wives. More meaningful content happened in flashbacks and past events than anything that Bosse did in real time during the story.
We also find out that Miranjo basically caused every single bad thing to happen in the entirety of the story. I wont go into specifics but Miranjo made Bosse a king because he made her happy. Then she wanted to spend more time with Bosse which involves stripping him of his kingdom so she tries to get everyone in his family killed. Bosse just sits back and agrees with this because all of his relationships are superficial. The ultimate resolution to this is Bosse rightfully dies and Miranjo is completely forgiven and Daida decides he wants to marry her. Daida decides to do this because he spent 17 episodes in a mental prison watching her past unfold. After watching the 3 to 4 year old and cradling her, he watches her grow up and develop feelings for his father. After all of this, he decides to marry her. This single development brought down the score of the show from a 7 to a 6 for me, it completely comes out of nowhere, is morally questionable, and the resolution for the cause of all their suffering is given a '''''happy''''' end. We are then left with the horrendous quote 'hate the sin not the sinner,' which is horribly ill fitting considering a particular aspect of the flashbacks shown.
Some argue that the author wanted each character to get a happy end and that is the purpose for why he wrote this story. There is nothing wrong with that, but the way he did it was horribly executed. In multiple flashbacks throughout the show, characters die, are disfigured, tortured, and have lasting consequences. During the real time events of the show not a single major character dies. There are multiple fake out deaths of which include multiple characters getting stabbed through the chest, given poison, ripped in half, mauled by beasts, and bonked on the head really hard. Every single one of these mortal injuries was cured by Queen Hilling's healing powers. By the third or fourth complete reversal of death on hilling's behalf it became apparent that there were literally no stakes in the second half of the show. Even towards the end when her healing abilities were spent and everyone was essentially dead everyone was miraculously brought back to life. The way in which this story was written established death and stakes before immediately backing out and taking away the possibility entirely.
Emotional fight scenes are undermined by the fact that they probably have no real stakes when the only shown stake can easily be fixed with healing magic. Emotional scenes in general rely far too much on characters crying, realizing the error of their ways and then resolving to change or just keep crying. It is easier to name members of the cast that do not break down and cry than it is to name each one that does. I have brought the subject of crying up multiple times because I personally believe that its overuse to a ridiculous degree was that detrimental to the quality of the show.
My final large complaint concerns the flashbacks to a conflict between two cultures. One culture is fighting for freedom and helps out a poor culture while the poor culture turns out to be entirely evil and sadistic and willing to betray the kind culture at the drop of the hat. What we are given is a thinly veiled allegory for Japanese and Korean conflict, with the Japanese depicted as the benefactors to an ungrateful and 'evil' Korean culture. I am in no position to lecture anyone on the morality behind the political allegory used in this show, however, from an outsider's perspective, the author let his politics get in the way of conveying a story. That awful quote from before 'hate the sin not the sinner' loses all meaning when you look at how the author portrays the Korean people. They are literally irredeemably evil and torture an innocent girl for the sake of doing so. The audience is not meant to sympathize them, but we are meant to sympathize with the girl they tortured who ended up doing just as many horrific actions because she wanted to make someone else happy. There is no moral ambiguity for the Koreans in the flashbacks, the audience is fully meant to hate the sinner in this case. Again, supposedly the author wanted a fairytale everyone is happy ending, yet he decided to make one sided ethnic racism a key component to his happy feel good story. I am in no position to lecture anyone on their politics but I found this incredibly distasteful and immensely detracting from the show.
------------ Overall 5 ----------
I really wish the rest of the series was as good as the first few episodes. The author wanted a happy fairytale where everyone got a good ending yet set the scene for a completely different story. Emotional development is reliant on crying, there are no real stakes, and characters are a mess by the end. The best part of the show is that the art style is clean aside from a few minor animation issues and the opening and ending songs and animation are good. If you can overlook those aspects, then maybe you'd enjoy Ranking of Kings. I did not end up enjoying anything past maybe episode 8, but those first few episodes were good enough to not bring this show down even lower.
