The below is a spoiler-free review of Season 1 of Ranking of Kings, which is now available to stream on Funimation and Crunchyroll.
Ranking of Kings is a classic fairytale in the making. This anime is all about not judging a book by its cover, but uses its very medium to lure audiences in with the false promise of a cute, Ghibli-esque, family-friendly story. But what it instead unveils is a dark fantasy tale with as much political intrigue and plot twists as Game of Thrones, game-changing action animation, and some of the best characterization the medium has seen in years.
The show is set in a magical world where the king of each nation is subject to ranking based on a number of criteria; where gods exist, magic is real and certain animals can talk; where devils strike bargains with mortals; where there's an entire clan of shadow people. This is the world where we meet Bojji, a little prince born deaf and tiny despite being the son of actual, literal giants.
A wordplay on a Japanese slang word for friendless, Bojji is often ridiculed for being unable to bear his father's crown when he grows up. Still, Bojji dreams of becoming the number one king and meets each day with a sunny disposition and a smile for everyone. When he one day meets a survivor of the wiped-out shadow clan named Kage, the pair realizes they can understand one another, and together they set out on an adventure to help Bojji reclaim his kingdom from the machinations of an entity trapped in a magic mirror.
Yes, this is very much the type of story you'd find in a picturebook for children – after all, the first episode is titled "The Prince's New Clothes." The visual aesthetic is reminiscent of early Nippon Animation (where Ghibli co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata got their start) and shows like 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother or Heidi, Girl of the Alps, with simplistic, round, and friendly character designs, soft colors, and painted backgrounds. Even the soundtrack, by artist Mayuko, has a sense of innocence and childlike wonder that brings to mind maestro Joe Hisaishi's work for Ghibli.
That is until you get to the end of the first episode, where Bojji's younger but physically strong and egocentric brother Daida (it fits that Daida shares a voice actor with Attack on Titan’s Eren Yeager in Japanese) decides to spar with Bojji. Here, Ranking of Kings sheds its animation-as-a-book-cover disguise and reveals that it was hiding some of the most kinetic and electrifying action anime has seen in years. Arifumi Imai, who gave us the best Levi and Mikasa fight scenes in the early seasons of Attack on Titan, delivers the type of swashbuckling swordfights even Hollywood hasn't been able to replicate in decades.
Later, Shōta Goshozono gifts us with what may very well be a masterclass in animation directing and visual storytelling. Episode 21 redefines what a fight scene can look like and what animation can do – what cinema can do – with dramatic wide shots, sweeping angles, 3D layouts, and expert use of blocking all coming together to give us an unprecedented fight scene with a detailed sense of scale (more of that on this excellent thread).
Indeed, Studio WIT proves once again that leaving Attack on Titan was the best thing the studio could have possibly done. After all, they’ve made nothing but bangers since then, and Ranking of Kings is undoubtedly their best work since Eren Yeager first took the world by storm back in 2013.
Beneath the cute look and incredible action, Ranking of Kings also has a rather dark, emotional story that gets quite gruesome at times. Characters die horrible, bloody deaths, betrayals hit you harder and with more emotional weight than a Game of Thrones plot twist, and there is imagery that may haunt your dreams — like drinking the blood of a bird that drank the slushified corpse of your father. The darkness hits so hard because of the character work, which the show excels at.
Every character we meet appears two-dimensional at first, an archetype worthy of a fairytale told to children to teach them very simple concepts and lessons, but they’re quickly revealed to be fully fledged, emotionally complex characters. No character is as they first seem, and Ranking of Kings manages to break ages-old fantasy and fairytale tropes left and right, giving us noble knights with less-than-noble intentions and evil stepmothers who turn out to be the most gentle and caring souls in the world.
Then there's Bojji, a character that exemplifies the "he protec" meme and seems practically engineered to be lovable and defenseless, but whose mighty smile that can melt any metal hides a lifetime of pain and sorrow. Bojji is lovable without being infantilized, fragile without being weak. He is the definition of "best boy," and his disability is not treated as a narrative device that Bojji is meant to cure, but simply a part of him that forces him to use other strengths to overcome his obstacles. This is a deeply empathetic show, and nowhere is it more evident than in the way Ranking of Kings places such an importance on portraying Bojji's disability with care (the Tokyo Federation of the Deaf supervised the sign language portrayed in the show).
As a fantasy world, Ranking of Kings manages to be massive and lived-in while only explaining the bare minimum of how things work. Like Mad Max: Fury Road, it’s able to tell you everything you need to know about the world through images, often introducing bizarre and seemingly random characters or scenarios that nevertheless serve to paint a picture of how things work or the sort of people that would exist here — like a mad king who lives alone in the woods and prays to a mysterious sky creature that eats the souls of slain animals and then regurgitates new ones to repopulate the forest. Even the power level is unlike that of any other anime. There is no chakra or nen system here, but even without laid-out rules, you still get a sense of how the powers play out.
Sadly, the second half of the season suffers from some pacing issues, and the finale jumps a few points too quickly in order to reach an unearned redemption for a truly despicable character that never got a proper resolution. Then there is a sort of out-of-nowhere flashback to the main antagonist's backstory that is so uncharacteristic compared to the rest of the show that it prevents it from reaching masterpiece status. The flashback portrays an entire country as two-dimensional backstabbing villains, despite the show otherwise refusing to paint anything as just black and white. To make matters worse, the episode used background art that resembles Japan's very real history of imperialism and colonization in Korea. It is an unfortunate allegory with some despicable possible implications. The fact that — for better or worse — the show never returns to this allegory makes it a very sour note on an otherwise ice cream sundae of pure joy.
Even still, with a unique visual style, complex and memorable characters, and some of the best action animation in years, Ranking of Kings is a story that will be told for years, even decades to come. Long live Bojji.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/JbMWYG9
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