Ousama Ranking

Osama Ranking is a disappointment with a lot of wasted potential. It is a show with a nice premise and a strong opening trio of episodes that slowly descends into an average revenge story and bad Deus Ex Machina. Let me explain: (Minor spoilers ahead) Bojji is a mute-deaf Prince in a medieval European setting with the dream of being the best King in the world. The first impression is that the story is going to be about the emotional journey of Bojji overcoming abuse and prejudice of society and family, doing the best for his kingdom despite his disabilities. The first emotional aspect is that Bojji isincredibly aware of the mockery he is submitted to, which he can tell by not only the physical language of others but also through reading lips. Now, I get that Bojji knows he is being abused but how can a Mute-Deaf know exactly what people, and even animals say about him if he never heard a single word in his life? Not that I was expecting realism but the shows opens with heavy emphasis on Sign Language, so one would expect that this would a reoccurring element of the show, but the moment other characters learn that Bojji can read lips sign language gets thrown out of the window and characters that know it stop using it completely. The author/show had the opportunity to teach something to the audience but instead just ignore one of the distinguishing elements of the story. The biggest problems I have with the story is that the show had the opportunity to show how medieval people lived with disabilities, build a long arduous story of overcoming the odds and becoming the best King in the world but after a few episodes Bojji starts getting thrown into the sidelines and a succession conspiracy starts taking place but instead of him being directly involved in unfolding the mystery, he goes into a Training Arc while the mystery slowly unfolds regardless to him. The mystery has indeed something to do with him and he gets involved but it doesn’t feel like he truly contributes heavily nor did it feel like his accomplishments and power were truly earned. Just to add a final note on presentation and music: The art style is highly reminiscent of Princess Knight, Heidi of the Alpes and anime from the World Masterpiece Theater. Personally I love it, I grew up in Europe in the 90’s and these anime were popular on TV, the style is Old School but not necessarily bad. Music is great, it is very medieval with orchestral elements and a lot of 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures which are part of the Medieval/Renaissance style of composing. All in all, Ousama Ranking anime could have brought a lot fresh air to the anime landscape with it’s Old School style and standout premise but went to an unsatisfactory fantasy mystery I personally did not find necessary or interesting.

The first five episodes of Ousama Ranking are the best first five episodes of an anime I've ever seen. No exaggeration: the art and music is top-notch; characters defy easy categorization and feel lived-in, each one capable of both mistakes and heroic moments of growth; the world is built on childish whimsy and nods to old fantasy tropes, but the story is deceptively mature, balancing light comedy with family drama, political intrigue, and sudden violence; the fights are visceral, gorgeously animated, and *restrained* to a degree nearly unprecedented in the genre. This is masterful stuff. It's such an incredible shame how the writing nosedives after that.There are scattered moments of greatness in the next eighteen episodes, and the technical aspects remain elite, but the story consistently declines in quality and never recovers. What initially seemed like a commitment to morally grey characterization soon starts to feel like a cynical reliance on twists. The first time a character does something that goes against their established motivations, it makes them interesting; by the tenth time, there is no character left. Most of the cast eventually morphs into the same indistinguishable ball of contradictions, shifting loyalties on a whim. The restrained action of the first five episodes is abandoned in favor of unnecessary, egregiously lengthy fights with no consequences. If a major character ever gets injured or seems to die, just give it a few minutes... healing magic is on the way. Sometimes, the story doesn't even bother to give us "magic" as an excuse; it just blatantly ignores any earlier scenes that become inconvenient, like they were only written in the first place for cheap shock value. A renowned swordsman has his own right hand cut off in a dramatic display of penance. A few episodes later, he's acquired a prosthetic hand offscreen and swings a sword like nothing happened. Another man gets his leg ripped off above the ankle and loses an eye in the same fight. After, he wraps up his stump and somehow walks normally on it. Neither injury has any impact on his fighting ability or is ever mentioned again. A shocking early death is retconned, but the mechanism by which the character survived is never explained. Throw in a truly irredeemable villain who gets no comeuppance simply because everyone seems to adore her for no discernible reason (what's a little murdering-your-entire-family between friends, anyway?) and a random marriage at the end of the season between two characters who had zero romantic interactions prior to the proposal, and it's safe to say the first five episodes of Ousama Ranking were a fluke.

I really wanted to love Ousama Ranking. And honestly, the first half had me completely sold. The animation is gorgeous, the soundtrack is doing a ton of heavy lifting, the art style is charming in a storybook way, and I have no complaints about the voice acting. Bojji is instantly likable, the world feels cruel and unfair in a way that actually hurts, and for a while it felt like I was watching something special. Then the second half happened, and it quietly kneecapped the whole show. The core problem is simple: this anime is terrified of consequences. Like, full-on panic attack levels of terrified. No matterhow bad things get, nothing ever sticks. Without spoiling anything, characters get mentally wrecked, physically destroyed, stabbed, crushed, cursed, whatever and it almost always gets undone. After a while, “death” scenes stopped feeling tense and started feeling like filler, because I knew the undo button was coming. It got to the point where anytime something serious happened, I didn't react emotionally anymore. I just sat there waiting for the heal, the save, the revival, the “actually it’s fine” moment. And I was almost always right. I felt no tension because I was conditioned to stop caring. And it’s not just the damage, it’s the forgiveness. Holy shit, the forgiveness. Characters do genuinely horrible things, and instead of dealing with the fallout, the show just tosses in a sad flashback and expects that to clean the slate. Murder? Betrayal? Manipulation? It’s fine, they were sad once. Let’s move on. The story keeps trying to sell this as emotional maturity or kindness, but it doesn’t feel wise. It feels lazy. Forgiveness without consequences isn’t deep, it’s just the narrative refusing to get its hands dirty. The show wants to feel gentle while constantly sidestepping accountability, and that combo just doesn’t work. Bojji himself also kind of suffers from this. What made him compelling early on was how stacked the deck was against him. He was weak, isolated, powerless. Every small win felt earned. Later, he becomes so absurdly capable that his struggles stop feeling relatable. At some point I was no longer rooting for him; I was just watching the animation flex. And yes, the animation is incredible. That’s honestly what carries a lot of the later episodes. If this show looked average, I don’t think half of these fights or emotional beats would land at all. Underneath the pretty presentation is a story that keeps pretending it’s dark but never has the guts to commit. That’s the most annoying part. The show clearly knows how to write a cruel world. You see it in the grim backstories. You see it in the setup. But the actual present-day story takes place in a padded, consequence-free version of that world where nothing truly bad is allowed to last. It wants the vibes of tragedy without paying the price. By the end, I wasn’t mad, I was deflated. This could’ve been something great. Instead, it’s a show with high production values and writing that keeps chickening out whenever things get uncomfortable. Pretty, emotional, and ultimately hollow. Solid 5/10. Looks amazing. Writing’s doing the bare minimum.

From a classic folktale (The Emperor's New Clothes) to an allegory that's worth more than a thousand words, absolutely NO ONE ever could've fathomed that mangaka Sosuke Toka's work would become more than just a classic underdog story. And instead, it took us the audience to new foundations and heights that really stand amongst the best of the best in the only way that this relative unknown author could've done, teaching us cases of human charateristics in morality, friendship, sacrifice and so much more that we just underestimated how grand everything just naturally works in every step of the way. Simply, wow, and I mean,WOW. The thing that makes Ousama Ranking a.k.a Ranking of Kings work feels childish (or childlike rather) and tomfoolery, but trust me, it just simply works and exudes nothing but quality and quantity as the series progresses with each mysterious step into pure whimsical fantasy as one could get. And for a show that really is this coming-of-age story that's set in medieval times about a deaf boy becoming king and his Shadow companio escaping the treaches of malign, I'd thought that I was watching the game "A Boy and His Blob" come to life, and it is THAT engrossing to seal the deal about the protagonist Bojji and his companion Kage about their own life journeys. But what Sousuke Toka did to elevate a simple story, to simply say that we weren't prepared for what's to come, is truly an understatement to how this is a classic case of subverting tropes and naturally glossing them together to make a plot so life-manipulatively magnificent to knock our socks away. It's a tactic building upon tactics that just warrants you to pay VERY CLOSE attention every minute and every second, because one blink, and you'd miss a beat (unlike SOME people who just chooses to be ignorant and remain full of bias). Case in point, I would've never thought that the generic clash of "good vs. evil" will have that many metaphors built right into it, and Ousama Ranking is without a doubt, the new master in knowing what makes the core theme work without having to fall behind to tropes (y'know, just like all shows out there being so generically contagious). This adventure fantasy feels tight, slick, filled with all of the feelings and emotions that would wreck any viewer (plus yours truly), and above all, shines best in its own right that there's no equal out there that could match the likes of Ousama Ranking. To wedge the knife cutting deep into the heartstrings, how does one manage to do character writing so deep and rich in philosophical humanity that there's always answers for every question? Only Sousuke Toka can do that, and for all the basis of watching Ousama Ranking in these past 6 months, I have felt nothing but happiness, love, sadness, anger, and the most important of all: the fear factor that continues to shake as the series progresses. Every character is not just a cardboard cut-out, because each and every one of them has a purpose to carry their own dreams and ambitions to the extreme points of sacrilegious lamentation, even going as far to the point of pursuing infighting when things go south. I don't wanna go too deep with the characters here, because that would make for an absurdly long essay that could match the likes of Wikipedia (and technically spoil the series for what's to come). But, make no mistake that from the simplest (Bojji and Kage) to the most complex (kings Desha and Bosse) of characters, nothing says more than rareified exquisity when human beings (plus a shadow) can very naturally be their imperfect versions of themselves the way they see others too, topping up with the mysteries of their own backstories that filled with tremendous amounts of weight that is both heartfelt and relatable. This is to the point where I can finally mention the currently famous meme out loud: *smack slipper on the floor* "E-M-O-T-I-O-N-A-L D-A-M-A-G-E"! And boy, Ousama Ranking is truly an emotionally damaging series for all the right reasons, which are layers upon layers of what defines perfect, yet imperfect humans, with no-nonsense "padding" drama. Author Sousuke Toka's manga art style isn't the best and feels rough, and that's where Wit Studio under the guidance of debut director Yousuke Hatta comes in, and it truly elevated this unknown manga that has gone without an English translation right until the anime came out. Speaking about Wit Studio first, the animation studio is obviously going through a transition phase that's leaning away from the days of Attack on Titan and (hopefully not) Vinland Saga. And what came out of it is a totally brand new Wit Studio that is once again ready to experiment on shows of other formats like Great Pretender, Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song and the upcoming season's Spy × Family collab with CloverWorks, all while retaining the same quality that the studio has garnered the notoriety from all these years. And I still have to say that ANY Wit Studio production will never ever miss the mark when it comes to strikingly beautiful visuals and breathtaking animation, and Ousama Ranking is no different in that regard. Being a childlike fantasy that meanders close to Studio Ghibli's stories, and filled with an action-packed adventure that can rival studios like Ufotable and Studio Bind (because Mushoku Tensei really set the bar too high to insanity), Wit Studio always delivers, and delivers hard with passion and dedication to the craft that it's basically next to flawless at all. And what's a studio without the dedication and hard work of the staff team behind Ousama Ranking, most particularly debut director Yousuke Hatta. Having worked as episode director with high-profile people like Shingo Natsume (One Punch Man S1, Boogiepop 2019, ACCA: 13) and Yuzuru Tachikawa (Death Parade), it left more than enough experience for the newbie director to execute his own craft in Ousama Ranking, and it really shows considering the unique and vibrant aesthetics with distinctive art style with simplified faces and expressive animation that fits well, almost the point of paying an omage within the lineage of the directors who helmed Sonny Boy and Mob Psycho 100 respectively. The staff team under Yousuke Hatta also MUST be given props for going above and beyond to adapt the manga up to 11, because it could not be said enough that this was a team effort that's a match made in heaven. Most crucially, what's an anime without music, and while most cases the music always is anime's saving grace when everything else fails, but Ousama Ranking just clearly defies logic to present 2 sets of OSTs that just more than fits the theme and mood of the series. And while I prefer the 1st Cour's arrangement with King Gnu and yama, Vaundy and milet aren't slouch musical artists either, and all 4 songs are great in their own right. In the 1st Cour, the happy-go-lucky aesthetics served Bojji and Kage's journey well with King Gnu's OP song "BOY" which is one hell of a bop, and yama's ED song "Oz." that's a reference to The Prince of Oz to signify the symoblism of a not-so-simplistic fairytale journey. And when the 2nd Cour came in with Vaundy's "Hadaka no Yuusha", that's when all hell broke loose with a slow, but steady gung-ho song with the finest sakuga OP animation heralded by Jujutsu Kaisen's OP director Shingo Yamashita, it's yet another impressive work in the books and you can feel every inch of that influence. milet's ED "Flare" is a nice song to purposefully round things up as a whole, or should I say "People makes the world go round". To say that Ousama Ranking is perfection, more than subjectivity and the classic tale of what it means to be an underestimated underdog's rise to success, I'd think that there's a better way to sum this show as a whole, and that's starting and ending with metaphors. See, this show has laid the hidden meaning of "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link", and putting this in Ousama Ranking's context, realistically sums it up as: "You're as strong as your weakest link." There is NOT a single shred of doubt in my mind that Ousama Ranking will be remembered for months and years to come, and it's the new, modern classic of jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring motivation at its finest.

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