Hello and welcome to my ramblings on this season’s prospective dark horse – Ousama Ranking. Truth be told, I was looking at other shows to review before seeing the premiere of Ousama Ranking (which ended up being one of the last shows to start its run). So far, I’m happy with my choice, but some storm clouds are on the horizon for our tiny king’s adventure. Let’s take a look!
This is an episode of two parts – Shadow’s backstory and the duel’s aftermath. (Small note: I’m going to call Kage Shadow, since it seems weird to half translate things). Kage’s backstory was…average. Now, for any other show, that’s a compliment, since no one’s ever said “wow, that was a great backstory episode!” But – Ousama Ranking has set such a high bar with the first episode, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by how standard it was. Nothing was bad – just nothing blew me away. I didn’t feel terribly connected to any of the momentary characters we met (although, I feel like that creepy princess is going to return at some point). This also brought up a glaring weakness of this show: character design. The kind bodyguard and the fellow who tossed Shadow into an alley looked remarkably similar. Hasn’t been a problem so far, but as the cast grows, I’m really worried about characters starting to look too much alike.
From the first half, the biggest takeaway from it all was that Shadow is a very loyal, murder-thief dog-friend.
Now, the second half….the second half got us back on track. I dislike court intrigue, as it’s generally overly complicated and minimally interesting. Ousama Ranking does a great job of getting the viewer to understand the position the various people are in – and has them acting realistically for their stations. Bojji’s emotions and reactions? Spot on. We have a new player in the spear chucker, who seems to be mute – probably a future plot point. Some additional complication is revealed with Daida’s shadow backer, which I’m sure to see more of.
But this second act is all about Shadow and how he sees Bojji as someone worth serving – Shadow becomes Bojji’s first subject. I have to admit – that was a pretty touching scene. I think the animation carried it more than the content, but I got a few feels.
So where from here? I suspect we’ll see either some training to power up our poor prince or we’ll have some outside forces come in to force Shadow and Bojji to work together and save the day. This is technically Seinen (which is really weird to me – so far, feels pretty standard Shounen, right?) so all my plot guesses are out the window. I’m scared about the overly simplistic character designs, but the animation is still strong (the tears welling out of Bojji’s bandaged eye were *chef kiss* fantastic). So far so good – good luck little prince and murderyshadowdemon dog!
