Welcome all, to another week of Ranger Reject. A lot happens this week, not all of it necessarily good, so lets skip the pleasantries and dive right into the episode!
Starting off, this was a really fast paced episode, and not necessarily in a good way. Ranger Reject covered a lot of ground, 5 entire chapters from what some friends have told me, and there were a lot of concepts in this episode that don’t feel like they got the attention they need or deserve. Take the Rangers and their power structure for instance. We get a small scene early on revealing their 2nd-in-Commands, as well as an introduction to the idea that the Rangers can be replaced and how little they care for each others lives. This was our chance to really dive into the internal politics of the Rangers, to show us they weren’t a unified force, using Suzukiri as our point-of-view character. Instead it’s a rather quick scene only showing us how ruthless they are, something we really already knew.
Another good example would be Fighter D, who survived! The core of his stuff is great. How he survived using the explosives to blow himself up before the artifact did, the injury and subsequent fight with the 5th ranked of the Blues, even the replica artifacts and everything were cool. It’s again nice to see Fighter D steadily improving and figuring out how to best use his powers, I really like that. But again, it feels like more time could have been spent fleshing things out. Why is the Blue and the artifact melting, is it because he’s a replica just like it, not a real person? Why did no one comment on it? And he can make fully functioning heads out of his hands now? That seems wild. There’s so much here that Ranger Reject just dropped on us without much explanation.
Oh and don’t even get me started on Hibiki, this was is a freaking train wreck. Cutting of his hand at a moments notice to help sell their trick so Fighter D can join the Rangers? The dudes that committed already? I get that he was raised by religious fanatics, but that seems like a bit much. Hell, I find it difficult to even buy his crazy parents to be honest. They want peace between humans and monsters and blame the humans for all the violence because they defended themselves? Against the monsters aggression? Also, how did he survive destruction of his church and still think monsters and humans could get along? Did the monster leave him alive and brain wash him or something, is that the plot thread? Ranger Reject can do a lot here, but when combined with everything else it’s just… To much for a single episode.
And that’s sort of where I’m at for the whole week. It feels like Ranger Reject has a set arc in the manga it wants to reach, a story beat it wants to end on, and chose this moment to absolutely blitz through the story so that the rest of the season would be on pace to reach it. And you know what? If it works, if the rest of the season is good and well paced and not a mess, I’ll take it. I’ll sack one episode for the sake of the season and a productions health, go for it. But for now, as the most recent episode, this is the first crack in Ranger Reject for me. Hopefully it’s just a one-off.
I also felt this was the first episode where things didn’t add up, unfortunately, particularly with regards to the characters.
I’d also like to see them retire the trope of “bad guy who’s also really lazy/shy and on the verge of a mental breakdown”: it’s boring and unbelievable. And oh god, why was he melting?! Can someone please tell us about the melting???
Last note: the show is doing all they can to tell us that these anime putties are “weak”, but from what I can see, them morphing/tossing on disguises and then engaging in bombings throughout the world would have probably led to their victory years ago. They are immortal, for chrissake. Just avoid the handful of divine artifacts in the world and you’re golden.
Would you prefer the pure evil villain who is evil just because? Also if you expect any sort if realism from a Sentai show you are out of luck. Personally I do not care for this adaptation and just want to read the manga. At least the pacing is better
Great question. Sometimes I actually do prefer an evil-for-evil’s sake evil villain. It can be done well.
What bugged me about random melty blue guy is the improbability of a such an obvipus weirdo climbing so far up the corporate ladder. It’s one thing to write him as psychotic punk or a member of a violent street gang, but a big organization like the definitely-not-Power-Rangers, with its absolute priority being discpline and secrecy… I don’t think they’d put up with this guy.
So yeah, it’s not “why” he’s evil but rather the “how” he’s evil here that bugs me. Context.
I hope the manga’s good!
Also, concerning realism: I don’t know if realism is necessary to write real characters and stories. I think all of us as lovers of anime/manga can put up with (and love!) a great deal of fantasy and artistic liberty. What I always like to see is plausibility within the realm of the show/story. Internal logic, i.e. realism within the context of the created universe.
I like that the Rangers are distinct from each other. At first I assumed they were psychos, but no, it’s just Red. Blue seems to have more of an uptight personality, Yellow is easygoing(?), Green seems cool and so on. None of the others come off as outright insane or evil to me like Red, though there might be something up with Yellow. I don’t trust anime characters who are constantly grinning.
The pacing of this episode was a shame though, I agree. Grabbed the manga afterwards to understand what even happened and now the cuts make even less sense.
Let’s just say that the manga provides more character insight for D’s and Hibiki’s past as well as their bonding and it makes the fight scenes make actual sense (and the outcome IMO more extreme). There is a reason for why the manga doesn’t properly show Hibiki after the battle.