Summary
Go! Go! The ranger lost! satirizes the superhero genre featuring the oppression of the Divine Dragon Rangers and their dominant enemies. The series explores the complex motivations of its characters, subverting the typical no-name superhero stereotype. Unlike other shows like The Boys, Go! Go! The ranger lost! still revere the superheroes it satirizes, or at least revere their potential.
Few anime ideas receive the same level of instant fascination as that of Go! Go! The ranger lost! on Hulu, but calling it Dark Power Rangers is too succinct to describe its subversion. The series simultaneously fetishizes and satirizes the colorful and spandex action seen in Super Sentai or its American counterpart, Power Rangers. However, Ranger lost! takes the essential step as an anime to not feel too much like the Power Rangers version of The Boys or Invincible.
Go! Go! The ranger lost! launches in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine in February 2021 alongside Blue Lock, Edens Zero, and Four Knights of the Apocalypse. It's not yet a blockbuster in terms of sales like other Kodansha products, but its concept is promising as an action anime. Go! Go! Attractive point of Loser Ranger! lies in how it approaches the genre and which characters receive the spotlight.
Go! Go! The ranger lost! Subverting the Sentai genre in Anime form
Calling it Anime Dark Power Rangers belies its satirical value
Go! Go! The ranger lost! introduces a familiar world where it is The Divine Dragon Rangers are an oppressive group of famous people with superpowers who force their enemies to fight them in strange battles every week. They won their conflict with the aptly named Monster Army thirteen years ago, with the Rangers having a clear advantage. Since their defeat, the Transformed Warriors of the Monster Army had to entertain the masses and were beaten into submission until Warrior D decided to break the cycle in Episode #1. To do this, he determined to kill the Dragon Keepers running the chapter.
The satire of Go! Go! The ranger lost! is not just a cynical spoof of the violent or narcissistic tendencies awakened when humans are given extraordinary powers. While Dragon Keepers are considered villains, they have diverse personalities, with the Green Keeper being much kinder to his team than the insecure and murderous Red Keeper, who showed his brutality as early as Chapter #6. The unnamed Warrior D and many other lower-ranking members of the Dragon Rangers were resentful as the series explored their reasons for wanting to destroy the Dragon Rangers.
This isn't the first time Power Rangers has gone down a dark path
Go! Go! The ranger lost! Using a new perspective, the Sentai Series has faced death before
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers never explored the Putties' perspective. However, dozens of subsequent series and its source material, Super Sentai, had tackled dark themes before Go! Go! Ranger lost!. The death of the Ranger has been dealt with on various Power Rangers shows such as Lost Galaxy, Time Force, SPD, and perhaps most famously in the loving tribute to Thuy Tran in Once & Always. Super Sentai has featured ranger deaths since the first series in 1975.
Following this dark path is not a journey to extremes or depravity as in The Boys, but a journey that gives agency to a group of often anonymous thugs. Fighters, also known as “Dusters”, have different personalities, body shapes, and aspirations. Fighter D wants to defeat the Rangers to assert his identity. On the opposite side, Ranger First Class Yumeko Suzukiri has a more mysterious plan to kill them, and cadet Hibiki Sakurama wishes to restore a sense of justice to the Guardians.
General Go! Go! The ranger lost! anime is impressively complex and has the potential to be a much bigger hit than simply “Dark Power Rangers.”