Anime Spotlight #49: The Red Ranger Becomes An Adventurer In Another World
a.k.a. The Animeister.
Well, this is embarrassing, Ticketholders!
I failed to realize that I had fewer Mondays than Fridays to work with this month, and so had planned to make this the 50th edition of the Anime Spotlight to close out Superhero AniMay. Today's review was supposed to be Go! Go! Loser Ranger!, but since I wrote this review first and that anime is currently airing its second season, I'm still going to end the month of my birth on a high note with this review of another promising new anime that was inspired by Super Sentai and Power Rangers.
But first, I thought I would share my history with the American side of the franchise.
You may remember from my Chio's School Road and Gridman reviews, and my responses to the passing of Kevin Conroy and Jason David Frank, that I grew up with Power Rangers. I was even a mark for VR Troopers, Masked Rider, and Big Bad Beetleborgs when those shows came along. I began my viewing in an era of reruns, and so didn't get to see Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in broadcast order, but what I saw hooked me immediately. I didn't care that my target demographic classmates thought the show was, quote, "gay," and of course, in a pre-internet world where I was just a kid, I didn't know that a greedy businessman had bought a Japanese show, filmed a high school sitcom around it, and underpaid American actors to dub in new fight dialogue to save money. We didn't have the visual fidelity to notice that the Yellow Ranger was a guy despite the out-of-suit character being female. It was a cool show with mostly good writing and one of the first long-form, serialized narratives I had ever gotten invested in as a kid, at a time when episodic storytelling was the norm for televised media. Even when the second season ended abruptly and went into reruns to make room for the movie; even when season three also ended abruptly after introducing a new villain and power-up only to turn the cast into children and bring in an entirely new cast of Rangers; even when Zeo ended abruptly and Turbo gave me whiplash by replacing a Ranger with a child and giving the Rangers car powers out of nowhere because I didn't know the second movie was canon (and I still haven't seen it), I stuck with Power Rangers all the way through Lightspeed Rescue. When I couldn't be home to watch episodes, I tuned into an FM radio station that was just Fox in audio form and listened on my Walkman (I'm 41, remember?). I played the games, and had all six original Ranger figures and a few monsters, the complete Thunderzord system, Shogun Megazord, Falconzord, and a few of the Zeo-era toys that I hung onto until about fifteen years ago when I moved to another state.
I lost interest a few episodes into Time Force (which everyone says is one of the best seasons) because of the cute mascot, cheap-looking, over-designed villains, Matrixploitation, and CGI. The acting and CGI turned me off to Wild Force (though I did happen upon the "Forever Red" episode, which was cool), and tuned back in for Ninja Storm, watching continuously until a few episodes into Mystic Force. I don't remember watching much of Power Rangers after that beyond noticing that Skull was in Samurai and giving Megaforce a few episodes before the acting got to me. Dino Charge managed to keep me interested all the way through, but Ninja Steel lost me at "famous country singer becomes gold cowboy ninja," and Beast Morphers was interesting for awhile. I can't remember why I stopped watching it, but I hear the final twist was amazing if you've seen one of the seasons I skipped. I haven't seen any of the final seasons or the special, and I don't plan to, but the ride was fun while it was fun (onscreen, at least), and I still check out content by fans and critics of the franchise (Linkara was a big one, but more recently, I've been following Conner the Waffle's "Weird World Of..." retrospective series and MistareFusion's "Mighty Morphin Zyurangers" and "Oh, Zeo" comparative series).
And of course, I'm always up for anime like Love After World Domination, and today's mouthful of a title.
Any good (or intentionally bad) Super Sentai needs thematically juxtaposed heroes and villains, and the Sentai invented for this anime, Kizuna Five, has villains straight out of a magical girl parody called Relationship Enders (who do what it says on the tin with thematic monsters of the week who target families, romances, friendships, social constructs, etc.) led by the Breakup King (yes, I'm serious). On the hero side are the titular Kizuna Five ("Kizuna"—a word classic fighting game fans might recognize from the Savage Reign/Kizuna Encounter duology by SNK—is the Japanese word for strong bonds between people...but also leashes? I'm choosing to ignore the kinky connotations of it for the sake of keeping this review family-friendly going forward...), your typical "government and/or science discovers conveniently thematic energy source and turns five-plus teenagers and/or teen-adjacent humans with attitude into a motley crew of rainbow-colored superheroes" group who wear costumes that look like animal-themed Duelist Academy uniforms made out of armor and band-aids and fight with bandage-shaped weapons.
While delivering the finishing blow to the Breakup King in the Kizuna Five series finale, Kizuna Red dies (‽) and the title happens, with Red (his name is Tōgo Asagaki, but everyone in the dub just calls him Red) bringing all of his powers and genre tropes along for the ride (including obnoxiously audible move voiceover, poses that cause actual explosions, and the ability to summon and pilot his team's Megazord by himself somehow, whether or not it is logistically feasible or practical to do so because there aren't many rock quarries or One Piece battlefields in the new fantasy world to fight giant monsters in). As he explores the fantasy world, Red acquires new allies in Yihdra (a falsely disgraced mage with a typical, "big boobs, bigger hat" witch design, but pink and purple), Teltina (a princess with a wolf demon living in her chest, and she's the blue one, da-ba-dee), her disturbingly jealous and protective knight Lowji (who wields a sword with seven elemental forms named after the deadly sins, and he's also blue, which means he and the princess might be related, which makes his violent jealousy of Red all the creepier), and Raniya (the princess of a tribe of Egyptian cactus elves—yes, I'm serious—who has similar powers to Red, but she's yellow because sand, gold, and Egypt).
I love the trope awareness as a source of comedy, and I'm glad it didn't overstay its welcome. Red Ranger Isekai (as I've sometimes seen it called online) could have easily gone episodic and told the same, RPM-esque meta jokes over and over again (but also castration jokes because of Yihdra's crazy butler and Power Of Friendship jokes because of what kizuna means), but thankfully, the series also uses this awareness to flesh out both of its worlds, dimensionalize its core characters and relationships, and escalate its storytelling into something bigger than its humorous foundations. On top of genre stuff like Red being romantically involved with another Ranger, having a friendly rivalry with an evil Ranger, and having a Dark Mode of his own, Red Ranger Isekai introduces an organization of demons who toy with human desires and infect them with seeds that turn them into Resident Evil bosses to gather energy and revive their mother and queen (because JRPG fantasy world and Sailor Moon reference), as well as the possibility of time travel shenanigans later in the manga and/or a second season because Raniya's ancestor helped seal away the Demon Queen with "the original hero," who was an otherworlder like Red, and may be Red himself. Even the stupid Megazord summoning mechanic gets partly explained when the remaining four Kizuna Rangers (now working with the reformed evil Ranger) notice their "Kizuna Beasts" being repeatedly deployed to an unknown location despite the Enders having been...ended at the beginning of the anime.
Hopefully there will be a second season, but the anime is currently listed as finished. The manga, as I said earlier, is ongoing, but it hasn't had a Chapter or Volume release since March. Speculation says we might not see new print content until June, but nothing has been officially announced yet.
If you enjoyed this edition of the Anime Spotlight, or Superhero AniMay in general, please remember to Become A Ticketholder for real to establish a bond with me, share your dreams and goals down in the comments section, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't have to start making my clothes out of used band-aids, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
I'm still holding myself to the promise that you will get to read my Punk Hazard review in June, and I plan to devote August entirely to this column whether it's Monday or not. Yes, I know I skipped July; I don't know what I'm doing that month yet. Stay Tuned, and
Animeister,
Power Down!
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