Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m simply delighted to be returning to Ranking of Kings, where Bojji seems to have at last crossed paths with his would-be mentor. The road to Despa’s doorstep has been long and treacherous, fraught with near-death experiences and bitter betrayals. Through it all, Bojji has retained his strong conviction and gentleness of spirit, and after half a season of being punished for those laudable qualities, I’m more than ready to see him finally win something.

Meanwhile, it seems Daida has truly run out of options, and is now a prisoner in his own kingdom. Having gained too much power too soon, Daida was undone by his own confidence, favoring the words of those who flattered his ego over those who tempered his pride. This is not to say Daida was uniquely ill-suited for the throne; rather, that like all of Ranking of Kings’ characters, he has been sculpted this way by a lifetime of experience, caught between the preferential treatment of his mother and the indifference of his father. Ranking of Kings does not presume to characterize people as inherently good or evil, worthy or unworthy – we are all an accumulation of disparate experiences, all capable of rising to greatness or falling to despair. Let’s see if Bojji’s can begin his own rise from the underworld, as we return to the remarkable Ranking of Kings!

Episode 7

We open on a quietly ambitious shot of movement into depth, the show employing a slight parallax effect across the three figures set at distinct distances from the frame, using their relative positions to create a sense of forward movement. Combined with the fisheye perspective, this choice opens the episode on an immediate note of disorientation, movement and perspective working in tandem to make us feel unmoored in this environment

And thus Daida is forced to consume the tonic

Ranking of Kings’ lighting filters do an excellent job of giving the show a sense of old-fashioned anime texture, like it’s still being hand drawn rather than animated digitally. There’s a very high-opacity layer of grit applied over the base drawings, which comes more clearly into focus when passing over the image’s internal light sources. This creates a further effect of making it seem like motes of dust are floating in the air, adding to the ancient aesthetic of this chamber

Apeas is clearly tormented by the ongoing events, and can barely watch Daida as all this happens. They seem to be defining him as duty-bound yet troubled in a similar way to Domas

Despa possesses quite the costume. Like Bojji himself, he’s not someone you’d immediately pin as a warrior, looking more like a court bard or something

His costume also points towards Ranking of Kings’ general philosophy of design, a design basically any animator would agree with: silhouettes are important! Distinctive silhouettes make it easy to define your characters visually; here, it seems like the relationship between Despa and his brother is illustrated through each of them possessing a sharp horizontal bulge in their design, with Desha in his cheeks and Despa in his pantaloons

Despa claims that his brother is jealous of him “because he is no equal to me in strength or leadership,” among a variety of other qualities

He draws further attention to his own lovely face. Hardly the wizened warrior sage we were expecting

This show really delights in tangential weirdness, which I can absolutely respect. There are lots of strange unexplored corners of this universe, like Despa’s relationship with his brother or that forest king

Despa states that the one thing you must have to move forward is courage

Love this simulation of cut paper figures for Despa’s story. Ranking of Kings always looks a bit like an illustrated storybook, making it natural for it to lean further into that style for its vignettes

Before taking on Bojji as an apprentice, Despa gallantly extends his arm and asks for cash. I suppose in a show that takes care to demonstrate how its theoretical “villains” are actually multifaceted people, it also makes sense to make our theoretical “heroes” possess qualities like extreme vanity and greed. People are complicated!

Kage is ultimately forced to hand over his life savings to convince Despa. All of this serves as a quiet reminder that Daida wasn’t really defeated by any inherent unsuitability of character – he simply trusted in the wrong people, while Bojji is lucky enough to trust in the right people

Despa’s character acting and expression work are delightful. They’re having a lot of fun with this guy

A combination of handcam-emulating frame movement and incredibly fluid character animation create a sense of vulnerability as the candles all go out, making it feel as if the curse haunting Bojji has a physical presence in this room, and that we are furthermore trapped in the room alongside it

Despa announces that there is no way Bojji can gain physical strength

Whole lot of fisheye compositions in this episode, all designed to emphasize the feelings of isolation and despair in our brothers

“Even with no strength, he still possesses all kinds of potential.” This almost serves as one of the show’s thesis statements, urging us all to avoid assessing ourselves through one specific formation of “value,” and understand that there are many ways to become a great person. A direct denial of this whole king ranking system

Despa heads out to “prepare himself for training,” and returns later with his face beaten to a pulp after an unfortunate bar fight

As Bojji and Kage dive into bed, I’m once again impressed by how much personality these animators are able to draw out of the movements of a character who’s essentially just a black blob. There’s a sense of weight and consequence to Kage’s semi-fluid movements that makes it as easy to parse his emotions as if he were a human character

Of course, that still can’t compare to Bojji’s remarkable expressiveness, celebrated again as he learns to take pride in doing chores around the house

Also some impressive cuts of incidental animation as Bojji makes a truly atrocious stew. Ranking of Kings has plenty of impressive action animation, but it also respects the importance of granting incidental moments like this a sense of lived-in reality through movement. Great fantasy stories are not just contiguous stretches of badass fight scenes; they possess moments of rest and gentle reflection as well, and animating such moments with care is crucial to building the substance of their worlds

This staff is having way too much fun with Despa’s face. His reaction to consuming Bojji’s awful stew is an all-timer of horror

The storyboarding here is also quite impressive, working in tandem with the fluid animation to make transitions like this shift to a monologue about giants feel truly momentous. Dutch angles and shifts between high and low frame positioning are all helping to build a sense of familiarity with the contours of Despa’s home, while also simply feeling more dynamic than traditional mid-distance shots

And Despa at last drops the bombshell: Bojji is a child of giants

“For you to get stronger, you must first know yourself very well. You must also know your opponent.” Generally good combat advice that further echoes Ranking of Kings’ overall themes. So much of this story’s tragedy is a result of insufficient self-knowledge, or false assumptions assigned to others

“Can you tell which weapon I chose for you? Set aside your previous way of thinking and choose one.” Each step of this process echoes Ranking of Kings’ overall philosophy: here, Despa underlines the idea that if you believe you are inherently weak, you might simply be assessing yourself from a frame that is unflattering to your talents. To know yourself, you must assess yourself from all angles, not simply the one that has been imposed upon you

Bojji sees a reflection of his father in a great ax, and briefly reaches for it, still desiring to be the man his father hoped him to be. But Bojji is not that man, and so he sets the ax aside

“Being alone is the spice of success.” An interesting comment from Despa. It seems to further emphasize how assessing yourself according to the perceptions of others is always a route to disappointment; along with physically training, Bojji is learning to trust his own vision of himself

Bojji’s morning routine of deftly avoiding murderbirds feels like a perfect fusion of Ranking of Kings’ old and new aesthetic traditions. These loosely defined birds feel like creatures from another era, squashing and stretching in cartoonish exaggerations of flocks, while the focus on multi-tiered compositions and short focal distance emphasizes this production’s cutting edge digital innovations. Though studios like Ufotable or MAPPA seem intent on defining a new aesthetic of crisp and consistent digital reality, Ranking of Kings demonstrates how technological innovations need not mean the abandonment of anime’s aesthetically diverse and highly creator-specific origins

If you can’t tell, I’m not exactly thrilled by the Ufotable/MAPPA route. Their aesthetic goal seems to be “make anime that look like badass videogame cutscenes,” and that’s not really what I’m here for

Kage’s breakfasts look Ghibli-tier delicious. I am extremely jealous

And as Bojji trains, “Daida” retakes his throne, stating “so… I have sacrificed another son”

And Done

Ah, the twists and turns! Ranking of Kings’ narrative is winding in all sorts of intriguing directions now, while also furthering its key themes of human complexity and self-knowledge. In spite of not containing any overt action scenes, this actually might have been the production’s most visually impressive episode to date, owing significant credit to its remarkable fusion of dynamic layouts and fluid character acting. Within just a few short minutes, the episode’s insistently cozy framing made a true home of Despa’s house, signaling Despa’s ultimately trustworthy nature with every aesthetic tool in its arsenal. For all I spoke of this episode’s choices serving various dramatic purposes, the ultimate, overwhelming result of its strengths was a basic sense of storybook enchantment, like our travelers had at last stumbled upon a welcoming cottage in an eerie forest. Every great adventure needs a few cozy inns along the road, and this episode served as a perfect moment of rest in Bojji’s grand journey.

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