English Dub Review: Ranking of Kings “Royal Majesty”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Desha has come for Miranjo, and he’s not leaving without a fight. That is, until Bojji makes his true powers known and Despa advises his brother not to mess with either Bojji or King Bosse. Instead, they plan to pit the two against each other while they’re safely in the underworld. But when Prince Ouken awakens, that might throw a wrench into those plans!

Our Take:

Coming off a bit of a disappointing episode, I was interested to see how Ranking of Kings would turn things around this week. But unfortunately, Royal Majesty is another one of my least favorite episodes of the show in a while. It’s slow, pretty boring, and feels a lot like pointless filler. What’s worse, last week’s episode kind of looks even worse in retrospect after this one basically invalidated the entirety of the struggle that took place between Despa and the castle guardians.

This week’s new dubbed episode doesn’t start off badly. We open down at the gate of the underworld where we left off last week. Bojji has just arrived with Gigan and Kage to find Domas and Hokuro locked in a stalemate with Despa and his guards. After revealing that he’s come to conquer only Miranjo, Bojji has a strange flashback to a time when Miranjo was ordering his mother to be killed. She places baby Bojji beneath her for safety, and as arrows fall all around them, Bojji is safe—but his mother’s blood is all over him. It’s one of the most traumatic things the show has shown us so far, and definitely makes me commiserate a bit more with the poor little prince.

That scene is over quickly, though, and we move on to the real meat of the episode, where things get pretty slow and lazy. Despa apparently has a long history with the giant Gigan, because he forced him into his service when he was overthrowing his father. There’s a whole big thing about their history, and how he mistreated Gigan, and it all just feels very out of left field and irrelevant to the overarching story. The long and short of it is that Despa orders Gigan to return to his service, but Bojji steps in because apparently he and Gigan are besties now despite only meeting like 5 minutes ago.

What’s interesting is that Despa calls Desha, who tells him not to engage in combat with the prince because he would be vastly outmatched. I mean, I knew Bojji’s training had helped him, but to be more powerful than the king of the underworld is pushing it. Seemingly outmatched, the two brothers decide to retreat back to the underworld and let Bojji deal with King Bosse himself. Despa retreats back to his home, rendering much of the past two weeks rather pointless. Why did we need all those scenes of Despa trying to kill Domas?

Speaking of Domas, after Despa makes his exit, he issues a sobbing apology to Bojji that feels very melodramatic. Then Hokuro gets in on the action and I was worried the castle basement was about to flood. I guess he did try to kill Bojji, so it’s justified. But what isn’t justified is Bojji’s forgiveness, because he still can’t bring himself to face Domas. He flees upstairs followed by Kage, and that’s where this week’s episode ends—but not before Prince Ouken revives, which means next week’s episode should be much more exciting!