English Dub Review: Ranking of Kings: “The Law of the Underworld | A White Horse in Love | The Gentle Soldier, Hokuro”

Overview

“The Law of the Underworld”
Fren is branded an outlaw when he leaves the underworld to help save Ouken.

“A White Horse in Love”
When Whiteking grows fat after the captain neglects to care for her, only one thing can whip her back into shape.

“The Gentle Soldier, Hokuro”
Hokuro joins the military to repay Bojji’s kindness.


Our Take

Picking up from the Underworld storyline, the brothers Desha and Despa try desperately to find a solution to help Ouken of the curse, though the Underworld’s laws will prohibit anyone to leave the city, such as with the case of Ouken’s second-in-command Fren. Unfortunately, with his retaliation and servitude to the former prince, he fled the Underworld, only for the others to come to Despa to share their worries to get approval for venturing outside, and the 3 pals create a diversion to buy Fren some time before he gets captured back for execution from the Order. Well, that was the plan at first…

For the 2nd storyline, the Underworld’s captain is tasked with taking care of Prince Despa’s white horse “White king” (which is an ironic name given it’s actual gender), and she’s grown over-massed like a glutton to be able to do anything. But all that changes with a black male stallion that she’s in love with, and works the grains to get back her original proud stance. Too bad that the male stallion already had a family, and Captain would take the beating in whatever way he could….

And finally Hokuro’s backstory as a recruit in the kingdom’s forces, he was just a lowly servant at the time of King Bosse’s passing, supporting Bojji when everyone else was cheering for Daida instead to be the next king. Instead, Prince Bojji is off on a journey, and despite everyone being an asshole to him,, Hokuro decides to go but is cut short by Domas, which Queen Hiling overrules his plan and decides to bring the only person that knows sign language to communicate with Bojji.

Overall a solid episode that breaks the formula of the previous episodes with so much variety on a narrative level which is great. The story of the horse was fun while the first and third tales were quite emotional. I get why this season might be polarizing to fans as it doesn’t move the story forward as a continuation of season 1’s story, but I’m loving the amount of character depth we’re getting and I hope to see more of that in later episodes.