English Dub Review: Ranking of Kings: “Immortality and the Three Brothers”

Overview

Ouken’s past is revealed as his desire to become stronger and put an end to his father’s cruel reign is recounted. Throughout the hard-fought war against the Gigantes, the prince distinguishes himself by his conduct, until one fateful day…

Our Take

This time around we get a full episode with the backstory of Ouken the immortal and it’s quite a sad tale. We were told snippets in the first season but with this episode, it’s now laid out before us. Seeing things from even since Ouken’s birth he was destined to descend to madness. Their evil father sees Ouken as his perfect creation since he was only having kids to seek immortality. Coming so close to taking over Ouken’s body when Desha finally killed him. Even before his death, the evil king was close to immortality with his research.

It’s now better recontextualized to see some of the same scenes from season one but expanded upon, like during their revolution. Even more detail about how hard it was on Desha and how much it pained him to resort to methods similar to his father’s. They beat him and changed their country for the better yet at a great cost…

Overall, I’m surprised we got an important episode regarding the story while the previous ones were just slice-of-life fillers here and there. But this felt like more of a horror story. It’s really sad to see him lose himself and how his past took a toll on him as an adult which resulted in losing himself and finally embracing his “curse”. I genuinely didn’t expect to see an episode as serious and disturbing as this one. Hopefully, we have more of these before the season ends.