English Dub Review: Ranking of Kings “The New King”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Bojji is beaten to a pulp from his battle with Daida, but his stepmother Queen Hiling comes into the room and uses her powers to help heal him. Kage tries to sneak out of the castle, but is caught by Bebin, who imprisons him and lies to Bojji about the shadow creature’s true whereabouts. Then the King dies and it’s time to name a successor. His will clearly states that Bojji shall rule, but the Queen initiates a vote of no confidence against him and in the end Daida takes the throne. Bojji sets off on a journey, and Hiling is left with the feeling that her family may never be the same again.

Our Take:

The third episode of Ranking of Kings finally gets to the king part this week! Bojji’s father passes away (really quickly) and the battle for power that the show is presumably set to explore can begin in earnest. It’s not a bad episode, but it is pretty boring for the most part, content with setting up pieces that will come into play later on.

The number one most interesting thing to talk about after the events in this episode is the Queen herself. Hiling came across as a pretty stereotypical evil stepmother in the first couple episodes with the way she treated Bojji. Even her character design seems meant to invoke witchy, fairytale-ish comparisons—her nose is so sharp it could probably take out an eye. She does continue her behavior toward Bojji in some ways this week, but it also paints her in a much more understandable and sympathetic light. Sure, she might be looking down on Bojji for less than ideal reasons, but it’s pretty clear at this point that she has his best interests at heart… or at least she did at one point.

We get to see flashbacks from when she first came into Bojji’s life after his mother had died. She’s intent on winning him over, and is always trying to play with him or bribe him with sweets. But he takes little interest in her, until she helps heal an injured snake creature he finds using her mysterious powers. From that day on the two of them were like a real mother and son. It’s a little unclear to me at this point what happened, although the arrival of Prince Daida’s birth likely has something to do with her seeming change of heart. In the end of the episode, she allows Bojji to go off on a quest of his own despite her misgivings. Maybe she’s finally ready to let him go and grow on his own into who he needs to become?

Prince Daida, on the other hand, would rather his older brother not grow up at all. He seems like a completely self-obsessed and evil little boy so far. I hope the show can flesh his character out a little more, because right now it seems a bit strange that he’s so mean all the time when his parents were both pretty nice as far as we’ve seen. Of course, appearances can be deceiving. Domas appeared to be on Bojji’s side in the premiere, but in this episode he’s one of the deciding votes when it comes to stripping the King-ship away from Bojji. He’s going to be accompanying the older prince on his journey now, though, so perhaps he’ll get to make some moral restitution along the way. A servant named Hokuro is also tagging along; we don’t know much about him besides the fact that he was the only servant who wanted to accompany Bojji, so he should be interesting to watch.

The New King isn’t the most exciting episode I’ve seen this week, but it does show that the series is starting to get on track with where it wants to go. I feel like the first couple episodes were definitely a little slow moving, but now that the major players have been introduced and Bojji’s on his way to who knows where, the following episodes should amp up the stakes.