Episode 16 – Go! Go! Loser Ranger! Season 2

I feel like I gave Hisui short shrift in last week’s review, but it all worked out just fine in the end, because “Make Our Dreams Come True, Ranger Force” gives our girl even more time in the spotlight. This is time well spent, because Hisui is quickly becoming one of this series’ standout additions to the ever-expanding cast. I promised myself that I would keep the references to how much of an improvement this season is to the last one to a minimum, this week, so let me just say that all of this attention to fleshing out Fighter D’s allies as genuinely compelling heroes in their own right is something I am so happy to see become a priority.

On paper, Hisui’s origin doesn’t stand out as especially original or groundbreaking for Go! Go! Loser Ranger!, since she is the umpteenth member of the Ranger Force who was permanently traumatized by losing loved ones to the war against the Monsters and found their only solace in joining up with the one system in place that let her repay her enemies in blood. What makes her work so well is the simple way that they contrasts her particular tragedy with the time-loop story that everyone is currently trapped in. Here we have a girl who only ever wanted a “normal” childhood, but circumstances made it so that, even as an eight-year-old orphan, Hisui could not escape the gravitational pull of violence and revenge that has consumed pretty much every character in this show. It explains why Hisui found so much solace in the relative normalcy of the Green Squad’s humdrum day-to-day, and it pulls double duty by adding even more tension to Fighter D’s ongoing deception.

Speaking of, since Hisui was faking getting caught in Wakaba and Magatia’s illusion spell the whole time, she saw that Fighter D transformed from being the old cop to his usual disguise of Hibiki, right? The knowing look she gives F.D. at the end of the episode makes me think that the jig might already be up for our would-be conqueror of the surface world, but that is an element that I felt could have been communicated more clearly.

Honestly, this episode has pretty much everything I could want from a new chapter in the G!G!LR! saga: Compelling writing, Fighter D being a clever little stinker, and a hilarious sequence where male-on-male smooching ends up saving everyone from certain death. If you glance down just a paragraph or two, you’ll see that the score for this episode isn’t as stellar as it could be. Well, given that this weekly review format requires me to qualify the success of each episode in some form or another, I can’t just ignore the fact that the production values for G!G!LR! are becoming rather sloppy. We’re hovering fairly consistently in C-plus to B-minus territory, so it isn’t like the situation is dire enough to derail the whole show, but episodes like this one are just shabby-looking enough to be distracting. The character modeling is inconsistent, the editing is haphazard, and the storyboarding is persistently accomplishing the absolute bare minimum when in communicating the action and drama.

I have to keep my enthusiasm for this otherwise excellent season in check for now. It’s one of those situations where I can’t unequivocally recommend the anime to people who haven’t already hopped on the bandwagon, though I can at least feel a lot more confident in recommending that those folks check out the manga. It’s not the most ringing endorsement, I know, but what can you do? The whole point of an anime adaptation is to bring a static story to life with vibrant visuals and interesting direction, and this show only ever manages to accomplish that maybe 50% of the time.

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Go! Go! Loser Ranger! is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+ on Sundays.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.