Go! Go! Loser Ranger!

Episode 4

I can't remember if I first saw this comparison when I was scrolling through Reddit, Twitter, Discord, or what, but at some point, I saw people make the comparison between Go, Go, Loser Ranger! and the delightfully deranged Amazon Prime superhero satire The Boys. After this week's episode of G!G!LR!, that comparison really (hehe) hits home!

You get it? Because of how Dragon Keeper Red hits that one Junior Ranger's face so hard that it turns into jelly and pins the poor guy's corpse to the wall? Yeah, the way DKR just smiles and continues to enjoy his sashimi while his victim's brain chunks are still dribbling down the plaster right behind him is a Homelander move if ever I saw one. It was obvious that this guy was no good already, what with how he lorded his power and fame around or how he treated the monsters he kills every week, but G!G!LR! has made it impossible to ignore that the Dragon Keepers aren't just egotistical assholes. The organization is downright evil, with a guy like this running the show.

This explains why a fellow like Hibiki would be so eager to try dismantling the system alongside Fighter D, even if Hibiki is committed to a less blood-soaked approach. The backstory reveals that we make it seem miraculous that the guy isn't going all-in on Fighter D's more direct approach. Granted, we didn't know enough about Hibiki to properly clock whether he was also as unhinged as all of the other Dragon Keepers, but now I have no problem declaring the guy to be just a teensy bit "Cuckoo for Coco-Puffs" after he cuts off his own hand without a second thought to keep up the ruse he cooks up with Fighter D after the melty dude with the scythe arrives to clean-up Dragon Keeper Red's mess.

You can hardly blame Hibiki for having a skewed worldview, though, seeing as he had the misfortune of growing up in a family of radical cultists who all got obliterated in front of his eyes when their "God" – one of the villainous monster generals — descended upon their church and exploded everyone. It's a dark but hilarious Sentai-seasoned spin on a cultural issue still relevant to Japanese society. It makes me almost wish we just had a whole show about what it is like to grow up in a world twisted by religious indoctrination and the regular life disruptions that come from dealing with new rubber-suited monster baddies every week. At least Hibiki seems to have taken the cult's message of respecting life to heart, even if it leads him to make some rather drastic choices to avoid anyone other than himself.

(By the by, here's a brand-new entry in "Genius Pitches That James Really Needs to Start Charging Consultation Fees For": A Netflix-styled true-crime mockumentary about the aftermath of a cult implosion, except the cult leader turns out also to be a Kamen Rider.)

Anyways, my only major complaint about this episode is how the fight against The Underwhelmingly Melting Man is handled. It's not a bad bout or anything, but there was something about the editing and the pacing that made me feel more confused than excited. The switcheroo that Fighter D and Hibiki pull at the end eventually makes sense, but I feel like the moment was supposed to be an exciting twist, whereas the actual execution ends up falling flat. Still, that one gripe of mine doesn't prevent this from being a fun and suspenseful episode that keeps the story of Fighter D's revenge moving along nicely. Let's hope that Hibiki ends up doing okay wherever he ends up.

Rating:

Go, Go, Loser Ranger! is currently streaming on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ in other regions. James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.