Ranger Reject – known in the West by the unfortunate localized title Go! Go! Loser Ranger! – has been a wild ride for most of it’s runtime.
Animated by Yostar Pictures and based on Negi Harub’s manga of the same name, Ranger Reject follows an unlikely protagonist by the name of Footsoldier D, an ‘evil henchman’ from deep space who has had enough of his repetitive life on Earth.
For the past 13 years, in exchange for their continued survival after a failed invasion, D and his fellow henchmen find themselves trapped in an endless performance of staged ‘Weekly Battles’, each of which end with their defeat and only serve to boost the reputation of the planet’s local heroes, the Divine Dragon Rangers.
As a result of his disillusionment, one day, D decides to make a stand, throwing a regularly scheduled battle out of whack by misbehaving and disobeying the Dragon Rangers’ established rules.
His tantrum eventually put down by the personal hands of the team’s leader, Red Keeper, a despondent D decides to abandon his station and begin a long journey of knocking the heroes off their pedestals by pulling back the curtain on their ‘heroic’ existence.
Most fans of the show will tell you, mingling the aesthetic of Hasbro’s Power Rangers with a setting remarkably similar to that of Amazon’s The Boys has delivered a welcomed boost to an already engaging storyline.
And after a dazzling first season finale involving a series of unexpected deaths and changes in power dynamics, a second season of Ranger Reject has now officially been announced.
Per a teaser trailer released on June 30th, its visuals a mash-up of clips from the first season, in particular its last two episodes, the season will air sometime in 2025.
As to what viewers can expect to see in season two, speaking from an ‘anime-only’ perspective, at this point it seems that anything can happen.
With the final episodes of the first season, we not only saw changes being made to the Dragon Rangers’ roster, D’s plans come to fruition, and his overall combat prowess increased, but we’ve also started to see clues as to just how widespread the Dragon Rangers’ control is – and how desperate those living under them have become as a result.
Fans are also speculating that XX might become another antagonist or that something twisted will be revealed about the very nature of the Rangers themselves (After showing off how much power he has and how evil he truly is, Red Keeper appears to be a fan favorite to be revealed as something greater than human).
There’s also hope regarding the introduction of mecha battles, as these are important to the tokusatsu genre that inspired the series’ aesthetic and mythos.
However, the biggest thing on the minds of fans of this show is: Will the pacing improve?
One of the biggest issues with season one was its seemingly random pacing. Some of this appears to be an effort to take some of the humor from the manga out of the anime’s presentation, and while the loss of the humor isn’t so bad, the hiccups to the story caused by making the show so serious has fans both worried that this will continue into the next season and wondering if a little bit more laughter might have been the remedy to the entire situation all along.
Ranger Reject/Go! Go! Loser Ranger is now available on Hulu with English subtitles.
An English dub for the series has not been announced at the time of this writing; but given how those are going lately—maybe that’s for the best!
