The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

Go! Go! Loser Ranger!

What's It About? 

Attention Power Rangers fans! The heroes become the villains and the villains are…well, they're still the villains in this action-comedy from Negi Haruba, creator of The Quintessential Quintuplets. Follow one plucky villain as he plots to take down the oppressive Rangers and finally fulfill his dream of taking over the world!

Go! Go! Loser Ranger! has story and art by Negi Haruba, with English translation by Ko Ransom and lettering by Phil Christie, and Kodansha Comics will release its first volume both digitally and physically on November 8.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

For as many of these tokusatsu take-offs as we're getting in English these days, it's nice to be able to be really, genuinely surprised by one. Not necessarily in terms of mere quality; after all, I'm a known mark for this sort of material, and even a simple riff on the spandex superhero genre will work for me so long as it's entertaining enough. But it's rarer, as it is in many forms of storytelling, to get something that feels like it's really aiming to impress with its subversive swerves. Go! Go! Loser Ranger! has a fair amount of build-up at its start, as even before the full density of its ambitions is made apparent, there's enough happening that it can be tricky to keep track of the opening timeline and the positions of characters. Don't get me wrong: the opening chapter is generally fun, even as we spend maybe too much time on a drawn-out gag of enemy mooks focus-grouping on monster design. But it's not wholly representative of where Go! Go! Loser Ranger! is actually going; by the end of that first chapter we think we get the idea, before the end of the volume makes clear that, no, we still barely have any concept of the full depths of the rabbit holes these Rangers are rappelling into.

It's honestly a great ride. I regrettably feel I have to hold back, as Go! Go! Loser Ranger!, especially in the latter half of this first volume, turns into one of those stories where I don't want to talk too much about what happens in it for fear of giving away some of the more impactful surprises. Suffice to say the central concept—that a tokusatsu hero setup exists in the 'real' world but is still every bit as choreographed as a professional wrestling match—goes to some impressively dense and complex places just in this first outing. Just in that introductory chapter, the story plays off the dichotomies of heroes and villains, or perhaps more accurately, 'winners' and 'losers'. It's a story akin to watching one of the players for the Washington Generals suddenly wish they could actually beat the Harlem Globetrotters, and it provides that strong thematic framework for the story to keep piling on layers until the rather surprising resolution at the end of this volume.

There's a confidence to Negi Haruba's presentation of all this material, even if that aforementioned density makes things a little confusing before you get a handle on everybody. Compounding that is the point that many characters are color-coded, but can't have that reflected in the black-and-white presentation of a manga like this. But Haruba's talent for presenting a huge variety of distinctive facial designs for the cast helps as you acclimate to this story, fleshing out a rather imaginative structure. Go! Go! Loser Ranger! has its own spin on the old Sentai setup, with a whole staff/garrison system meant to illustrate what such an organization would need to work in 'real life' (despite also functioning via kayfabe). And that system is also instrumental in how the depths of Haruba's various story subversions play out. I confess that by the time that's all cemented and some of the bigger twists were coming out, I'd gone full sickos.jpg for the sort of things this series seemed to be plotting. And after finishing this volume for this preview, I'll absolutely be tracking down future installments to read out of my own personal interest.

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Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

I'm a little torn by Go! Go! Loser Ranger!. On the one hand, it's an interesting parody of typical Sentai shows, framing the defeatist and cowed evil army with a team of Rangers with less-than-heroic motives. But on the other, it tends to dip into edgelord territory. While thankfully avoiding outright tastelessness, it does feel like a waste for the series to never comment on, say, the worship of militaristic structure typical of a Sentai show, or the genocidal undertones a lot of these shows have with regards to the monsters. But I can still respect Loser Ranger for what it achieves and how it does it: Fighter F's shapeshifting is an undeniably cool ability that lends to a lot of creative scenes, and the running gag of him getting decapitated admittedly made me chuckle (it's okay, Dusters like him can reconstitute their bodies). It would be nice if we got more insight into the motivation of the Dragon Keepers, but I suppose that's a lot to ask for just a first volume.

The art is very nice, with the Dusters having a very charming design. The Dragon Keepers are very aptly designed as a dark take on the Go-Rangers team, as well. The cityscapes are eye-catching, especially with the Monster Army base floating above the city, chained to it all as it hovers above. I ultimately recommend this manga, with minor reservtions.