Welcome all, to another episode of Ranger Reject! This week continues the exam, revealing the true secret behind it and driving our cast to conflict, meanwhile in the background a greater threat is beginning to arise. Pretty ominous right? Well lets dive in and talk about it!
Starting with the test itself, the reveal that this wasn’t actually designed to test pairs of two but full teams of five was really interesting. Suddenly a seemingly impossible test designed to fail everyone instead becomes a measure of leadership, team work, and judgement on who you team up with. I still wouldn’t call it perfect, the way Ranger Reject presented it last episode was still very flawed, but this episode was a valiant recovery and may end up saving the arc for me. Shion’s betrayal despite everything Fighter D did for him yesterday, the way Fighter D is slowly building up his team of rejects to steal back the keys they need, as well as everything else going on in the background, was all around pretty good. It still suffers a bit from pacing, but not nearly as badly as the previous episode.
If I had to pick a moment that stood out to me the most though, it would definitely be Fighter D’s reveal to Suzukiri. I like that he came up with actual verbal signals instead of like… taking her aside privately or something to reveal it, because why would she got with Hibiki like that? Plus her reaction to the reveal, her immediate shift in attitude and internal joy, was really cute. She’s clearly very happy to see him again, to an almost romantic degree it feels like. Seriously, that spread of Fighter D’s face as she remembers their time together was a tad too strong to just be friendship. Anyways, combine this with him revealing himself to the other examinee and it feels like Fighter D is starting to build up his own allies/forces within the Rangers. It’s cool to see!
As for what’s going on behind the exam, I could never have expected this. One of the boss monsters, the same one that killed Hibiki’s parents and apparently Shion’s brother, named Lord Peltrola survived? How? And why is he down underneath the base of all places? Ranger Reject did a great job with the slow reveal here I think. Starting it with Shion’s motivations surrounding his brother, the mystery of how he was killed 4 years ago when the eradication of the boss monsters was 13 years ago, Fighter D’s confusion around the whole thing making it clear he wasn’t aware. Then we get the reveal as Peltrola kills the maintenance guy who discovered Fighter XX just as he was extending a hand of peace, drafting her into his service. It’s an effective intro, and Fighter XX’s terror makes it clear that Peltrola is not an ally.
On that note, why is she afraid? Peltrola is meant to be one of the boss monsters, their superiors, right? Was their relationship with all of the boss monsters terrible, or is he specifically bad news? Whatever the case, it’s clear that Fighter XX dreads his arrival, going so far as to wish for Fighter D to break his mimicry and escape, to abandon the mission of revenge against the Rangers she previously pushed so hard for. It makes me wonder, could this be a unifying factor for the Rangers and the Dusters? Fighter D is already slowly revealing himself to people, growing a team who know what he truly is. With a great enough antagonist to fight against I could see them being forced to team up. I hope not, I don’t want to redeem the whole system and I like the Keepers as villains. But temporarily could work.
Alternatively, this could also be a route for all 10 of our cast to pass, when only 5 were originally intended to. It’s clear Peltrola is going to break up the exam, ruining it on the 3rd day. And since the only people down here at the moment are the 2nd-in-commands and some trainees, I could see Fighter D bringing them together to take down a boss monster he has no interest in serving any longer. How he does that without revealing himself is another story, or it could lead to all 10 knowing what he is. I don’t know. Whatever happens though, this arc is shaping up to be a bit more than a simple “Exam” arc, and I’m here for it. Peltrola has introduced a lot of possibilities we didn’t have before.
So yeah, all in all a solid episode. Some nice progression with Fighter D, the exam suddenly got a lot more interesting and Peltrola is keeping Fighter XX and the Dusters engaged in the story. Fighter D passing this exam and exiting out into the world a fully-fledged Ranger also makes for a great end point for this first season, as he’s able to work against the Rangers from the inside now. Hopefully Ranger Reject takes its time here and we get some cool action as they all face off, as Fighter D has been learning some cool strategies. I’d hate for Ranger Reject to rush through this like it has in some of the previous episodes.
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