English Dub Review: Ranking of Kings “The Prince’s Apprenticeship”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Prince Bojji and Kage make it to the house of Desha’s little brother Despa, who agrees to take Bojji under his wing as an apprentice—as long as he’s paid properly, that is. Despite Bojji’s inability to grow physically stronger, he continues to work hard at his training, even when it comes to basic tasks like cooking breakfast and cleaning. But Kage is becoming suspicious of what kind of training Despa is providing. And why must it be done behind closed doors?

Our Take:

Ranking of Kings continues this week with its seventh episode, The Prince’s Apprenticeship. After several weeks of traveling around new territory, this episode introduces us to location and keeps us there for nearly the entire runtime. Bojji and Kage have made it to Despa’s place in the hopes that he will be able to train up the prince to gain great strength. It doesn’t exactly go as the two of them pictured it, but Bojji is still able to start training like he should…right?

Despa is an interesting character, and definitely is one of the more memorable ones so far. The writing does a good job of keeping his true intentions shielded. We know from the start that he’s not really helping Bojji out of the goodness of his heart due to the whole payment thing, but he also isn’t a straight up villain, as he keeps his bargain to train the young prince no matter how effective he thinks it will prove to be. The man tells Bojji that he’ll never be able to get stronger no matter how hard he works due to some weird physical thing—nothing to start with means nothing can grow or something? And then Bojji goes and makes a god-awful breakfast that causes Despa to realize that he’s not exactly what he seems.

Apparently, despite Bojji’s minute size, he’s actually the offspring of giants. This isn’t necessarily a big surprise since King Bosse was huge, but it is kind of funny that the smallest boy has the biggest backstory. The studio has a lot of fun with the visuals this week. There was a lot of impressive shots and animation, especially during the Bojji breakfast scene—those reactions were gold.

The only real mystery in this episode is Bojji’s training, but it is a good question mark for sure. Kage hears strange things coming from behind the closed doors of Despa’s training room, but he’s barred from entering via some flimsy excuse that I’m honestly surprised he accepted. Kage started out as a real cantankerous fellow, but he’s more like a tamed pussy cat these days. Regardless of whether Kage is acting out of character or not, there’s no question that Bojji is exhausted after his long training sessions—to the point where Kage has to drag him back to bed every day. After one particularly loud bang, Kage is able to peak through the door. He sees Bojji, who has apparently split a gigantic boulder in half… but there’s gotta be more to the story.

That’s where the episode leaves Bojji and Kage, though. We do get a few brief moments with Daida, however, and his storyline is not going well for him. After drinking that vile concoction from the mirror, his body is used as a vessel to reincarnate King Bosse. The King implies that this isn’t the first time he’s been born again in the body of a son, which makes me wonder about his wishes to have Bojji be his successor. Did the mirror save Bojji, or doom him?