English Dub Review: Ranking of Kings “A Promise to the Demon”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

On his way to the afterlife, King Bosse shows Daida some of the happy and sad times he’s had with Miranjo and asks the boy to pledge to save her no matter what. While this is going on, Despa cuts off  the demon’s head and prepares to make a wish to restore Ouken, but before he can do so Daida returns and wishes for Miranjo to be brought back to life—so he can marry her.

Our Take:

Welp, that episode was sure something! Ranking of Kings returns this week with the penultimate dubbed episode, and it is definitely one of the weirder episodes in the season. A Promise to the Demon is part flashback, part demon drama— none of it very satisfying and all of it very strange.

To start with, we get to join Daida as he relives his father’s memories of Miranjo. We’ve gotten so many looks back at their life that I wasn’t sure exactly what more we could have to see, and really there’s not too much. Basically, Bosse seemingly stops Miranjo from killing herself, and then she becomes indebted to him and vows to help him fulfill his dream of becoming the strongest man in the world. But the first challenge Bosse loses, he seems to give up, and then Miranjo suddenly says they only have one choice—and that’s to ask the demon-she-promised-never-to-ask-for-help-from for help.

Most of this flashback felt kind of unnecessary and lame, and the rest of it didn’t make much sense. I definitely get the feeling that this show has fallen apart a bit in the back half of this season, unfortunately.

In the present, Despa easily defeats the demon (although I don’t know why the demon is willing to grant him a wish just for cutting off his head when he could easily get it back using force?) and is about to ask for Ouken’s return when Bojji stops him. Bojji and his brother both want Miranjo to be saved with a wish, and that’s what happens. This was one of my favorite parts of the ep, just because both boys have seen Miranjo’s true self and been helped and hindered by her in different ways.

It’s nice to see the two of them decide to have mercy on her… but what’s not so nice is that Daida then randomly decides to marry her? It’s weird enough that he barely knows her, and that she and his father may have been a thing, but also we get basically no input from Miranjo herself about this. It almost seems like she only agrees because if she doesn’t, some of the Big Four will attack her, and then when Hiling comes up Daida is just like ‘I decided to take her as my wife’. Like, what? You may be the king, but you’re still like eleven, dude.

In summation, A Promise to the Demon had a few interesting bits, but mostly it just reinforces my feeling that the show has gotten too caught up in itself and is slowly running into the ground as it progresses. There’s only one episode left now, but maybe it can redeem itself a little in the end? We still have Desha to deal with, after all.