Review of The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World
In an immensely saturated genre, Isekai Red stands out from the rest of its contemporaries by blending the absurdity of Tokusatsu with many of the traditional fantasy tropes of Isekai. Had a lot of fun with this one as someone who grew up a big power rangers fan, seeing an anime actually capture the magic of power rangers in terms of the crazy transformations, cringey fights, explosions, zords, friendship etc etc., this show plays out like a love letter to the Tokusatsu genre and my generation who grew up watching it. If you like power rangers, Kamen rider or just want an Isekai that’s different,look no further. This is a really enjoyable watch that starts out light and gets surprisingly emotional.
Isekai Red kind of tricked me because the first couple episodes made it seem like this was just going to be a show that made fun of how ridiculous some Toku concepts were. After the MC gets isekai’d to another world, the characters react as you’d expect for people who’ve never been exposed to power rangers or Kamen rider. After a few episodes though, it starts taking things more seriously, fleshing out the world, the characters and actually having a pretty interesting story. It eventually became a standard fantasy world with power rangers style villains executing a power rangers villain style plot and a ranger as the main character, which either sounds great or awful depending on how much you liked power rangers growing up. These days I’ll take pretty much any variation on Isekai that makes it different from the usual depressed salaryman gets summoned to a world and now has a wish fulfilment harem of hot elves and cat girls. This is a genre that’s been in desperate need of fresh blood and this show is just that to me.
The character relationships are the best part of this show like they are for most power rangers inspired series. Togo is a constant source of optimism and inspiration for the other characters, often helping them overcome past trauma and move forward. He might be “cringe and “over the top” but he’s a genuinely great dude with a heart of gold who will do anything for his friends. Sadly he still suffers from being dense in matters of romance like most other isekai protags, but this show is much more about friendship than romance so it is what it is. Loved how he and Yihdra’s relationship developed and his rivalry with Lowji. It wouldn’t be a power rangers series if red and blue didn’t have some sort of beef, so I like how they incorporated a lot of the color/character traits from live action toku stuff into the anime.
Production isn’t the best here, but it’s passable. I do love the character designs a lot and the voice acting staff is actually a real cool way to pay homage to some classic Sentai and Kamen Rider series!
This’ll probably be one of those series that the masses forget, but for me as a 90s baby who grew up watching power rangers on Saturday mornings this was like a dream come true. Despite how saturated the genre has become, I still love the concept of Isekai. The issue is writers with limited imaginations who don’t do anything different with what should be a completely blank slate of a world. Credit goes to the author here for trying to do something new with the genre, even if it’s not the best thing ever, I liked it quite a bit.
Isekai Red gets 8 morphers out of 10.