The Best Anime Of Spring 2024 (And Where to Stream It)

For four seasons, “The Boys” has turned the superhero genre on its head and delivered a gritty, subversive superhero story that interrogates the genre itself. Now, the sentai genre gets its own anime version of “The Boys” with “Go! Go! Loser Ranger!” (an adaptation of Negi Haruba’s manga). The premise is simple: What if there was a sentai team of color-coded superheroes similar to the Power Rangers except, instead of being heroic, they were evil and bloodthirsty? And what if the weekly battles between the Dragon Keepers and the invading alien monsters from a fortress floating in the sky aren’t the hard-won showdowns that enthusiastic audiences think they are, but rather a televised live show that enslaves the alien monsters, forcing them to fight and die in what’s disguised as Saturday morning entertainment for kids?

It’s a brilliant premise effectively executed, with the anime embracing the iconography and tropes of sentai shows while reframing them to be part of an existential horror experience for Fighter D. He is our protagonist, a faceless foot soldier who gets tired of the endless charade and assumes a human form to infiltrate the Dragon Keepers and destroy them from within. Much like “The Boys,” the initial “the heroes are evil” premise is a gateway to exploring more complex and interesting subjects like propaganda, corporate greed, and the military industrial complex. The Keepers aren’t just celebrities, they each handle their own little militia under the promise that they are there to defend humanity from the aliens, but essentially serve as a paramilitary organization. The show is entertaining, bizarre, and funny, whether you know “Power Rangers” or not.

“Go! Go! Loser Ranger!” is streaming on Hulu.