- Series Analysis
- Ranking of Kings
- WIT Studio
Ranking of Kings: WIT Studio's Fairy-Tale Prestige
Sōsuke Tōka began Ranking of Kings as an independent web manga on Manga Hack in 2017. By 2021, WIT Studio had adapted it as a twenty-three-episode prestige TV anime directed by Yousuke Hatta.
Ranking of Kings — the WIT Studio anime adaptation of Sōsuke Tōka’s manga — is a structural case study in how non-Jump, fairy-tale-coded material can break through to prestige TV adaptation. The manga began as an indie web series on the Manga Hack platform in 2017. By 2019 it was commercially serialized. By 2021 it had a twenty-three-episode prestige TV adaptation from WIT Studio, one of the medium’s leading prestige-anime studios. The trajectory was unusual and worth documenting.
The work is also a case study in WIT Studio’s late-2010s and early-2020s pivot. After producing Attack on Titan Seasons 1-3 (and then being replaced by MAPPA for The Final Season), WIT needed to demonstrate it could deliver prestige anime outside its established Shōnen-adjacent register. Ranking of Kings, Spy x Family co-production work, and Vinland Saga Season 1 were the projects that completed that pivot.
The indie origin
Sōsuke Tōka began Ranking of Kings as a personal project on Manga Hack, a free Japanese web-manga platform that allows independent creators to publish work without traditional editorial gatekeeping. The platform’s structural function is to let creators build audiences before commercial publication. Many Manga Hack series remain hobbyist; a few cross over into commercial publication when an editor identifies commercial potential.
Ranking of Kings was one of the platform’s clearest crossovers. The series was picked up for commercial publication by Enterbrain (a Kadokawa imprint) in 2019. As of 2026, the commercial publication has produced twenty-plus volumes, with Tōka continuing to write and draw the series.
The indie origin matters analytically because it shaped what the work is. Without a Shōnen Jump editorial structure shaping the work toward established commercial templates, Tōka was free to build a fairy-tale-coded narrative — a small deaf prince, a shadow-spirit friendship, a quest structure that owes more to Western fairy tales than to shōnen battle manga. The work’s tonal identity is what made it stand out for adaptation.
The premise as fairy-tale anchor
The protagonist, Bojji, is the first son and presumed heir of King Bosse. He is small, deaf, and physically weak in a kingdom whose nobility values martial strength. He cannot speak; his communication is through expressions and limited sign. The kingdom largely views him as unfit to inherit. The story follows Bojji’s friendship with Kage, a shadow-spirit boy who is the last survivor of an assassin clan, and the political and personal conflicts that arise as Bojji is increasingly excluded from succession in favor of his half-brother.
The fairy-tale framing is structurally precise. The work is not a parody of fairy tales or an inversion of them — it uses the fairy-tale form earnestly. Kingdoms have ranks. Royal succession has stakes. Shadow-spirits and magic exist as background reality. Friendships across power asymmetries are treated with the moral seriousness that fairy tales bring to such relationships.
The treatment of Bojji’s disabilities is also structurally precise. The work neither magically resolves his deafness nor frames him as tragic. Bojji is small and deaf and has a particular set of strengths (perception, discipline, courage) and weaknesses (physical scale, communication). The story uses these as character material rather than as obstacles to be removed.
WIT Studio’s production approach
WIT Studio’s adaptation, directed by Yousuke Hatta, made several precise visual decisions that defined the work’s prestige profile.
Deliberately storybook visual identity. The adaptation uses thick outlined character work, watercolor-evocative backgrounds, and color palettes that read as illustrated children’s-book rather than as typical TV anime. This is a structural choice. The visual identity tells the viewer that the work is operating in a different register than ordinary fantasy anime.
Patient pacing. The twenty-three-episode run gives substantial time to small character moments. Bojji’s communication scenes, in particular, are given the time they need to land — the work does not rush past the structural difficulty of a non-speaking protagonist.
Strong direction of emotional sequences. Several mid-season episodes are widely cited as among the most emotionally precise anime of their year. The combination of WIT’s animation quality, the work’s earnest fairy-tale framing, and the patient pacing allows these sequences to work without sentimentality.
Faithful preservation of the source’s tonal range. The work’s combination of comedy, action, political intrigue, and earnest emotion is preserved in the adaptation. The work does not collapse into one register; it holds several at once.
The result was a 2021-2022 TV anime that won broad critical acclaim and significant international audience. Ranking of Kings was nominated for and won multiple Crunchyroll Anime Awards categories. It became one of WIT’s signature post-Attack on Titan works.
The Treasure Chest of Courage and follow-up
Ranking of Kings: The Treasure Chest of Courage (2023) is a follow-up production from WIT, structured partly as a recap of the original series and partly as new content. The format reflects a production pattern increasingly common in late-2010s and 2020s prestige anime: rather than producing an immediate second season, studios produce a recap-plus-bridge work that maintains audience engagement while the manga produces enough material for a full second season.
As of 2026, the original commercial manga continues to publish. A full second season of the anime has not been formally announced, though the manga has produced more than enough material for one. Whether WIT or a different studio handles a potential continuation will be a structural question for the franchise — WIT’s production capacity is heavily committed to other projects.
What the trajectory demonstrates
Ranking of Kings’s path from Manga Hack indie web series to WIT Studio prestige TV anime tells you several things about modern anime adaptation pipelines.
Indie-origin properties can win prestige adaptation. The Shōnen Jump pipeline (manga serialization → audience accumulation → TV anime) is no longer the only path to major adaptation. Manga Hack, Jump+, and similar digital platforms have become alternative pipelines that produce properties with structural identities Shōnen Jump editorial would not have shaped.
Fairy-tale and folk-narrative forms have prestige audience. Audiences will engage seriously with works that use fairy-tale structures earnestly. This is not a niche audience — Ranking of Kings’s commercial scale demonstrates it is mainstream.
Disability representation can be handled with structural precision. Bojji’s deafness is one of the more carefully handled disability representations in modern anime. The work demonstrates that disability is character material, not narrative obstacle, when handled with care.
Studio pivots are possible. WIT Studio’s late-2010s and early-2020s pivot — from Attack on Titan-tier shōnen-adjacent production to a broader prestige portfolio including Ranking of Kings, Vinland Saga, and Spy x Family co-production — demonstrates that production studios can substantively shift their portfolio identities within a few years if they handle each project with craft.
The Otakira encyclopedia covers the Ranking of Kings TV anime, The Treasure Chest of Courage compilation, manga, and licensed releases across 15+ Arab markets.