Juuni Taisen is about a group of 12 warriors - mercenaries, martial artists, assassins - that are brought together in a death game held every 12 years. The winner of this aptly-named Zodiac War gets one wish, any wish, granted. The rest die. And aptly named the tournament is, as each of the warriors, assigned to animals of the Chinese Zodiac, has some sort of special power or fighting style that is related to their namesake. This show is one that fans of high-stakes, battle-royale style fights to the death might love. For the rest of us, it's unlikely to be quite as enjoyable.
Let's start with the writing. I actually think the writing in Juuni Taisen is pretty good. The show does an excellent job at fleshing out the characters, their backstories and motivations - it draws a very solid line between how they act on the battlefield, and how they are as people, which brings a very human element to the anime that you don't often see in the genre. Much of this is accomplished by the structure of the show - I would estimate about 40-50% of the show to be flashbacks, and unlike many anime that give one short flashback as a character dies, we get the full background in small, bite-sized, easily digestible chunks as we follow each character's own storyline throughout the death game. However, this format is a double-edged sword. It took me only 2 episodes to be able to start predicting who the next casualty was gonna be, and a few more for the overall winner. The characters themselves were pretty interesting overall, with their own quirks that kept me from being bored, even though we really only had each individual character for a couple of episodes at best, making it difficult to be truly invested in one or the others. Again, though this comes at a cost. The characters, while having human elements, never felt truly deep or complex. Not a bad thing, and it worked out for Juuni Taisen, but it's something to note. I don't know what the overall opinion on the ending was, but it felt satisfying and very in-character for me. After all, even if the
The other major aspect of Juuni Taisen that I want to bring up is the visuals. The fights, when they do happen, are pretty well done - however, they are short, vicious affairs, which perfectly suits this show as more of a character study than a battle anime. The character designs were pretty fun, too, and some of them, like the Rabbit's, were wonderfully wacky (or outlandishly garish, depending on your tastes). The main problem I have here, though, is the total nosedive of animation quality in the latter half of the show. I'm not sure at what point it began, but at some point in episode 8 or 9 I realized that the animation quality went to straight garbage. The CGI, especially the characters, was poorly done, and in combination with bad lighting, the whole image took me right out of the scene. Was there CGI in the earlier episodes? I'm certain there was, but it wasn't quite so blatant. At least the characters weren't being CGIed, I know that for sure. While it wasn't EX-ARM levels of bad (to be honest, nothing quite is), it was definitely a mess, and hurts the show's final impression a bit.
Also, I liked the opening song. Nothing else to say about that.
Score: 3 / 5. An enjoyable show with decent writing, but atrocious visuals in the latter half pulled me right out and left me with a bad aftertaste. Don't expect too much fighting - Juuni Taisen isn't about that. Rather, it uses the combat to explore the characters.
\* Score may be modified by a +, -, or +- (plus/minus, indicating range). These modifications are used to express differing values based on my own personal opinion/enjoyment, aspects of the show that are possible points of contention, or points given/taken away for excellence/weakness in some particular way.
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