Juni Taisen: Zodiac War (Review)
Get Ready to Rumble with Juni Taisen: Zodiac War!
When it comes tournament-style anime, Juni Taisen: Zodiac War was far from anything I ever could have expected from the genre. On the surface, it looks like a cliche-riddled series in which personifications of the 12 signs of the Chinese Zodiac are pitted against each other in a battle to prove who the best really is. What might seem like an anime that will be filled with plenty of fights and long monologues starts off slow, but then explodes by the end of the first episode when it becomes clear that none of the characters are safe or exactly what they seem.
Juni Taisen is a series that would make George R.R. Martin nod in approval. Each of the 12 mercenaries set to do battle gets a chance to have their backstory revealed and series writer Sadayuki Murai (it’s based on the manga by Nisio Isin) manages to make even the scummiest characters redeemable in some way. It’s this that makes Juni Taisen so good though because it’s such a character-driven series. After all, the series focuses on the 12 signs of the zodiac and you don’t want fans getting upset because their sign sucked.
While everything about Juni Taisen seems familiar, there’s nothing quite like it out there. Instead of taking the obvious path with characters, the series really dives into what would be effective and unique powers for each of the combatants to have. For example, Dog (Chuck Huber) does have heightened senses, but his true power is in the venoms he makes. The same goes for Sheep (Kenny Green) who is an explosives expert. These might not seem like skills/ abilities traditionally associated with the animals they’re modeled after, but let’s be real, a fight between a dog and a sheep isn’t going to be fair. It’s because of this outside the box thinking that Juni Taisen actually manages to avoid most of its cliches and put the characters on some semblance of equal footing. Because of this when the blood starts flying it’s clear that none of the characters are truly safe.
There are definitely plenty of supernatural elements in this anime. The whole point of the tournament is to try to win a “wish” and it can be absolutely anything the winner desires. Even some of the characters have abilities that defy not just the laws of physics, but logic as well. However, some of them don’t have any magical powers at all and instead posses incredible fighting skills or even just weapons that prove to be devastating. It’s this blend that makes the characters such a motley crew. They’re a true hodgepodge, but Juni Taisen never reveals who the sure-fire winner is. Much of the series is spent moving between character to a point where it’s unclear who the true protagonist is. Instead, it lets you choose a favorite only to inevitably watch them die (there can be only one after all). That being said, it can be incredibly frustrating watching each of the characters you start to root for die off one by one. Still, people love Game of Thrones, so there’s definitely an audience for this anime.
While the true purpose of the series is to show off the epic confrontations between characters, that isn’t it’s sole focus. Instead, there’s a lot of history behind the characters and how they came to be in this epic battle. Some of them even have past experiences with each other that have driven them to meet once more on this field of battle. Since all of the characters are mercenaries many have found themselves on opposite sides, but a number of the characters are total oddities. Because of their massive amount of experience, watching these unique warriors do battle is certainly a sight to behold. Whether they are incredible martial artists, brilliant tacticians, or magically endowed psychopaths, every fight sequence makes the most of the characters involved and Graphinica delivers some real eye candy with their animation. It’s not as dazzling as some of the anime I’ve seen in the past, but it does the story justice and effectively raises the stakes for everyone involved.
Juni Taisen has plenty of strengths, but each one feels like a double edge sword. The character designs are the strongest part of the anime, but because of this it’s hard to focus on just one character to root for and at worst there are a few characters who don’t quite stack up with the others. It’s also hard not to get angry as every character you root for starts to bite the dust, especially since it slowly becomes clear that there are some definite favorites for the creators. However, because the cast is so extensive it’s also difficult to really form real attachments to any of them. Still, it’s a story that you’ll feel compelled to see through the end. So if you like tournament style anime where none of the characters are safe, then you’ll dig Juni Taisen. It wasn’t my favorite series in recent memory, but it gave me a lot more than I was expecting from it.
Oh and if you do check it out, try to guess who is going to be a winner before the third episode. I definitely got it wrong more than a few times.
