十二大戦

JUUNI TAISEN

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
12
RELEASE
December 19, 2017
LENGTH
24 min

DESCRIPTION

The record of the bloody battle between the twelve proud warriors—

The 12th Twelve Tournament that gets held every twelve years…

Twelve brave warriors who bear the names of the signs of the zodiac fight each other for the lives and souls.

The participants are twelve very strange warriors: “Rat,” “Ox,” “Tiger,” “Rabbit,” “Dragon,” “Snake,” “Horse,” “Goat,” Monkey,” “Rooster,” “Dog,” and “Pig.”

The victor of this tournament gets to have one wish granted, whatever the wish may be.

The one wish they want granted—

Who will be the final survivor?

Whose tears will flow on the bloody battlefield filled with conspiracy and murder?

A soul-shaking battle royale is about to begin.

(Source: Crunchyroll)

CAST

Usagi
Nobuhiko Okamoto
Nezumi
Shun Horie
Tora
Hiromi Igarashi
Ushii
Yuuichirou Umehara
Sharyuu
Saori Hayami
Inounoshishi
Youko Hikasa
Niwatori
Ayane Sakura
Elder Tatsumi
Takuya Eguchi
Dotsuku
Tomohiro Nishimura
Younger Tatsumi
Kousuke Toriumi
Hitsujii
Choo
Uuma
Hikaru Midorikawa

EPISODES

Dubbed

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RELATED TO JUUNI TAISEN

NOVEL ActionJuuni Taisen

MANGA ActionJuuni Taisen

REVIEWS

AmishaelAL
70/100
For fans of the survival horror trope, who don't mind if there's not much in the way of mystery
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say I liked it. Quite a lot too. Sure, it was predictable at times, and sure, the quality of the animation took a huge nosedive about halfway through, but I really don’t think it deserves all the hate I’ve been seeing it get lately.

First off: the story. It’s true that from about episode 3 you can tell who’s going to die based on how the anime works. But that doesn’t actually take away from the enjoyment. It’s just like having a friend tell you a major spoiler for a series – the surprise might be gone, but sometimes you enjoy it all the more for that. (The only difference here is that the anime spoilers itself.) I personally didn’t mind knowing who was going to die, it just meant I knew who to focus on when watching an episode.

Character development was basically episodic. One episode per character (although there were exceptions). I thought Tiger’s story was great – that was probably my favourite part of the anime. Most of the backstories were interesting (with the exception of Snake and Dragon, or at least that’s my opinion), and the characters were just quirky enough that I enjoyed watching them without getting bored. That’s actually one thing that can be a con for an anime, but in this case was a pro; the amount of time spent on each character was manageable - bite sized pieces, if you will.

The ending, whilst not necessarily a brilliant one, was nevertheless a fitting send-off for the show. The anime did take a rather different approach during the last episode – much more philosophical – but it addressed the question raised at the beginning. I thought the way the wish (the overall point to the story) was handled was very thought-provoking, and even though I didn’t necessarily agree with the wish itself, it was very human. That humanity is something that the anime needed after the Taisen bloodbath. It gave the show…closure, you might call it. There were some plot-holes, and some questions that remained unanswered, but in relation to those I don’t think answers were actually needed.

There were a lot of fabulous fight scenes (at least in the first half), and some pretty good music too.
The anime was faithful to its Battle Royale/Hunger Games trope, and even though there are parts of it that I feel could have been handled better, I respect it for that. (In regard to parts that could have been handled better…I’d say basically everything to do with Rabbit. My main bugbear; there was so much potential…)

Nonetheless, if you like the survival horror trope, and like seeing a mix of interesting characters (but don’t mind if there’s not much plot), I’d recommend you check out Juuni Taisen.

Enjoy watching! XD
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wakkawakanda
55/100
A nicely animated anime with good ideas, just don't think too much whilst watching it.
The show was considerably better animated and entertaining than I had assumed it would be after reading the premise... but that's it. After the first two episodes, a pattern is built in the story telling and nothing changes. Once the pattern becomes obvious then all suspense is sucked from the show as a whole. Which kills the theme of a battle royale, being that any participant has the chance to win. The show either purposefully or accidentally spoils every major plot point.

Spoiling it's own plot is grounds for a deduction but it doesn't necessarily mean the story is bad, as long as it is still told well. It was not. They killed off the more interesting story lines early on and left the show with the run of the mill antagonist assortment. Once it made it to the final 6/7 participants, it became quite clear whom the win would be handed to. (I am having trouble deciding if it was the last 6 or 7 because one participant was an absolutely non-factor throughout the everything but they technically held a place. SN: As soon as I typed that description, I realized that could be applied to at least 3 of the fighters) The story truly had some great and new ideas/ themes to work with but the writing could not handle the task.

!!Reading beyond this point will give away spoilers though I will still try to remain somewhat vague!!

The show ends on a note that all the participants that were eliminated were at the least sincere in their actions and not just crazed murderers, and in some cases they were considerably kind people. However any feelings that are supposed to be felt during the montage of flashbacks is ruined by how quickly they are dismissed. Every back story, except for two, did not contain any character development and could have been left as minor dialogue or even a monologue during some down time in between the fighting. Instead we are left with a running monologue by a fighter that just keeps repeating itself every two or three lines and introduces no new strategy besides what they mentioned in the first episode. I admit that it was at this point I started to watch the series at 2X speed. Though I was becoming tired of the bland and redundant writing, I did still watch and finish the series.

Which brings me to my final point as the why I am even writing this review and how the show received the score it did. I automatically give any show that I complete a base score of 50/100. The show was clearly decent enough to keep my attention and for that it at least starts at an average score and nothing less. Then when I added how much I loved the character designs and animated movements, the score jumped to 75/100. I honestly think I only finished the show just to keep seeing the fighters... fight. Every episode kept eroding that score until after the final episode it was at 65/100. Yet as I wrote this review and spent more time thinking about it... I probably will not be watching another anime by the original writer unless it is recommended to me by a trusted source.
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InternetExplorer11
60/100
An overall enjoyable show with decent writing that fans of battle royales and character studies may like.
**A Completely Average Review of Juuni Taisen** *written by a decidedly average person* *Possible spoilers ahead.*
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 Rat was the winner, the show isn't about him - it's about the cast as a whole, their lives and their deaths, whether it was out of honor, greed, or pure, unadulterated insanity.

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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