Jyu Oh Sei

Quick & Dirty

Language: Japanese

Initial Interest: Moderate

Favorite Character: Third

Opinion: Good

Synopsis

Thor and his twin brother, Rai, are cast off to a forsaken planet by unknown masked men after witnessing the suspicious death of their parents. Given only a beam knife and a smelly satchel, they wander together in search of civilization on the primarily plant based world. They soon discover the plants have the advantage. Only the strong survive; the ones who throw away their humanity and become the beasts humans once were.

(Source: AnimeNewsNetwork)

Pre-Viewing Thoughts

I’d never heard of this before but Kaze got Vandread for Christmas and it was one of the previews on the first disc. He said he wanted to check it out. He showed me the preview so we could figure out the name and it did look kind of interesting, and the synopsis looks kind of interesting. The art kind of reminds me of Escaflowne. Here we go.

Favorite Character

I picked Third as my favorite character because while I like Thor, I like Third just a little more. This is another series where the choices are somewhat limited on characters. Third comes off as a total badass to me. He seems like he could probably take control if he wanted, but he doesn’t want. He also seems really perceptive. I like perceptive characters because it’s always fun to see where and how they strike. Third didn’t let me down either, he struck brilliantly in episode 4.

Overall Opinion

What they did well: The plot seems really interesting and the characters are likeable. I like the pacing so far as well.

What they didn’t do well: There’s an underlying power struggle in this plot that I don’t really understand very well which kind of detracts, but minimally. Supposedly everyone is exiled to this planet for crimes or whatnot but they still seem to have a lot of good resources. In the first five episodes we see the use of a wine glass (which is immediately shattered), two hover-bike things, lots of transparent wire, plenty of swords, plenty of clothes, enough food to mostly support 5-6 different towns, and a fair amount of jewelry. But they haven’t made any mention of receiving supplies from off-planet and there don’t seem to be any animals other than humans here. I’m also having trouble keeping track of how many clans there are, especially since Chen is supposedly one of them but Top is at one point said to be the weakest and then described as stronger than Chen…so…consistency? Or were they not counting the women?

I definitely want to finish this series, and since it clocks in at 11 episodes that will only take a couple hours another day. If the synopsis sounds interesting to you I’d recommend giving this one a shot.

Next Official Review: Undecided.