Juuni Taisen: Zodiac War Episode 5

Ok, so it looks we finally get a little more context for this war and what it’s all about, a nice reminder of the action that brought us to this show in the first place, and a few ‘wtf’ moments.

“The Juni Taisen is a grand war whose results will redraw the maps of the world.” – Host guy AKA Shitty Magician AKA Guy who likes to clap a lot.

Basically, a bunch of rich people are using their enormous amounts of wealth and power to gamble on who will own the world based on the results of the tournament. Huh. Sounds like real life. And, predictably, the three favorites to win are Monkey, Ox, and Rabbit with Sheep as a wild card. Of course, now that they’ve said that I doubt he’ll have any chance at victory. Honestly, though, I have absolutely not a single clue as to who would win. With everyone who remains, it wouldn’t be surprising no matter what. Hopefully, there’s some alleviation from that in the form of twists or chaos (still waiting on Monkey’s plan(s)). Maybe Tiger is a master of drunken fist? The undercat. A dark tiger, so to speak.

This is the first time since the first episode that we’ve seen fighting too! It looks like Rat and Snake are playing a nice game of… cat and mouse snake and mouse snake and rat. That just doesn’t even sound right. Anyway, while initially cool, the fact that the remainder of the action was Monkey paralyzing already dead birds was not particularly what I wanted to see. I’m not entirely sure if the audience is supposed to be able to decode Rabbit’s grunts, awkward pauses, and mouth noises, but I’m lost on that end as well. All of this brings me back to my dominating question for this show. They took out the reporter angle, they keep giving backstory and then killing off the characters, and the action is largely absent. There doesn’t seem to be a reason to watch this show yet.

Let’s get down to the main content of this episode though, which is two major points that I took away. One, Sheep never swallowed his poison. Ergo, he has an enormous leg up on the competition when you factor in his experience and his ability to deal with large groups at once. Psychologically at least, he is clearly winning. Second, Sheep is very likely going to die it seems. Very counterintuitive considering what I literally just wrote. I only say this based on the evidence presented in this episode cross-referenced against what the past 4 episodes have been like. He’s completely out of the loop. He has no idea who’s still alive and who has passed. His goal of saving his family from this burden is intermingled with a sort of disdain for young people. He respects their power but it seems like, overall, he underestimates them. He got cocky around Tiger, claiming she was definitively weaker than himself. Those all seem like bad signs.

On a more positive note, Sheeps backstory is my favorite backstory so far, perhaps because of his obvious love for his family mixed with a lot of questionable parenting methods.

For example, I don’t think a baby needs to be regaled with bedtime stories about how you “waded through battlefields bathed in blood and death.” That might just be crossing a line. Annnnnd, he’s giving a toddler a detonator as a birthday present. Hobbies are fun!

One piece of his backstory that really sheds light on his motivation is that his end goal is slightly modified from everyone else. For Sheep, winning seems like it would obviously be the best case scenario. Realistically, however, he knows that without manipulation tactics he stands no chance against a lot of the higher ranking warriors. That’s where his modifier comes in. If he can’t find a direct way to win, he has no problem blowing up everyone including himself.

Also, real quick, can we talk about how there was a Juni Taisen on an international space station of some sort? Why aren’t we there now instead of an abandoned city??? Just jokes. This setting is pretty pleasant so far and I’m not sure how well Chicken would have done with, uh, space birds. Technically, I guess it’d be hard for her to do worse than she did in the city though. Ah, well. The show is still enjoyable and even if an obvious direction to watch out for isn’t present, learning about everyone’s pasts has been very fun so far. And Horse is next!