Jyuu Oh Sei really is a series with its ups and downs. Overall, it remains an enjoyable series. I’m glad I watched it. Though it remains flawed. The story is about a young boy, who lives in a sci-fi-like world along with his twin brother. His parents then are killed and he, along with his brother, gets sent towards a planet full of outlaws. Not only that, but the climate is extremely harsh, and full of human-eating plants. He now has to survive, to be able to get out of this planet, and find out who sent him to Chimera and more importantly: who killed his parents.
The plot progression develops in quite an interesting way. The show starts out great, but as it progresses, you keep seeing more and more flaws in the world system that the creators built. Then, as the series progresses even more, the anime changes focus from story to characters. At first, this seems dull. And it is indeed, but then the events start to slightly improve until that arc ends with a very enjoyable climax. The last two episodes then handle the conclusion, and solve all of the questions that were formed during the first episodes of the season. All of this gets closed by a very satisfying ending. Some people hated it, though I really like endings like these. Especially the combination of characters who remained alive was great and original.
Still, the governmential system in Jyuu Oh Sei is so full of questions. It doesn’t make any sense at all. This is supposed to be a world, in which people have to struggle to survive. How come people are living in such huge communities? How are they able to live and gather food? Nothing is explained on that. Then the series also decides to skip four entire years at that point. In order to show the main character, growing up from 11 to 15 years old. First of all, the way he acts is way too old for a fifteen years old. You can only see this by the fact that he keeps making impulsive decisions. Second of all: when we switch back to him, nothing really happened. It’s like he’s been sitting in a chair for the last four years. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Around the later episodes, we also have a character who keeps killing people for some kind of reason. This reason never really is explained.
The fact is, that Jyuu Oh Sei is short. In one case, it’s good, as the storytelling was quite well done. The creators really planned the episodes in, without trying to create rushed scenes, and they succeeded. Though they had to make a sacrifice for this, namely the unanswered plotholes mentioned in the above paragraph.
The music and graphics are nothing really special, though the battle choreography looked quite interesting. Especially during the early episodes you really could see that the creators spent some time into this.
Overall, it’s a short series with only eleven episodes, and I don’t regret watching it, despite the bad moments. Jyuu Oh Sei is nothing special, though if you need something to watch, and don’t have any idea what you want to, I’d certainly recomment to at least check this anime out.
Just got down to watch this. Damn I hate the ending. It kind of ruined the series for me. And you’re right, there’re lots of things that really don’t make much sense and never fully explained. And the main character became less and less interesting as the story progressed. And the two characters I’m interested in the most, they gave one of them such a lame and cheesy raison d’etre towards the end, the other
one I don’t even know what role he’s supposed to play to begin with.
Just like you, despite this anime’s many flaws (mainly towards the end) I still like it more than many others out there and don’t regret watching it. If only it was given a more satisfying ending…
Hated how it ended as well. The first 5 eps were great but then the time skip and it just went um stupid.