Juuni Taisen Zodiac War Episode 10 Review: A Tiger May Die, But It Leaves Its Skin

I was not impressed by this episode of Juuni Taisen. The animation was once again awful, we didn’t learn anything about the rest of the characters and we just got hit right into the feels. It was nice to learn Tiger’s ‘grudge’ before she died though.

Japanese Original Episode Title: 虎は死んで皮を残す

Plot

We get to see more about Tiger’s backstory and this time it involves her ‘relationship’ with Ox. They met in a battlefield and Ox saved her life without knowing that she was another Warrior. She gave her a really big speech that motivated her to become a better warrior and change her life for the better. She then found out that he was the Warrior of Ox and that was the reason why she joined Juuni Taisen.

Back to the fight, Rabbit’s parts are still moving and managed to stab Tiger, because she threw herself in front of Ox in order to save him. He then takes her and runs away saying that he will try to save her. Tiger realizes that he doesn’t remember her and asks him to be the one that will take her final breath so she won’t have to become a zombie. And so he does.

Episode Highlights

Tiger is more likable than I thought: She really gave another side to her character after this episode. She is not just some crazy drunk girl seeking revenge. She was just in love and wanted to meet the man that helped her get out of the horrible state of mind that she was in. Pretty cute.

Ox’s eyes: Is it only me or were his eyes weird during the whole deep speech moment in Tiger’s backstory? I am talking about this. Damn that bad animation really ruins it for me.

Themes & Trivia

Necromancy: It is a supposed practice of magic involving communication with the deceased – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, to bring someone back from the dead, or to use the deceased as a weapon, as the term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft.

But did you know what the word means and where it comes from? The word “necromancy” is adapted from Late Latin ‘necromantia’, itself borrowed from the Greek νεκρομαντεία (nekromanteía), a compound of Ancient Greek νεκρός (nekrós), ‘dead’, and μαντεία (manteía), ‘divination’.

Comments

Okay, so a few things about this episode. The animation of the backstories was so bad… I got so frustrated that I cringed my teeth when I saw it, seriously. They got one of the deaths and characters to have the element of romance and love which is great and made us all feel terrible, but I would prefer if this story had more juice to it than the unnecessary two episodes that the twins had. It would have been so much better and they could have made it even more emotional! Poor Tiger, she was in love with him and he didn’t even remember her, *signs* I guess life is tough honey. But I have to say something, she got to fulfill her wish without winning Juuni Taisen which makes everything even harder for our feels.

On another note, I really didn’t understand what was Rabbit thinking with his attack, we haven’t been given any more information on his plan and strategy but I have come up to this conclusion: Rabbit is no longer in his body, because how the hell would he win if he was in million pieces. I highly believe that he is in Monkey’s body. I wonder what happened to his fluffy tail… Is it going to attack anyone by itself as well? That would be kind of cute… I also wonder if in the next episode we will see all the slices of his hands flying around like frisbees. Lol.

Killed in a drunken rage of LOVE

I really look forward to seeing Rabbit’s and Rat’s backstory. Two episodes are left and I think they won’t be enough to include satisfying stories and plot but let’s wait and see. For me, Ox is such an uninteresting character. Yes, he is a killing machine, he is proper, he is a gentleman, he saves innocent people, he is even dressed up as a BULLFIGHTER for god’s sake, but he is boring! Booh! I am glad that according to the ending sequence he is not going to be the winner. Cheers!

NEXT TIME: To treat a man to beef from his own cow (人の牛蒡で法事する)