Juuni Taisen Zodiac War Episode 9 Review: The Man Who Chases Two Rabbits Catches Neither

That’s more like it! Finally some action and some fighting in Episode 9 of Juuni Taisen. I highly doubt that Rabbit is dead. He definitely has something up his sleeves because the way he was killed was way too easy!

Japanese Original Episode Title: 二兎追うものは一兎も得ず

Plot

Monkey is wondering around looking for victims while carrying Snake’s head. She then throws Snake’s head in the air and realizes that Dragon is in the sky, then she throws her master Rabbit in the air as well and Rabbit manages to kill Dragon while they are floating.

After that, we see Tiger’s backstory. She was basically a prodigy in the fighting dojo of her family, so they chose her to go to war to find her own path. Unfortunately, the war was too much for her and drove her slowly insane. By drinking a lot of booze, she managed to unlock her real powers and thirst for blood but made her lose her compassion and her own true self completely.

Back to Juuni Taisen, Tiger teams up with Ox in order to defeat Snake’s head and body along with Dragon’s torso and legs that fell from the sky to ‘assist him’. Ox hints Tiger that they should use Dragon’s weapon to kill them and guess what, they did and they froze the corpses to death. Rabbit steps into the fight soon after his team is dead, only to be annihilated by both Ox and Tiger.

Episode Highlights

Rabbit killing scene in the sky: How bloody awesome was that? Nice turn of events and amazing animation. The CGI in the slicing scene was amazing. Everything was so well done.

No way is Rabbit dead: That was the most anticlimactic death we had so far on the show. There is no freaking way he died that easily!

Dragon’s legs: I don’t know why but the running animation of Dragon’s legs had me giggling like crazy. I am talking about this.

Themes & Trivia

Liquid hydrogen: Liquid hydrogen is the liquid state of the element hydrogen. Due to its cold temperature, liquid hydrogen is a hazard for cold burns. Apart from that, elemental hydrogen as a liquid is biologically inert and its only human health hazard as a vapor is displacement of oxygen, resulting in asphyxiation. Because of its flammability, liquid hydrogen should be kept away from heat or flame unless ignition is intended. That’s why Dragon and Snake were using it along with fire, it’s super powerful and deadly. It’s even used by NASA to fuel rockets.

‘Water that is too pure has no fish’: In popular culture, this is a quote from the movie Bulletproof Monk with Chow Yun-Fat, but it originates from the Ts’ai Ken T’an (Vegetable Roots Discourses) compiled by Hong Zicheng during the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) in China. There are elements of Taoism, Confucianism, and Chan Buddhism to these writings.

Comments

After this episode, I realized what happened to the animation in the last episode. It’s clear to me now that they focused on making the Juuni Taisen fights and animation sequences amazing and just didn’t have time to perfect the backstories of all the characters. Such a shame. If you have a look at the killing scene of Dragon, Snake and Dragon’s body parts and Rabbit, everything was amazing, even if Rabbit’s death scene was a little bit too censored.

On that note, Rabbit is not dead for sure. He planned something in advance, otherwise, why would he just jump into the fight like that? If you noticed he bit his lips just before he started fighting, this is definitely a sign of something! Also, he has Monkey’s powers, he would never be this stupid to just go and fight two enemies like that. Did he transfer his soul to her or something? Is she going to come and stitch him up? Maybe if you don’t kill all his ‘friends’ he can’t really die and now he will show up as Monkey to surprise and ambush everyone? Or is it possible that as a necromancer he can’t die unless you burn him alive? Will all his pieces have a will of their own now? SO MANY QUESTIONS! We also haven’t seen his backstory yet, so I really have my hopes up for this!

Rabbits can jump as high as the Moon

Finally, we are getting close to the end and I really want to see Rabbit’s and Rat’s backstories and how Rabbit is going to use all his pawns before he dies, because, come on, we all know at this point who the winner is going to be. I am so pumped for the episodes to follow! Cheers!

NEXT TIME: A Tiger May Die, But It Leaves Its Skin