Jubei-Chan 2 (J2) 9/10
Back in the early days of the current anime boom a show was released about a young girl who was forced to transform into the reincarnation of a 300 year old samurai. It was goofy, it was silly, it was funny, it was sad at the end. Who knew they'd make a sequel?
These 13 episodes look great as most 2004 shows should. It's got great, colourful backgrounds and consistent animation throughout. The creators kept the same general character designs from the previous series which is good since they were really good and changing them would have amounted to blasphemy. (I'M LOOKING IN YOUR DIRECTION PATLABOR 2!) The music here borrows much from the previous series and maintains the continuity as well and I particularity liked the battle theme and the end credits theme. The VAs all come back from the previous series as far as I know and they're all great.
The story picks up a year(?) after the events of the previous series with Jubei living a normal life after discarding the lovely-eyepatch that turns her into Yagyu Jubei the Second, samurai kickbutt mistress. (For reference, her transformation turns Jubei into an adult version of herself dressed as a kunoichi with kick ass samurai skills.)
A new threat arrives on the scene as a group who split from the Yagyu clan and went to Siberia have returned for revenge. Also a little blonde girl Jubei's age, Freesia, shows up and starts living in her house and messing with Jubei's relationship with her father.
It turns out Freesia is the daughter of Yagyu Jubei and has come to claim the lovely-eyepatch for herself and defeat Jubei-chan. She has a blue spade eyepatch vs. Jubei's pink heart and transforms into an older version of herself as well to do battle.
The show deals mainly with Jubei's continued reluctance to fight, she wants a normal life and tries again and again to discard the eye-patch and abandon her super-powered alter-ego but keeps being put into situations where she can't help it.
I always felt sorry for Jubei, her mom died while her dad was away at work and it really messed her up. When she meets Freesia she seems to really open up for the first time only to be betrayed by her new defacto sister. This show has some really sad moments between Jubei and her dad, the lady ninja that looks like her deceased mom, and Freesia. Where the first series was more goofy this one is quite serious and it shows you more of Jubei's personality and delves a little deeper into her unhappiness. If you've seen the first series I highly recommend this second one. If you haven't I'd recommend watching both of them.
posted by Zenith27 @ 4:48 PM
5 Comments:
I noticed you give alot 10's on this blog. In Anime I've never understood eye patchs I mean you got no depth perception to fight but I guess it proves the overall badassness of the charater because they can outcome it.
I keep an average up in the corner because it seems the 10s come along in groups.
I also thought I was giving out alot of 10s but then I realized it's more a matter of newer anime being better than older stuff in general in the production values department.
I tend to review shows as I finish watching them as the DVDs are released and I'm ever so slowly viewing through the back catalogue.
Don't worry though, I've got about 500 or shows left to go and alot of them rank below 5.
As for the eyepatch, my boss has a glass eye so I asked him about the whole depth perception thing. He said when you know how big something is you don't need your depth perception since your brain can compensate.
Thus he can drive without problems since he knows how large the various cars, buildings and other obstacles around him are.
That answers all my questions.
Can't give this anywhere near a 10 on one big issue: The storyline isn't really anything that wasn't presented in Jubei-Chan 1. In fact, animation aside, there really isn't anything here that is better than the original. Freasha is just an annoying addition to the cast, and Koinosuke was a much more interesting character who brought a lot more to the show than Ayunosuke. The Ruffians were (for some reason) way more annoying in this installment than the original as well. One last thing, no more, plump, juicy bonbons.
-Js2756
"The storyline isn't really anything that wasn't presented in Jubei-Chan 1"
I agree but here it's presented in a much more serious way. I preferred the seriousness of this series to the goofyness of the original.
For everyone's info who ever reads this. I usually grade the technical side out of 4 and the story out of 6. 4+6 = 10. Voila!
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