A fight to the death between the zodiac!
Creative Staff:
Story: NisiOisiN
Art: Hikaru Nakamura
Cover and interior design: Adam Grano
Translation: Nathan A. Collins
What They Say:
Rampage.
Weep.
Kill.
Every twelve years, the twelves signs of the Chinese zodiac take the form of warriors and engage in the ultimate battle royale. They face one another in battles to the death, using all the powers of their star signs, and the sole survivor is granted the ultimate prize—a wish. Any wish.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
I watched the anime of Juni Taisen and, for the majority of its runtime, it was just some relatively mindless fun that filled a hole in my usual watching habits that include more drama-heavy fare like March Comes in Like a Lion and Tsuki ga Kirei, say. It is, without including a “sport,” per se, a sports anime where the sport is simply a fight to the death with a time limit of approximately 12 hours, though this Juni Taisen was concluded well before that 12 hour time limit.
Reading the novel, I picked up on some things that I either missed or were not included in the anime. They are few, but fill in some character gaps that the anime couldn’t really have due to its nature. The fun part about reading this book is that each chapter is, mostly, from the point of view of a participant in this zodiac war. So the first chapter is Inonoshishi, the second is Dokku, the third is Niwatori, and so on until eventually it’s seemingly mostly from a third person point of view. But these early chapters provide an interesting peek into the minds of the participants that isn’t as possible in the anime version.
The anime, though, includes much more character backstory of the participants. Not much is known, nor cared about, the participants beyond that they are fighting against each other in this war. From that point of view, it’s relatively surface level and the pull of the book comes from how they all interact, how the fight plays out, and Ox and Tiger because they’re the best. But that’s not to say that the anime provides much more depth to the storyline of the present time, but these seem to work more in tandem than as a source material and its adaptation. I don’t think anything will be lost from only having seen the anime version, but much is lost from only reading the novel.
It is, perhaps, my history with the anime that made the book all the more interesting. I was already familiar with what was going to happen, who was going to die in what order, in what way they died, and so on. So I was grasping for additional material that the anime didn’t cover or that I didn’t remember from the anime. And I think it succeeded on that point, or at least in entertaining me through the 200-odd pages.
In Summary:
I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed Juni Taisen until I read through this book. Perhaps it is my fondness of NisiOisiN, despite only seeing relatively little of his work and, to date, only reading this one (but I do like the Monogataris, including Katanagatari, which I realize is not the same but it has monogatari in the name). This novel works as both standalone but, as I mentioned, I believe it and the anime perhaps work best in tandem than anything else. Not that much would be lost or less would be enjoyed by only consuming one version.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: October 10, 2017
MSRP: $18.99
