English Dub Review: Juni Taisen “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”

Sheep volunteers as tribute!

Overview (Spoilers)

Before we return to your regularly scheduled carnage, a brief message from the sponsors. Duodecuple welcomes anonymous dignitaries to observe and bet on the proceedings. You see, the Juni Taisen serves a purpose. It is used by various countries to settle disputes by betting on the warriors. Since only the richest countries and sovereignties can afford to participate, it allows the world to solve a great number of what could otherwise be devastating wars before they start. Betting has not yet begun for this Juni Taisen and will open when half of the participants have died. Until then, Duodecuple gives the dignitaries a recap. Rabbit, Ox, and Monkey are the favorites for this year, but Sheep is a former winner with a wealth of experience. This places Horse, Tiger, and Dragon in the middle of the pack. Nobody knows anything about Rat, so the gamblers aren’t interested. For those that forgot, cannons have already fired for Boar, Dog, Snake, and Chicken,

Back to the action, Rat leads Zombie Snake on a chase. He’s mystified by the fact that it can track him without a head. It apparently uses its sense of touch to feel his movement. Despite being brainless, it’s pretty darn smart. In the meantime, Monkey tackles Rabbit. The two are on equal footing when it comes to agility, and a single touch from her could be a death blow. The two meet to trade blows, then break away and repeat. The entire time, Monkey is talking, trying to remind Rabbit that he raised his hand for the pacifist alliance. This gives him pause, and he takes a moment to think about it… or does he? A manhole cover bursts open, and the air around Monkey becomes a recreation of The Birds. He was just biding his time until his reinforcements could arrive! She manages to destroy the zombirdies, and returns her attention to Rabbit.

Elsewhere, Sheep takes a moment to strategize. One part warrior, one part arms dealer, Sheep won a previous Juni Taisen by blowing up all the other competitors while they were trapped in a space station. He was content to live in retirement, but his grandson was called upon to be the next Sheep. He voluntarily took his grandson’s place, hoping to kill off all the competitors again. He is broken from his revelry by a sudden intrusion by Ox, but he fends the matador off with a claymore mine. He has his strategy set. He’s going to trick one of the mid-level fighters into working with him, making them believe he can teleport the poison jewel out of their stomachs. He never ate his, hiding it instead in his beard. As he searches for a patsy, he runs into Tiger, drunk on a park bench, but still somehow keenly aware of his presence.

Our Take

This episode ended up being a huge information dump. We not only get Sheep’s story, but we figure out why the Juni Taisen is going on in the first place. I always figured it was a giant gambling event, but I like that it is being used to resolve international conflict is interesting. It’s an interesting method for proxy warfare. I don’t get how it does that through gambling, though. It would make sense if each country put forward their own fighter, but whatever. Despite the amount of info we get, it doesn’t feel like exposition overload. I may have organized things in sections above, but the various stories and tales are mixed together throughout. This gives us plenty of action and strategizing along with the storytelling. His monologue is well written and doesn’t make the easy mistake of him knowing things he shouldn’t. It would be so easy for lesser writers to have him just simply know that Boar, Dog, and Chicken were dead and take that into account. Instead, he keeps on trying to plan for them being around. It proves the writers are paying attention at least.

The action was solid, with good animation and some action shots. Snake follows Rat over an overpass, and the animation took parallax into account as the overpass crosses underneath. Monkey’s fight against Rabbit and the birds may have included some cycled rounds, but it was done well enough that I couldn’t tell. We couldn’t see any of her impacts land on a bird, or on Rabbit, but we can assume she has some sort of one-inch punch effect. Still, the fight was impressive looking, just from the fists and blades flying everywhere.

Kenny Green got a whole bunch of time in this episode. He voiced Sheep, so between his storytelling and strategizing, he was heard for over half the episode. He successfully imitated the sound difference between adult and senior citizen. At first, I thought that young sheep was a different voice actor entirely. His story lacked emotion, which is fine enough for an action show. I won’t really ding the voice acting for not portraying emotion they didn’t get told to do.