Jing: King of Bandit


Genre: Adventure, Fantasy
Creator: Yuichi Kumakura
Manga/Anime/Both Both
Seasons:
  • Anime, 13 Episodes
  • Manga 13 Vol (US Release)

Spirit of Discord's Rating
2
out of 5
Trigun Kitties

Summary:

This series follows Jing, a thief who knows his craft like no other, and his lecherous, owl-like companion and most potent weapon, Kir, as they travel around the word to see all of the strangest and most bizarre things it has to offer. Then steal all of that strange and bizarre stuff. Sometimes they have misadventures and help people, but usually that’s all part of stealing things.


Explanation for Rating:

Spirit of Discord:
I tend to not give out a lot of low scores because I don’t like to review things that I haven’t finished, and I don’t tend to finish things that I don’t like (go figure). I’ll at least warn you that I’ve only seen the first half of the series, and haven’t read the manga, so you have to take this review with a grain of salt.

Jing was a series that started off semi-interesting…and then proceeded to get very repetitive. Early on the show introduced a slew of odd but interesting characters as Jing ventured from one strange town to another, stealing one strange thing after another. But unlike most shows, none of the people Jing meets stick around. Each and every one of them is a 1-2 episode affair, and the ones that last 2 episodes are only there because the stories they’re associated with don’t fit into one episode. So we’re left with just Jing and Kir wandering around, neither one with much personality to speak of and without any kind of relationship web.

Now, while Jing is off stealing his strange stuff, he of course encounters some opposition. Jing passes itself off as an adventure show, with its thieving (anti-)hero helping people escape the oppression of whomever he happens to be stealing from. It’s kind of like Lupin III with the kind of visuals you’d expect from Alice in Wonderland. Except that none of Jing’s adventures are particularly exciting…or even interesting for that matter. A lot of the villains are either defeated simply by using the Kir Royal (which is kinda like Slayers Dragon Slave, except used more often and does even more to ruin the drama of battles) or via some crazy tactic that is sort of explained, but doesn’t actually make sense. For an adventure it was just kinda…boring. If there had been an interesting plot there to make up for it, or some decent humor, then that wouldn’t be nearly as much of a shortcoming, but lacking either Jing falls far short.

Now, before I finish up, I’ll point out the one thing I liked about this show: the visuals. As I said above, the show’s like a cross between Lupin and Alice in Wonderland. It’s a strange experience, but a good, visually appealing, strange experience. I mean, how can you not like a show that has carriages pulled by giant slugs who are following cheese dangling from their feelers? While the artwork wasn’t impressively well done, I enjoyed the style of it and there were a lot of things in this show that were just fun to look it. If you just want to see some…interesting stuff, the by all means, check Jing out.

Overall score: below average. It’s pretty to look at, but neither enjoyable nor engaging to watch. If there were more of an overarching plot, character development, humor, or excitement to be had, then it could have been a good series, but as is it’s very lacking.

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