I had a tiny bit of time to watch anime which means I finally managed to finish Jyu Oh Sei! *applauds* Last year, my crappy old laptop’s CPU wouldn’t allow me to play the files so I’m really late with this one… But, it was worth the wait, at least partly. Watching the manga of one of your favourite artists (Itsuki Natsumi, in this case) come to life is always a great experience so I did enjoy Jyu Oh Sei when it comes to seeing those characters animated and hearing them talk and everything. The settings, BGM and colour schemes perfectly matched and created this really great bleak atmosphere. The animation itself was done really well (it’s an OVA anyway). The one aspect that really disappointed me was the pacing of the plot, though. Sometimes the narration would drag, whereas at other times they were obviously trying to put too much into one episode… It’s a shame really, because the whole series with all its interesting themes (cloning, gender roles/expectations etc.) suffered so much because of it!

But the one thing that made me cringe the most was that Saado’s/Third’s voice actor was Oguri Shun. He has this really distinctive, husky voice so that every time Saado was talking, that mental image of Oguri Shun in that white host-y suit he’s wearing in Hana yori dango (the complete opposite of what Saado looks like) kept popping up in my head.

vs.  

Nevertheless, I did enjoy the early 90s feel of the show which made me feel quite a bit nostalgic… (And for some bizarre reason, it made me want to watch Zetsuai and Bronze, not because of any BL hints of course o_O;)