Jubei-Chan on Demand

Yesterday I watched the first six episodes of Jubei-Chan through the Anime Selects channel of Comcast’s On Demand package. Much of the humor comes from the conflict between the simple Jiyu Nanohana and the overdramatics of her father, her attendant Koinosuke, the kendo student Shiro, the not-so-tough ruffian Bantaro, and the teachers going after her. Shiro’s romantic struggle adds some romantic dramatics and while Bantaro’s efforts to woo Jiyu are overwhelmingly trumped by Shiro, he is still one of the more passionate characters in the series.

The basic setup for those who don’t know is that Lord Yagyu on his deathbed told his attendant Koinosuke to find plump, bouncy bon bons (pocha pocha puri puri bon bon) to inherit the Lovely Eye Patch of his clan. 300 years later he sees Jiyu Nanohana, an 8th grade girl who recently moved from Tokyo, and tells her about the patch. She initially throws it into a pond but then puts it on when she is challenged by her teacher.

Jiyu then tries to avoid the eye patch because she wants to live a normal life and because she doesn’t believe in “ruling by the sword”, the aim of the Ryujoji school that is targeting her. Actually her simple nature may have more to do with, a demonstration of which occurs when she asks one of her attackers to explain why the Ryujoji has held a silly grudge for three centuries. Another factor might be that she doesn’t want to involve her overprotective father Sai who is struggling to finish his latest novel.

As you can see above, what I watched had Japanese audio with English subtitles which allowed me the pleasure of hearing Keiji Fujiwara voicing Jiyu’s father (he was also Hughes in FMA) as well as the historical sounding voices of the samurai characters. Bantaro is voiced by Yuji Ueda, who also did Keitaro in Love Hina and Kyohei in BakuTen, while Ryotaro Okiayu played the traditional Koinosuke and later went on to voice Byakuya Kuchiki in Bleach. The director of this anime, Akitaro Daichi, performed the same duties for Fruits Basket, Kodocha, and Bokura ga Ita; I noticed some similiarities between Shiro’s reflectiveness and that of some Furaba characters.

Some complaints are that the right attachment point on the eyepatch seemed to move every once in a while, that Koinosuke had to rush to retrieve the eyepatch almost every time, and that the actual action was left to the last couple minutes. While the first two are pretty minor, the third is a little disappointing since part of the reason I checked out this anime was for Jubei Yagyu fighting. I think there will be more action with her since the sixth episode ended with Jubei surrounded by ninjas and the final resolution will likely be a showdown between Jubei and Shiro or Hajime.

Overall, I laughed a lot and would like to see the other 7 episodes of the first season for a sense of finality. The running jokes about people getting lost in the bamboo forest, Jiyu getting a new teacher every day, and the defeated samurai thinking about their new careers didn’t get old; the tension between Sai and Koinosuke (and later Koinosuke and a spy) was another formidable avenue of humor. I would recommend it for anyone looking for a slightly-older comedy (released in 1999) that is lighthearted and has a slight romantic twinge to it.

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