Jan 10, 2017
*First review and mild spoilers please bear with me*
So Jungle no Ouja Taa-chan or Jungle King Tar-chan for the English title is an anime that aired in the 90s though the original source material, the manga started publishing in the 80s and got lots of more volumes than the anime only covered with it's 50 episodes length which to me is a good thing anyways given how awful this anime is but I'm sure my rating for this spoiled it already, yes I did end up hating it and let me explain my reasons as to why.
Plot:
Basically there is none but I didn't
...
go into this expecting it anyways, true it starts out very episodic and heavily focused on the comedy aspect of it which they fail miserably at or maybe succeed at if you are 12 years old and like piss/poop jokes with the occasional boner jokes because those are just too funny or maybe it's just me having no humor these days. Then we got the serious arcs which are basically just tournament arcs which not many anime can pull off even making interesting and again I know this is an older anime but it still failed to even make me remotely interested in them when all that happens are repeat things like Tarzan and his friends always beating up the bad guys and the characters from that arc gets their happy endings and you never see them again as they are quickly forgotten and back to Africa again. Only the first arc was a bit different in the sense that another character from that arc now joined Tarzan's gang and became a regular but that's it. Otherwise it's Africa>new tournament arc>Africa>new tournament arc etc and it's never anything else so overall there really is no plot to this anime, no overarching nemesis or anything of the like only the tournament arc villains that are just there and they are never a real threat and once their arc is done so are they. I like my plot being good or even there be some at all but there is something I prioritize more than plot and that is what we come to next.
Characters:
Oh boy... where to even start when there was literally no character I liked in this anime, lets get the annoying ones out of the way before the bland like Jane...and in particular fat Jane because there is a difference as clearly showed in the past when NOT living in Africa she was kind, sexy and a total fit for Tarzan (cover really fooled me, false advertising yo!) but then somehow she got lazy and fat out in Africa in the present? I thought it would be the opposite that living without technology and society would make you work out more for stuff like food, building huts, just trying to survive in general but apparently not in this case. She constantly treats Tarzan like shit and gets jealous on every female introduced with their ALWAYS great bodies too she wishes she still have but never once do the fat joke go away as I thought it would do so if you read this review and that thought cross your mind then yeah, it never goes away and not her irredeemable behavior either. Atleast she got less annoying in the tournament arcs but not by much. And then we got our bland MC Tarzan that just take all this stuff, acts like an idiot all the time and being a pervert that always gets boners whenever he see the newly introduced female in each episodes and again the cover giving me the wrong impression because here I thought he would be sort of stoic badass that protects the jungle but I guess I've watched too much Fist of the North Star so maybe that's my fault for thinking that but still doesn't make his character any less bland, or maybe he's annoying too.
When it comes to the supporting cast then they are all over the place like Helen, the first girl introduced that had a crush on Tarzan quickly got forgotten even though technically she was still there at their place in Africa but I guess no one cared anymore once they ditched her always when they took off to the country tournaments took place in never taking her with them, oh well. Ryou and Pedro are just fine, not too much personality to even distinguish between them tbh, both are fighters that just want to learn more and get stronger, nothing wrong with that but not too interesting either and shame you never get much background info on these characters for me to give a shit about them, given how little I did it could have a impact. There is a character I genuinely liked though (is this my first thing I mention I actually liked?!) and that's Anabebe and his antics, his jokes and rivalry with Tarzan was pretty funny I have to say and there is a point he gets rich and that makes him like an entirely different characters and you just never knew with that guy what he would do next, sadly he got underused a lot more later on as it became more about Tarzan in general but still for me he was my favorite character in this whole mess.
Artstyle & Sound:
What were they even thinking when making these character designs? alright the bodies are fine both for the male & female, they are all respectively either buff or busty and they are all sexy with the exception of Jane which somehow got shorter when she became fat because that's an anime trope thing I guess... but what is up with those derpy faces? their mouth to nose ratio are so close to each other to it just looks weird with most of them having a huge chin, especially noticeable on all the females, so click on Jane's character profile pic here on MAL and you'll notice immediately, every female and some males are like that in this and it really bothered me at the start but then I got used to it later on but still that's not a very good design and it being old or based on the original source is no excuse, the mouths could be just a little more closer to the chin like come on now. It's also weird when so many of them just looks the same but with different hairstyle/hair-colors, it's like they are all the same design with just added accessory on their head. Most of them do look different but there were just some minor characters that looked too much like some of the main cast so it made me confused sometimes but that was fine since it was only the minor characters that showed up in the tournament arcs.
As for sound I'm sure they only really got the composer to make 2-3 different OSTs that gets used throughout the whole anime, also the first theme song gets used a lot in hype moments where Tarzan punch out someone and even though they always repeat I have to say I am a fan of that song and it did actually make those moments more hype even for me that disliked this anime those were still one of the better moments to those dragged out tournament arcs.
So those are my thoughts, wouldn't really recommend it to anyone and it was 50 episodes long too and the manga cover much more than that and hey maybe that is better paced etc than this garbage but after this I wouldn't even want to give it a try and it's barely even translated anyways. Even to people that want their "manly men" fix from the 80/90s like Fist of the North Star, JoJo, Be A Man! Samurai School etc they won't get it here, trust me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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