Are you ready for more Zodiac Wars fought by your favorite warriors? Well, sit back, as today we’ll be going over what happened up until now in Juuni Taisen.
We’ll analyze the possibility for Season 2, as well as establish rumors about the show.
So, let’s get into it!
What happened so far in Juuni Taisen
There live 12 warriors, each named by one of the signs from the Chinese Zodiac. They are Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Chicken, Dog, and Boar. Each of these warriors embodies an element of the power of the songs they are named after. Every 12 years, a tournament is held for the zodiac warriors to see the ultimate sign.
The tournament is in the current year, and the participants must each swallow a crystallized poison jewel. These jewels will kill the one who ate them within 12 hours. The winner of the tournament gets to have one wish granted to them, whatever that may be. To win the tournament, one must retrieve the other 11 crystals from the other 11 zodiacs and return them before the deadline. Before they knew it, the Zodiacs find themselves in survival war.
As said above, each warrior has some power related to the zodiac sign they’re named after. They use these abilities to confuse their opponents and have them fight different unknown powers. Their abilities are as follows:
- Rat is a silver-haired teen and his ability is called “The Hundred Paths of Nezumi”. This ability allows him to choose 100 different outcomes, of any situation he desires. He has 100 possibilities and chooses one of them that becomes reality. The ability is incredibly mentally exhausting so he’s always sleepy. He’s the only one that didn’t have a wish.
- Ox is a horned man with long black hair. He’s incredibly strong and is called the “Genius of Slaughter”. He doesn’t seemingly have a special ability although he is unreachable with a sword. Perhaps, that’s his ability.
- Tiger is an orange-haired woman that looks like she has a drinking problem. It’s actually a part of her ability as she’s a master of the drunken fist. The most unpredictable fighting style there is.
- Rabbit is a white-haired muscular young man wielding 2 knives. He’s incredibly fast as a rabbit and also can control the bodies of those he’s killed. He refers to the zombies as friends.
- Dragon is the older of the reptilian twins. He can fly and create freezing air from a tank of nitrogen on his back. The ability is called “Heaven’s holding”.
- Snake is the younger of the reptilian twins. He uses a tank of fuel as a flamethrower instead of cold air. His special ability is “Earth’s guidance“, allowing him to feel vibrations from the ground to know where different attacks are coming from like an actual snake.
- Horse is a soldier who had his body modified. After this, he became a zodiac warrior and developed the ability “Stirrup”. It allows him to manifest an impenetrable defense that no one can get by.
- Sheep, who is the winner of the previous tournament. He’s a small and very old man with two horns. Since he’s incredibly old he doesn’t have much of a chance but enters to protect his family from entering. He’s incredibly good at strategy and is adept at using grenades.
- Monkey is a short-haired woman who’s a pacifist and doesn’t like fighting. She proposes that whoever wins wishes all the others back to life but other zodiacs have other desires. She has good martial arts abilities and has the ability to transmute anything into another state. Like water into ice and stone into sand.
- Chicken is a young green-haired woman with the ability to talk to birds. Her ability is called “Eye of Cormorant” and with it, she can control birds.
- Dog is a dark-haired man that looks like “Anubis” or a canine. His abilities lie in creating poisons to weaken enemies or buff allies. He believes he can make an antidote for the crystal inside him.
- Boar; last but not least we have the blond-haired woman that goes by the name of Boar. She uses dual machine guns with the “Non-reload” ability. Pretty self-explanatory.
After many different encounters, Rat manages to win through his hundred paths ability. He is then asked to participate in a winners’ interview and sees that he dies in 40 of the scenarios where he declines. He goes on and finishes up the interview. The next day he declares that his wish is to forget, that he doesn’t want anything else. The mysterious tournament organizer grants the wish, and Rat is seen sleeping happily in a classroom.
What’s Going on With Graphinica?
Juuni Taisen is an anime based on a light novel. It was written by Nisio Ishin and drawn by Hikaru Nakamura. Graphinica studio created an anime adaptation in 2017. The anime aired from October 3rd to December 19th of 2017 and was a huge hit when it came out. It ran for 12 episodes and was streamed by Crunchyroll as well as dubbed by Funimation. The anime is considered Top-Tier by fans and critics alike.
Many of the show’s credits are attributed to the writers behind the Zodiac Wars, as the premise is so captivating that it leaves people wanting to know more immediately. Although not all 12 Zodiacs were explored as much as we’d like them to, throughout the 12 episodes, we see enough of each to choose a favorite character and to have time to fall in love with them.
Graphinica did a great job with the show. Even though the studio is new and Juuni Taisen is just the third show they’ve ever adapted, they did a perfect job making a great series. It wasn’t easy considering the brutality of the story with many deaths and bloody scenes happening, and they had to both do justice to the story and make it in a way that’s digestible for more people. And they did a great job at that. From the voice acting to the animation, it’s the perfect blend of brutality and “coolness,” as the fans like to say.
Another big part of the success of the show was the character designs. Chikashi Kadekaru created some of the most memorable designs for these 12 characters. Even the Mysterious host of the tournament was crazy iconic. When it’s a show about 12 warriors in the whole world, you better believe they have to look memorable to live up to the hype. And in that department, it’s a job well done. Rabbit has more fan art than even some main characters from big shows like Naruto and Bleach. And it’s easy to see why.
Currently, “Graphinica” is airing 3 series, all of which have not yet ended. They have announced a 4th coming up in 2022 and the 5th one without a release date. So the studio is currently busy, and unfortunately, there’s no sign of it working on a sequel to Juuni Taisen at the moment.
What do we know about Juuni Taisen Season 2?
No one likes to be the bearer of bad news, but there have been no official announcements about a Season 2. Not all hope is gone. It’s been about 4 years since the show ended, but there’s been a lot of new source material on the Novel’s side of things since then.
The possibility of that getting an Anime adaptation isn’t that far away. Nisio Ishin stated that there’s a possibility for a Manga adaptation first before we can think of any Anime seasons coming, but that’s more than enough reason to believe that the thought is going around the creators’ minds for an anime. If there’s a whole manga is released, then the anime isn’t so far away. There were rumors about an announcement coming up in 2019, but that didn’t happen. That being said, the creators still haven’t canceled the show either. So, hope is still a thing concerning a Season 2.
What Fans Are Saying About Juuni Taisen Season 2?
Fans have been desperately awaiting the renewal of Juuni Taisen. So much so that they’ve been posting countless thoughts on forums. There are also plenty of theories and character analyses floating around on Youtube and other social media. Plenty of discussions about the different characters’ wishes. The show is really loved, and fans are confident that it will do great if a season 2 comes out. There are countless fan-arts of their favorite characters (mainly Rabbit).
Will there be a Juuni Taisen Season 2?
After Graphinica produced the show in 2017, they received countless compliments and good feedback from fans and critics alike. It had critical acclaim and killer ratings when it came out, scoring a 6.55 on My Anime List which is really high there for such a short-running anime. It also got a 4.1 out of 5 ratings by viewers on Crunchyroll. The show had 12 episodes with a runtime of 24 minutes an episode on average. Few people saw the show because it had a 17+ age restriction because of the violence displayed within the anime. Other than that, it did great. Its popularity has also been stable throughout the years as people keep searching to check up on the series periodically. You can check the Juuni Taisen search table here.
After the show had ended at the end of 2017, a sequel novel to Juuni Taisen was announced. It was released in 2018, and many fans couldn’t wait for the anime and dig in. Now they want to see it in anime form even more. The demand for a Season 2 is crazy—no one expected Juuni Taisen to do so well, not even the creators themselves. Since there’s enough source material for a whole new season, this is a perfect green flag for those waiting for the series’ renewal. All the facts favor a season 2, and it’s safe to assume the creators have noticed that. Now all that’s left is to wait for the announcement, which could happen sooner than we think. So, it’s almost certain that there will be a Season 2. Facts like this usually indicate renewals and rarely fail.
When will Juuni Taisen Season 2 Come Out?
As of this date, the shows’ return still hasn’t been announced. However, there were plenty of rumors about how it would be announced at the end of 2019 or early 2020.
These Rumors were probably true, but then quarantine happened, and it’s easy for plans to change in situations like this. It’s more than likely the anime will be announced either by the end of 2021 or in 2022, and you can be sure fans are going to explode when it comes back.
What Can We Expect From Juuni Taisen Season 2?
It’s not easy to say. There’s bound to be another tournament, but it’s not clear how it will happen since most zodiacs are dead. There was a statement in a Crunchyroll post that Season 2 will have all the characters revived and that they’ll have to fight the western Zodiac signs in an all-out war, hence the name Zodiac War vs. Zodiac War. This isn’t confirmed, but it would be interesting to see a new set of worldbuilding and characters and the different powers they’ll use. If fans get Rabbit, who’s on the good guys’ side, the internet will probably crash.
