King of Bandit Jing
Volume #1
English Dubbed & Subbed Version
Released: 2003
Version: DVD (ADV)
Approx. Rated: PG
Length: Approx. 100 minutes (25 minutes per episode)
English Cast: Ron Berry (as Kir), Gary G. Haddock (as Postino), Joey Hood (as Jing), Brett Weaver (as Vodka), Ryan Wickerham (as Cognac)
DVD Features:
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Synopsis:
A teen named Jing is a master bandit, known as the Bandit King. He has a talking bird named Kir as a friend. Kir is a womanizer. They go on various adventures and steal things, although not in the way one would expect.
The Review:
Unfortunately, this show isn't all that easy to describe. The episodes are self-contained for the most part. There isn't an over-arching tale in the making in this show, at least, there wasn't one in the first four episodes that I saw. Instead, we get a rather funny set of shows with this brash boy, Jing.
The first episode has Jing going to a city of Thieves where he wants to steal the tear of a mermaid from the guy that is the owner of the town. The main male characters that we meet for this episode only have names synonymous with alcoholic beverages. I found that fairly amusing myself. You've got two very odd people in the show named Cognac and Vodka.
The worst thing about the show is that Jing knows way too much that doesn't make sense. He's too powerful or something. When he meets this one bandit that he wants help from, he somehow manages to steal the guy's tooth. One minute the dude has it, the next Jing's got it. It's kind of cool, but they don't explain how Jing does it and it makes you kind of wonder what's going on.
The next episode is really messed up. It's about a ghost ship that can kind of take away people's souls by making them obsess over money. Jing meets up with a chick named Rose. Rose seems to be a cop of some sort. Anyway, she never introduces herself and suddenly Jing is referring to her by name. I found this especially confusing in the sub version. When Jing gets aboard the ship, he pontificates about how he knows this HAS to be a casino he heard about in the town we visited in the last episode. (Of course, we didn't hear about this casino...)
Jing is always right, and he always wins, so he ends up winning tons of money. Who knows why. Then he gets attacked by a nut whose body is made up of a wooden barrel. Jing can't seem to kill him until he notices a glittering coin on the guy's arm. Jing slices it and the guy melts. What the stink!? The place is crawling with money. How could Jing know the significance of this one coin? And then he immediately jumps to the right conclusion that it's the money controlling the people and not the other way around. So Jing runs around "killing" them, so to speak...since they're just spirits, it doesn't matter, right???
This irks the owner of the casino, a man with a pig head and armor. He turns into a monster made of gold and they yap some more about greed. Suddenly, Jing snaps his fingers and all these ghouls jump out to steal the gold off the gold monster. (I didn't know Jing held sway over dead people either.)
The last two episodes are connected, amazingly. They are a two-parter about a town where time is of the utmost importance. If you are tardy, you will die. There's a fox-like critter in it that does something similar to Kir and Jing, that being that it joins with its master's arm to shoot powerful energy balls about, like Jing does with Kir. (That's one of Jing's powerful moves.)
There are a lot of neat things that happen in this show. One of the moments that I enjoyed was when Jing entered the town. He had to get past these odd clockwork guys that had gears embedded in them. They swung razor wire between them and Jing walked right through. Also watch for the gator with the clock...
Other things you should know about this show is that Kir is a womanizer. Why a bird would fall for human (or humanoid) females I do not know, but he does. He walks the very fine line of perversion. Jing doesn't seem interested in girls, though. Also there's a motorcycle dude named Postino that appears in all the show and gives clues or advice to Jing. That's kind of cool, although it could be seen as gimmicky.
I watched the entire show in English and one episode in Japanese. The dub's sound was better, but that's to be expected since it was 5.1 whereas the Japanese was 2.0. Most of the time, I kept up with the sub, and it had a decent yellow font that never disappeared into the background like the white ones seem to. The dub was excellent. I can't think of any voices that didn't seem to fit their parts. From what I could hear in the inflections of the Japanese cast, they also seemed to be getting into their parts.
The Good Stuff:
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Very colorful characters |
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The animation is very nice and fluid |
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I like the character designs |
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The soundtrack is pretty good too, except for the ending song, which I find annoying. |
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The plots are all interesting and seem to have some moral to them or at least have a comment on society at large. |
The Bad Stuff:
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Some swearing, but it's not prevalent. |
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Mildly revealing clothing. I know of once instance of breast bouncing which may offend. |
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And there is violence, although it's not usually gory. |
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The 2nd episode has some face melting in it, but Slayers had much worse. |
I really do enjoy this show, although I get rather frustrated with Jing's aloof, smarty-pants behavior. The box says it's for 13+, but I think younger ones can watch it as well, although it's best if an adult previews it beforehand. That bird thing is rather odd and would be difficult to explain to a young mind. Check it out if you enjoy adventure sprinkled with some comedy.
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