King of Bandit Jing Box Set DVD Review

By sothis Published: May 7, 2006

PACKAGING AND MENU

8 / 10

Jing’s box is sturdy, but a little boring. Images of Kir, Jing and other characters are pictured on both sides of the box, but an orange color is over the top of all the images. Thus, what you see is gray and orange, with the images showing up only if you look closely. The spine’s image isn’t a full one, it’s part of one of the ones on the cover. I’m a firm believer than spines need to have their own artwork to make them stand out on the shelf, so this doesn’t work well in ADV’s favor. The one good thing about the box is that the Jing text is raised and silver, which is a nice touch.

Each insert for the four discs has the same picture as the DVD cover, with an alternate picture on the back side. I’m a big fan of the disc spines, which each have the same shiny silver text. Each volume has a stunning full color shot of the characters. I’m very impressed in general with the artwork used for these. Each disc itself has the same cover shot applied to it.

The menus are simple but very well done. The majority of each disc has a full colored image on the left side, with text on the right side. Music from the series plays in the background.

FEATURES

3 / 10

The only features to be found on these discs is art shots, and a clean opening and closing. Very disappointing… I feel like something else could have been added. Interviews, TV trailers, anything!

VIDEO

9 / 10

I was fairly surprised by how good the video quality was on this DVD. The contrast and black levels were perfect. The colors were amazing! The colors were very vibrant and solid, with little noise or artifacts. Some of the lines were very thin, and produced some extremely minor color bleeding, but other than that, there was nothing to complain about. There were virtually no aliasing issues, except for panning still shots, which was only noticeable for nearly vertical or horizontal lines.

AUDIO

8 / 10

The audio quality was very good. I primarily watched the series in Japanese 2.0 audio, which was overall one of the better stereo down-mixes I've heard in a long time. The sound was lively and used the stereo soundstage very well. The dialogue was mostly centered, but they made good use of the right and left directionality for action scenes. The English 5.1 audio was just as impressive, although not the best 5.1 mix I've heard. During action scenes and the like, there was very good use of the rear channels, bringing a lot of extra sound and music to the rear channels. One major problem I had with it is the inconsistency of using the 5.1 soundstage. In some scenes you'd expect the music and ambient noises to be brought back to the rear channels, but it sounded mostly like a stereo mix, which would then change to a more true 5.1 mix in a matter of a few scenes, which was noticeable only if you were looking.

CONTENT

8.8 / 10

Jing is 100% episodic. There, I said it. If you are reading this and are suddenly not interested, stop reading now and go pick up Juuni Kokki. Else, let's continue...

Jing is the world's best thief and is known for his desire to capture the most beautiful and unique treasures in the world. His pal, Kir, is a talking bird who loves the women, and follows him wherever he goes. King of Bandit Jing follows Jing and Kir as they travel to various towns and places, as they try to steal a different one-of-a-kind treasure. As mentioned, this is an episodic series. There is no central plot, and really, nothing that ties the episodes together, except for the mention of Jing's mysterious crystal that he carries everywhere he goes. There are some episodes that are mini-arcs, one being two episodes in length, and one being three episodes. Besides this, it's sort of like watching Kino no Tabi -- you see a different story each time, but it still ends up being wildly entertaining.

I loved the animation style of Jing, and haven't seen many things like it. It's completely cel shaded, and not a lot of thick black lines used anywhere. The colors are extremely vibrant and interesting, and in general the animation has a very fun and crazy style to it. The character designs and townsfolk/monsters are very humorous looking and have their own quirks. Things like the city designs really impressed me. For example, there's a two arc story about a town full of clocks (check out the Jing theme here on the site to see it), and it really reminded me of something Tim Burton would have made. Also a heavy favorite are the cute little bomb-animals (also in the theme) who really are ridiculously cute for a reason. The only aspect of the animation I didn't enjoy was Jing and Kir's transformation sequence. It was fine the first few times, but like with shoujo magical girl shows (THIS ISN'T ONE, don't worry), the transformation is identical every single time, which gets annoying.

Jing is one of my favorite series, and sits happily on my shelf in its shiny box set. It's random comedy at its finest, has great animation and a super fitting soundtrack, so you can't really go wrong with this one. Bear in mind that a lot of people don't like Jing specifically because of the episodic nature, but the answer to this should be obvious: DON'T WATCH IT IF YOU DISLIKE EPISODIC THINGS! For everyone else, Jing is a fun and entertaining ride...