TAB: Tom's Anime Blog

I always like it when I'm pleasantly surprised by a series, and Jubei-chan is a series that kept surprising me. The first few episodes didn't amount to much, but there series kept getting better and better.

Jubei-chan starts off as an action-comedy about a junior-high girl who inherits the "lovely-eye-patch", giving her the fighting abilities of the ancient great swordsman, Jubei Yagyu. With it, she also inherited the 300-year grudge a rival clan had against Yagyu's family. Even though she doesn't want to fight, a rival of the week (usually posing as a substitute teacher) keeps trying to defeat her.

And with this, one would think the show starts falling into a predictable pattern. The heroine, the boyfriend, the assistant, her girl friends, the comic relief, the enemys of the week, the final enemy, and so on. The show looked okay, with ugly character designs, decent comedy, and great swordplay, but nothing to write home about.

And then it just kept changing, and for the better. Jubei starts accepting her powers. The comic relief shows some backbone. All of a sudden, nothing can be taken for granted, and that's a good thing.

In the second half of the series, every episode feels like a well-done ending, at least in terms of the amount of change that occurs. Coupled with characters that have become interesting, this is enough to make this a good series.

Jubei-chan is not without its problems. Many of the secondary characters have ugly, monkey-like character designs, which always turns me off. The series starts off as a comedy, and never really knows when to stop being one, leading to the occasional joke at an inopportune time. (Compare this to a series like Mahoromatic, which mixed comedy and drama well.) But one can forgive these flaws because of the nifty and unpredictable story.

I say Jubei-chan is a good series. It deserves a good chance, as the first few episodes aren't much, but when watched to the halfway point, it'll start sucking you in.