King of Bandit Jing Vol. #4

By Dani Moure     June 12, 2004
Release Date: July 19, 2004



What They Say
No priceless bauble or exquisite jewel is safe from the leering eyes and stealthy hands of Jing, the King of Bandits. With a heart of gold and girl-crazy albatross sidekick Kir, Jing steals his way through one exciting adventure after another!

Includes 3 complete episodes.

The Review!
Jing and Kir take a trip to the town of Zaza to capture the Vintage Smile in their final journey of the series.

Audio:
For the final volume, as with earlier discs, I listened to the Japanese stereo track for my review. I noticed no technical problems during regular playback, though it's not the most exciting sounding stereo mix. Spot-checking the English 5.1 track revealed a slightly more immersive feel, and no technical problems.

Video:
There's nothing really left to say about the transfer, which is excellent again. The picture is very crisp and clean, and colours are reproduced excellently, and given the fantastic look of the series and its style, it looks great on DVD. There was no noticeable artifacting or cross colouration as I watched the episodes, and even cross colouration was non-existent. This is as good a transfer as you could hope for.

Packaging:
For the final volume, we get another striking cover based on the three episodes here. Jing is in the centre but just to the back, with his mask partly on his face. Stir takes up the bottom of the image with her hair sprawling around the cover as a border, and Rising Son is just off behind her. An image of Madame Earl's face is overlaid behind Jing in an almost ominous way, like she's looking over things. The whole piece is set against the town in the distant background, and it's a great cover to finish on. My only disappointment continues to be the lack of any volume numbering, titling or any other distinction on the cover, which is a little confusing on store shelves. On the other hand, it is nice that it leaves the art even cleaner. The volume number does appear on the spine, while episode titles are listed clearly on the back (though not numbered). Also on the back are the episode summaries and overall volume summary, as well as a feature list and screenshots. The bottom third of the back is taken up by the technical information, which clearly lists the audio languages, subtitles, aspect ration, episodes, runtime and so on. I love that ADV lays things out in such a clear way.

Menu:
The menu system is perhaps the most plain part of the package. Once again the main menu is a static image, with the options sprawled over zoomed in cover art. Episode selections from this menu take you straight to the start of the episode (there's no scene selection facility), while the two sub-menus have different static images. Access times are fast, but there's a distinct lack of variety considering each of the menu pages also plays the same music.

Extras:
There's nothing new here, so it could easily be ignored. I do like that ADV includes clean versions of the openings and endings on every volume, but honestly, with just those and a short art gallery, this disc is severely lacking in extra features. But then, the content more than makes up for it!

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the final volume of a series you always hope for some sort of closure that wraps up the ongoing story and gives the characters a bit of an end in the final episode. Of course, King of Bandit Jing is a little bit different, in that it has no real ongoing story and each episode stands alone as its own story, and fits in with the Jing formula. As such, the final three episodes play out a bit differently here. Forming a three-part story, we have an expansive and emotional tale that, while it doesn't wrap up Jing and Kir's journey, does provide a sense of satisfaction when the credits role as you know the journeys will continue, but for now what we've seen is complete.

"The Masquerade Ball of Zaza" sees our thieves journey to the town of Zaza, where a treasure called the Vintage Smile resides. Upon arrival, though, a massive tournament has begun to see who will be the heir to the throne of Madame Earl. Her husband and son had been tragically killed a few years earlier, leaving just her and her daughter, Stir. The tragedy sent Madame Earl into a strange phase that sees her wearing masquerade masks to portray her emotions, never revealing her true face. It's even been several years since Stir saw the true face of her mother. In hopes of finding an heir, she holds a tournament each year in which masked warriors compete, and the entire town watches.

This year, a mysterious fighter calling themselves the Warrior of the Rising Son is vying for the top spot. But there are also three thugs, the Ice Brothers, who always seem to foil the potential victor before they can win, by murdering the potential champion. As you would expect, Jing enters the competition in order to get closer to the treasure. Kir spectates along with several adoring female fans, as Jing battles his way through each competitor in a series of interesting fights, until it looks as though he and Rising Son will meet. But then the Ice Brothers get involved, and things start to go pear-shaped.

Jing makes a joke out of most of them, but one is so unhappy that he returns to take Jing's life at all costs. As Madame Earl watches on, Jing manages to avoid his onslaught, but Rising Son is hurt instead, and their identity revealed... A turn of events which leaves Jing facing execution.

This final story is probably the biggest yet for the series, and thankfully it's a very strong one. The tale is well plotted and nicely paced, giving enough time with the all the supporting characters that are relevant to the story to really get a feel for their personalities. As has been a strength of the series from the start, the episodes are very well-written with great whit and humour. Jing and Kir retain their fantastic personalities and act exactly as you would expect; Jing being uber-cool and Kir being the womaniser that he is. A couple of the twists and turns in the story are a little predictable (for instance, I guessed who Rising Son was a while before its reveal), but with Jing it never seems to matter because the characters are all so strong that it overshadows the occasionally simple nature of some of the stories.

Another advantage of the time spent with the supporting characters is that it really allows us to get emotionally invested in what's going on, giving the events of the story all the more impact. The relationships between the various characters, for instance Stir and Madam Earl, get enough time to really develop so that when things happen, it really means something. Once again the writing also comes into play here, as plenty is said with just gestures and the like rather than spelled out in the dialogue. Getting invested in a show is what really elevates its enjoyment for me, and Jing managed to engross me very much with these three episodes.

One of the other standout aspects of the series has been its visual style, and its cranked up again here. While it's not on the same level as the art town episode earlier in the series, it still looks fantastic and is always visually captivating. For a start we have a bizarre giant lip (I kid you not) commentating on the fights, the crowd is nothing but a sea of blacked out people wearing white masks, everyone wears a mask because it's supposed to be a take on a masquerade, and they're all visually interesting. Likewise, the locations are all well designed and quite striking so I never find my eyes wandering because it's just talking heads in front of some boring background. The look of the series is fantastic and it thankfully goes out on a high note.

And as always, the key thing that ties it all together is that it's just so darn entertaining. The series consistently has been, and I always find myself getting into the characters and situations, and often end up grinning at how much I'm enjoying watching the show, which is as much as you can really ask for from any series. I never found myself bored or watching the clock, every episode just flew by and the only disappointment came when the disc was over.

In Summary:
These final three episodes of the series do a great job of providing a good, fun story with some of the most entertaining characters I've seen in a while. The wrap-up doesn't really provide much of a conclusion as there's no ongoing story to really finish, but it provides a nice bit of closure in relation to this story and the series as a whole, and of course gives us a glimpse as to how things will continue with more adventures of Jing and Kir. For fans of the show, this disc is a no-brainer, and on the whole I would have no qualms with recommending this show to anyone who's not after a big intricate plot but just wants some entertainment in the form of enjoyable stories and some of the most memorable characters you'll find. With a nice presentation from ADV (the only let-down really being that the on-disc extras are so sparse), the series gets a massive thumbs up from me.

Now I only hope that ADV pick up the rights to the three-part sequel OVA series, King of Bandit Jing in Seventh Heaven. More of Jing and Kir is always a good thing!

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles,Clean Opening,Clean Closing,Production Sketches

Review Equipment
Philips 28" Pure Flat Widescreen TV, Pioneer DV-464 code free DVD player, JVC gold-plated RGB SCART cable, standard stereo sound.