History Literature / JuniTaisenZodiacWar

''Juni Taisen: Zodiac War'' (lit. "The War of Twelve") is a light novel written by Creator/NisioIsin and illustrated by Hikaru Nakamura. An anime adaptation by Creator/{{Graphinica}} has aired for the 2017 Fall Season, with Nisio stablemate Akira Akatsuki drawing a manga adaptation of the book in September of the same year. Creator/{{Funimation}}'s Simuldub premiered on October 18th, 2017. Watch it [[https://www.funimation.com/shows/juni-taisen-zodiac-war/ here]].

* BattleInTheRain: [[spoiler:It begins to rain after Ox and Tiger "finish off" Rabbit. Before they can fight each other, Rabbit returns as a HumanoidAbomination, and FinalBoss of the tournament, and begin to hunt them down.]]

* DarkerAndEdgier: Compared to the original Chinese tale, or with other battle royale works such as ''Manga/FutureDiary'' and ''LightNovel/MagicalGirlRaisingProject'', the participants aren't people who were randomly forced into a life or death battle. They are all warriors and mercenaries who knew exactly what they were getting into; the whole point is for the greatest killers in the world to fight it out to see who is the strongest. In fact, it's perceived as such a great honor to be selected to fight in the Zodiac War that one participant even murdered her own sister to take her place. Among the "EvilVersusEvil" variation, the cast isn't exactly evil, either; sure, they may be warriors, and definitely morally unscrupulous in some cases, but they're all practically [[GrayAndGrayMorality Gray vs. Gray]] since their own individual chapters and Rat's timeline-jumping ability show more facets to them than we see in the main timeline. Even the purest character, Monkey, isn't an actual innocent because she has spent years surrounded by death on the battlefield while working as a mediator. It's established early on that the majority of the characters are horrible people and that there isn't really a "good guy" to root for. With all the focus on the characters, it becomes equal parts war story, ultraviolence, and character study-- a blend generally left more to other genres. The War takes place in a CrapsackWorld, as these stories generally tend to be, but it's considered to be a secret, but very normal feature of the world it is set in rather than a one-off anomaly. While a decent amount of people live normal lives with no clue about what was going on, there is an endless amount of war and violence, 12 extremely brutal families of warriors more or less run a good deal of what happens, and the 12 houses are openly allowed to engage in violence and illegal activities and have the legal leeway to do so. It also turns out that [[spoiler: The Zodiac War is actually a proxy war that draws the geographical and political boundaries of the world, which the 12 families and the warriors themselves are unaware of, implying that the world is in such a bad state with all the wars going on that they need to literally use the betting during the Zodiac War to keep relative peace.]] Overall, the tone is that [[WarIsHell war is awful]] and nothing good can come of senseless violence. In the end, despite the winner getting one wish of their choice, the message is driven home that war has no real winners; the victor [[spoiler:nearly suffers a mental breakdown as a result of realizing that there was no wish without dire consequences and even the most selfless wish would backfire in the end. The strain of participating was so great on him, he eventually settled on wishing to forget that the events of the story ever happened.]]

* DarkerAndEdgier: Compared to the original Chinese tale, or with other battle royale works such as ''Manga/FutureDiary'' and ''LightNovel/MagicalGirlRaisingProject'', the participants aren't people who were randomly forced into a life or death battle. They are all warriors and mercenaries who knew exactly what they were getting into; the whole point is for the greatest killers in the world to fight it out to see who is the strongest. In fact, it's perceived as such a great honor to be selected to fight in the Zodiac War that one participant even murdered her own sister to take her place. Among the "EvilVsEvil" variation, the cast isn't exactly evil, either; sure, they may be warriors, and definitely morally unscrupulous in some cases, but they're all practically [[GrayAndGrayMorality Gray vs. Gray]] since their own individual chapters and Rat's timeline-jumping ability show more facets to them than we see in the main timeline. Even the purest character, Monkey, isn't an actual innocent because she has spent years surrounded by death on the battlefield while working as a mediator. It's established early on that the majority of the characters are horrible people and that there isn't really a "good guy" to root for. With all the focus on the characters, it becomes equal parts war story, ultraviolence, and character study-- a blend generally left more to other genres. The War takes place in a CrapsackWorld, as these stories generally tend to be, but it's considered to be a secret, but very normal feature of the world it is set in rather than a one-off anomaly. While a decent amount of people live normal lives with no clue about what was going on, there is an endless amount of war and violence, 12 extremely brutal families of warriors more or less run a good deal of what happens, and the 12 houses are openly allowed to engage in violence and illegal activities and have the legal leeway to do so. It also turns out that [[spoiler: The Zodiac War is actually a proxy war that draws the geographical and political boundaries of the world, which the 12 families and the warriors themselves are unaware of, implying that the world is in such a bad state with all the wars going on that they need to literally use the betting during the Zodiac War to keep relative peace.]] Overall, the tone is that [[WarIsHell war is awful]] and nothing good can come of senseless violence. In the end, despite the winner getting one wish of their choice, the message is driven home that war has no real winners; the victor [[spoiler:nearly suffers a mental breakdown as a result of realizing that there was no wish without dire consequences and even the most selfless wish would backfire in the end. The strain of participating was so great on him, he eventually settled on wishing to forget that the events of the story ever happened.]]

* BadassGrandpa: Sheep may be old (Boar even thinks he should be half dead by now), but he still manages to rank as one of the nation's best killers.

* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** The anime's opening gives the final survivor away with a visual cue. All of the eventual dead have glowing eyes in the character montage-- that is, all except [[spoiler:Rat]], who is the eventual winner.
** It is mentioned that the previous battle was won by the Boar. This helps establish that the current battle will follow the traditional story, as [[spoiler: the Year of the Rat follows the Year of the Boar]].

** Boar's father is implied to have been one, as he used brutal methods to train her into an effective fighter, would kill people in front of her to punish her for showing mercy to her opponents, and had no problem beating with her when she messed up. The anime plays this trope straight, with her describing him as "My father, whose discipline and training bordered on abuse." In addition, Boar's mother in the anime was overly concerned with making sure her daughter looked and acted refined due to her status as the future head of the family; Boar describes her as "My mother, whose care for, and reliance on, her daughters bordered on near obsession."

** Tiger's father took great pride in her because she was intellectually gifted and one of the best students produced by her family's dojo. By the time she returned home after being sent into battle as a teenager, her mental abilities had shriveled up, she was severely traumatized and depressed, she had turned to alcohol to try and forget her actions on the battlefield, and she was reduced to a near-primal state in which she fought on all fours and killed with her bare hands; he promptly disowned his daughter and threw her out, despite the fact that she only became a warrior in the first place because she wanted to make him proud.

** None of the battles are predictable. Circumstance appears to play a bigger role than skill, with some of the less fight-focused participants actually fairing better that the better fighters. The most powerful skill doesn’t have much to do with fighting, nor does it guarantee a good outcome.

* DarkerAndEdgier: When the story said there was a war going on, they weren't kidding. Unlike other popular battle royale works such as ''Manga/FutureDiary'' and ''LightNovel/MagicalGirlRaisingProject'', the participants aren't people who were randomly forced into a life or death battle. They are all warriors and mercenaries who knew exactly what they were getting into; the whole point is for the greatest killers in the world to fight it out to see who is the strongest. In fact, it's perceived as such a great honor to be selected to fight in the Zodiac War that one participant even murdered her own sister to take her place. Among the "EvilVsEvil" variation, the cast isn't exactly evil, either; sure, they may be warriors, and definitely morally unscrupulous in some cases, but they're all practically [[GrayAndGrayMorality Gray vs. Gray]] since their own individual chapters and Rat's timeline-jumping ability show more facets to them than we see in the main timeline. Even the purest character, Monkey, isn't an actual innocent because she has spent years surrounded by death on the battlefield while working as a mediator. It's established early on that the majority of the characters are horrible people and that there isn't really a "good guy" to root for. With all the focus on the characters, it becomes equal parts war story, ultraviolence, and character study-- a blend generally left more to other genres. The War takes place in a CrapsackWorld, as these stories generally tend to be, but it's considered to be a secret, but very normal feature of the world it is set in rather than a one-off anomaly. While a decent amount of people live normal lives with no clue about what was going on, there is an endless amount of war and violence, 12 extremely brutal families of warriors more or less run a good deal of what happens, and the 12 houses are openly allowed to engage in violence and illegal activities and have the legal leeway to do so. It also turns out that [[spoiler: The Zodiac War is actually a proxy war that draws the geographical and political boundaries of the world, which the 12 families and the warriors themselves are unaware of, implying that the world is in such a bad state with all the wars going on that they need to literally use the betting during the Zodiac War to keep relative peace.]] Overall, the tone is that [[WarIsHell war is awful]] and nothing good can come of senseless violence. In the end, despite the winner getting one wish of their choice, the message is driven home that war has no real winners; the victor [[spoiler: nearly suffers a mental breakdown as a result of realizing that there was no wish without dire consequences and even the most selfless wish would backfire in the end. The strain of participating was so great on him, he eventually settled on wishing to forget that the events of the story ever happened.]]

** [[spoiler: Just as Ox is about to be brutally ripped apart by the undead Monkey and Rabbit to become one of the living dead, Rat mercy-kills him by throwing one of Sheep's bombs at him. The resulting explosion vaporizes Ox, The reanimated bodies of Monkey and Rabbit, and the body of Tiger (who had died in died in Ox's arms after he killed her so that she wouldn't die from a wound given to her by rabbit and reanimate after her death). ]]

** Boar's father is implied to have been one, as he used brutal methods to train her into an effective fighter, would kill people in front of her to punish her for showing mercy to her opponents, and had no problem beating with her when she messed up. The anime plays this trope straight, with her describing him as "My father, who's discipline and training bordered on abuse." In addition, Boar's mother in the anime was overly concerned with making sure her daughter looked and acted refined due to her status as the future head of the family; Boar describes her as "My mother, who's care for, and reliance on, her daughters bordered on near obsession."

* AnAesop: Nobody really wins in war. [[WarIsHell No matter the prize, it's never really worth it.]] [[spoiler: Further lampshaded by Rat’s interactions with the duel’s host. There’s a ton of ways he can die AFTER the fighting stops. Also, the host even says outright, Rat is perfectly allowed to wish for more wishes, but for most people, regardless how many wishes they get, its still not enough.]]

''Juni Taisen: Zodiac War'' (lit. "The War of Twelve") is a Light Novel written by Creator/NisioIsin and illustrated by Hikaru Nakamura. An anime adaptation by Creator/{{Graphinica}} has aired for the 2017 Fall Season, with Nisio stablemate Akira Akatsuki drawing a manga adaptation of the book in September of the same year. Creator/{{Funimation}}'s Simuldub premiered on October 18th, 2017. Watch it [[https://www.funimation.com/shows/juni-taisen-zodiac-war/ here]].

* AnAesop: Nobody really wins in war. [[WarIsHell No matter the prize, it's never really worth it.]]

** Played with in regards to the Tatsumi brothers. While they are highly immoral and openly admit to caring more about themselves and money than each other, they are rather close and do appear to care about each other on some level. Dragon, in particular, is highly protective of his younger brother, despite how often he comes close to losing his patience with Snake's carelessness. It's played strait in the novel, which repeatedly and heavily touches on how strong their bond is; Dragon even flat-out admits to missing his brother after Snake is killed by Rabbit, but is openly grateful that his brother was killed off right away so that it wouldn't come down to them having to kill each other. The anime zig-zags this more, as Dragon and Snake appear to care about each other somewhat, but their closeness and Dragon's real feelings about his brother's death aren't shown; the anime even leaves out the emphasis that the book put on them being TogetherInDeath once their bodies are frozen and smashed (through, at least, the final episode shows a moment from a deleted timeline where Dragon is very much pissed off after watching his brother be killed by Ox).

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Rat wins, but both his ability to experience multiple timelines and his win have clearly negatively impacted his mental health. Trying to come up with a wish that wouldn't come with severe consequences eventually drives him to a near mental breakdown and, upon being approached by Duodecouple and ordered to decide, he panics and screams that he just wants to forget everything that happened during the The War. Duodecouple happily obliges the poor kid. Even though this is rather sad on it's own, as it is pretty much as if The War never happened (except for the deaths of its participants) and everything that everyone went through during it was totally meaningless (not to mention the people the dead have left behind now having to move on without them, and the fact that some of the warriors had no one and will likely be totally forgotten except for providing data for future Juni Taisen's), it's heavily implied that, given the nature of war and the morality involved receiving a wish for the death of eleven other human beings, it's the best choice that Rat could have made. In the end, he goes to school and goes to sleep as usual, but he's clearly content and at peace now that his memories have been wiped; he even has a genuinely happy expression on his face as he sleeps.]]

* UnderestimatingBadassery: The fatal flaw of ''almost every'' participant. They're so short sighted that they can't see that their opponent might have something up their sleeve, which invariably leads to their demise.

* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: As this is a battle royale tournament, inevitably characters are going to die off in the middle of their character development. [[spoiler:Boar had the first chapter to explain her motivations, and the anime even went as far to show her entire life up to that point, but she winds up dead at the end and becomes one of Rabbit's "allies".]]
* DysfunctionJunction: While it may not be obvious, each of the characters have clearly been shaped by all the fighting and killing they've experienced in one way or another. The most obvious one is Tiger, who's trauma was explicitly addressed; even though she got her life back together, it's pretty clear that she is just barely functioning as is still very depressed and traumatized.
** Rat is implied to be mentally damaged due to [[spoiler: having to repeatedly live through traumatic experiences multiple times due to his power and coming to the conclusion that all humans suck and that trying to do anything in life is inevitable pointless as a result.]] If you pay close attention to his behavior in the anime and his thoughts in the novel, it becomes pretty apparent that he is very messed up, and it is just further confirmed by the ending; [[spoiler: he ends up needing to wish his memories away to be able to continue functioning]].
** Chicken is very brutal and self-centered yet [[{{Dissonant serenity}} extremely cheerful]] due to having no memories or personality to speak of after being horrifically abused and then being adopted by the Niwa family so that they could exploit those traits and make her a mercenary.
** The Tatsumi brothers are explicitly stated by Rat and their novel profiles to be major [[{{StepfordSmiler}} Stepford Smilers]] who put on a silly and optimistic front with everyone except each other.
** Horse has a near crippling fear of losing or being seen as weak and is noted by Rat to likely have an inferiority complex.
** Rabbit is clearly deranged but, from the way the novel frames the narrative about his mental state, it is implied that he was conditioned to be a soldier focused solely on winning and that he has no personality or moral awareness of his own. Monkey may be optimistic, but it's clear that all the violence and destruction she has witnessed has had an impact on her.
** Boar is a sadistic psychopath, but it's implied that she became that way as a result of her upbringing in a prestigious family of mercenaries and that her parents were abusive.
** Sheep and Dog are both total asses who look down on everyone else and have a very low value of human life, yet they both somehow have family members who they clearly love deeply.
** Ox is one of the two decent humans in the whole story, yet Rat suspects that his personal philosophy and generally calm outlook are the result of some sort of mental unbalance as he thinks that it is nearly impossible for anyone to think the way Ox does (though this could also just be attributed to Rat's own pessimism).

* FanDisservice: You'd think a handsome, ripped man wearing nothing but a [[{{Stripperiffic}} skimpy bunny suit]] would be hot, wouldn't you? Not when he's mentally unhinged with constant dilated BlackEyesOfCrazy and very willing to chop people up to make "friends".

* ForegoneConclusion: Since the story is [[ItWasHisSled based on the original myth]] of the Eastern Zodiac, the basic outline of defeats is a given. It's only the ''how'' that is uncertain, with several cases of LoopHoleAbuse along the way. Rabbit's ability throws a wrench into things, resulting in deaths and defeats that play with the order of things. [[spoiler: Snake dies ''before'' the contest, but is destroyed in the proper order. And Rabbit dies in the proper order, but his corpse continues to terrorize the others until the very end]].

* RegularlyScheduledEvil: The Zodiac War happens every 12 years.

** Boar was so preoccupied thinking about a way to easily dispatch Rabbit that [[spoiler:it opened up a blind spot while she was mentally preoccupied, and she dies unceremoniously when Snake's corpse grabs her from behind, giving Rabbit an opening to plant a knife in her chest]].
** Dog thought Rooster wasn't worth much physically or mentally, but he needed a distraction for Rabbit, so he dopes her up on a strength inducing poison. [[spoiler:She immediately crushes his skull after getting the dosage.]]
** Rooster thought she could fight on par with Ox due to her newly enhanced strength. [[spoiler:He quickly stabs her through the eyes before she knew what hit her.]]
** Monkey thought she could easily subdue and restrain Rabbit because the latter was not a trained fighter. [[spoiler:She did not realize that Rabbit could use Snake's severed head as a camera to see his blind spots, and thus, Rabbit was able to stab her when she tried to get behind him to incapacitate him.]]
** Sheep witnessed Tiger sitting on a bench and downing mass amounts of alcohol, causing him to view as nothing more than an incoherent drunk and the weakest of the fighters. [[spoiler:He's forced to eat his words after she shreds him apart with her nails.]]
** Horse thought that Snake's corpse could not use its abilities and weaponry, and thus decides to ignore a warning from Rat that said corpse might come to the bank he was hiding in. [[spoiler:He meets his end when Snake's corpse, looking for Rat, torches the bank with Horse inside, causing him to suffocate from oxygen deprivation.]]
** Snake dismissed Rabbit as a threat due to his bizarre behavior, and thus let his guard down around the latter when he detects Monkey planting explosives underneath the floor. [[spoiler:When he tries to warn Dragon, it creates an opening for Rabbit to decapitate him.]]
** Dragon thought he was untouchable because he could fly beyond the detection of the other fighters, and focused all his attention on Snake's corpse fighting Ox and Tiger. [[spoiler:This caused him to forget that Rabbit and Monkey's corpses are probably nearby. As such, when he tries to ambush Ox and Tiger, he left himself open to be distracted by Monkey tossing Snake's head at him, giving Rabbit an opportunity to bisect him at the waist when he also gets thrown to Dragon's altitude by Monkey.]]
** Rabbit initially ''seems'' to play this straight when he confronts Ox and Tiger on his own despite their superior combat prowess and predictably gets hacked to pieces by them. However, he averts this [[spoiler:as he committed suicide just before Ox and Tiger manage to touch him, which enables [[{{Necromancy}} his power]] to work on his corpse, just as he had planned]].
** After hacking Rabbit to pieces, Tiger and Ox were so focused on their promised duel that they overlooked the fact Rabbit committed suicide just before confronting them. As such, [[spoiler:they did not notice that Rabbit could use his power on his own corpse until he managed to fatally wound Tiger by stabbing her InTheBack]].
** Ox was so focused on the reanimated Rabbit's [[HumanoidAbomination grotesque appearance]] that he did not realize the corpse's bizarre shape was designed to hide a reanimated Monkey inside itself. [[spoiler:He pays for this lapse when Monkey's corpse bursts out of Rabbit and manages to restrain him, necessitating a MercyKill from Rat to prevent him from being reanimated himself.]]
** Rat completely averts this trope due to [[{{Seer}} his ability]] giving him foreknowledge of what every other participant is capable of, and as such, knew to stay out of everyone else's way. [[spoiler:This ultimately wins him the Zodiac War.]]
* TheVerse: The light novel is a prequel to an earlier Nisio manga story titled "The One Wish That Must Be Granted, And The 99 Which Can Be Done Without", which the last episode of the anime is an adaptation of.

''Juuni Taisen'' (Lit. "The War of Twelve") is a Light Novel written by Creator/NisioIsin and illustrated by Hikaru Nakamura. An anime adaptation by Creator/{{Graphinica}} has aired for the 2017 Fall Season, with Nisio stablemate Akira Akatsuki drawing a manga adaptation of the book in September of the same year. Creator/{{Funimation}}'s Simuldub premiered on October 18th, 2017. Watch it [[https://www.funimation.com/shows/juni-taisen-zodiac-war/ here]].

The book received a sequel, ''Juuni Taisen vs. Juuni Taisen'', in December 2017.

!!Juuni Taisen provides examples of:

* CrapsackWorld: The World that the warriors of Juuni Taisen live in isn't an exactly happy place. There are so many conflicts here and there and even the most pure character, [[spoiler: Monkey]] can't save the conflict and have her ideals hammered down. Perhaps the Bartender of the 9th Episode said it the best, that fish won't live in a pure water.