Most animes run in ‘seasons’ of 12, 13, 24 or 26 episodes. All of those numbers make sense to me. 13 episodes (or weeks) are one-quarter of a year. I accept 12 episodes, as you will lose a week to some holiday special (“The Death Note Christmas Show”. I’d love to see that one, especially when Light and L sing carols together). I would even accept 50 episodes (that’s almost a whole year, with one week taken up by eating lots of turkey and another one for a break away from the murder and mayhem, to reflect upon this most joyous of times. Then, we can return to the murder and mayhem.)

It’s the shorter ones that have me scratching my head. Sometimes it works (“Planet of the Beast King”, 11 episodes), sometimes it doesn’t (“Golden Boy”, six episodes, somewhat self-indulgent), but there are some that are so short, do they even count as a show? What is it that they get such a miniscule amount of shows? Was there a budget crisis? A test run? Some kind of a bet? Nothing else to do?

The first one in question is “Jungle de Ikou” (or “Jungre de Ikou”; I’ve seen both spellings). Now it gets billed as an OVA, but don’t you have to have a series BEFORE you have an OVA? Is there some kind of anime rule or regulation I missed on this?

The story is fairly simple (more…)