Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton come together in King of Bandit Jing.

King of Bandit Jing. V.1-4.
TV series (13 episodes), 2002. Director: Hiroshi Watanabe. V.1, 4 episodes/100 minutes; v.2-4, 3 episodes/75 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: A.D.V. Films.

The popularity of most anime titles depends upon an interesting story and charismatic characters. Jing’s allure is based upon its surrealistic art design and humor. The original manga, Oh Dorobo Jing, by Yuichi Kumakura has appeared since 1995. This anime TV version by Studio Deen was broadcast as 13 weekly episodes from May 15 through August 14, 2002.

The publicity and many reviews compare Jing to Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, but it seems more like a collision between the Dr. Seuss movie The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, with juvenile role-reversed versions of Don Juan and Leporello wandering through the bizarre fantasy world of cities each based upon paintings, music, medieval masked balls, clockwork and other obsessive attributes of culture. Jing is a notorious “Bandit King” who can steal anything, although he only goes after treasures owned by greedy robber barons or aristocrats who stole them in the first place. The corrupt local politicians and nobility quake in fear at his name and surround their palaces with armed guards, but nobody ever connects the sinister legend with the wholesome-looking 12- to 14-year-old boy who strolls into town with his sidekick, the funny-animal crow Kir. (The publicity says albatross, but Kir is the most crow-looking albatross you ever saw.) Jing is so handsome that the local teen girls all fall for him, but he politely brushes them off; it is Kir who goes after them with comically exaggerated romantic passion. It is quickly obvious that Jing’s obsession is to prove himself the world’s best thief, and to dispense Robin Hood-type justice; he usually gives away the treasures to their rightful owners or to the needy at the end of each adventure. Kir, who is a typical Renaissance-literature sardonic loyal manservant, gets all the best lines; and the writing is very witty.

Locales and characters are often part of the burlesque surrealism, such as violinists who use their moustaches as their strings, artists who use their daughter’s body as their canvas, and a musical city where the sidewalks are giant piano keyboards (which even juvenile viewers should realize would actually create discord rather than harmony). Most of the supporting characters have liquor-based names: Mayor Cognac, King Cointreau, the greedy art-collector Drambuie and his henchman Rum, the nine-tailed demon-fox Sherry, three characters named Angostura, Lemon and Stir, and girls with names like Fino and Vermouth. You get the impression that the animation staff had lots of fun working in visual references to surrealistic artists like Dali in both the settings and the costume design. The individual episodes are all variations of the same formula, but Jing is clearly not supposed to be about plot or character development. If you like fine-art humor with a general atmosphere of Italian comic opera, give Jing a try.