Wild Cardz

Original Title: JaJa馬!カルテット
Romanized: Jaja Uma! Quartet
Literal: Shrew Quartet

Plot Synopsis

The Card Kingdom is protected by it's four sworn guardians, the Crown Knights, aka the Jaja Uma Quartet. They are: Jo Diamonds, who can run and jump like nobody else, Casa Clubs, a martial arts expert with amazing senses, Coco Hearts, the cute psycho-magic master, and Sunday Spades, the team's leader and possessor of the mysterious and ultimately powerful trump power. These four young lasses use their card magic to defend the country from whatever evil happens its way, but this time the enemy isn't a criminal or even a supervillain--it's a giant chess piece. When a huge white pawn takes out a bridge and then starts moving in on the city, the only thing standing in it's way are the Knights. Things go from bad to worse when a second indestructible chess piece shows up, along with some lady who thinks she's an agent of God, a sleazy black marketer, and a bunch of nasty ninjas. Then there's the dashing Joker...

Quick Review

Rating: 2 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-06-28

Wild Cardz is standard all-girl hyperactive action anime in its purest form, with a board game theme. The plot is nonsensical and basically nonexistent, but the action is high-speed and continuous, and it's seasoned with superpowered girls in short skirts, ninjas, and chipper banter. What the animation lacks in quality or creativity, it makes up for in sheer volume of action, and there are a few bits of imagination in the backgrounds and magic. The Japanese acting is also reasonably funny, even if all four of the main characters sound confusingly similar. The dub, on the other hand, has abysmally bad dialogue, so it's hard to even tell if the acting is any good.

Wild Cardz is no masterpiece, but I enjoyed the ride. If 50 minutes loaded with cute girls and turbocharged action sounds like fun, you probably will too.

US DVD Review

Nothing special, but a solid production. The video transfer is acceptable and the Japanese and English stereo soundtracks sound fine. The English "subtitle" track, however, is a lot closer to the dub script than the actual Japanese dialogue. The only special feature is some clips highlighting the voice talents of the actors (in both English and Japanese, for a change).

Content Guide

A very brief flash of nudity and some non-graphic mass havoc along with a few small bits of off-color humor account for USM's 13-up suggestion, though really, 10-up is reasonable.

Violence: 2 - Lots of destruction, but little or no blood and death.

Nudity: 1 - Short skirts and a very brief flash or two of skin.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - A few non-G-rated jokes and comments.

Language: 0 - Nuthin'.

Notes and Trivia

In the original title, the linguistically-mixed "Jaja Uma" is an moderately insulting (though not particularly crude) Japanese expression for a headstrong or unmanageable woman, roughly equivalent to the rather old-fashioned "shrew." The Japanese title of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, "Jaja Uma Narashi," uses the phrase, though it doesn't appear that the title of this series is a reference to it.

Availability

Available in the US from US Manga Corps on a budget-priced hybrid DVD. Was also available on a single subtitled or dubbed VHS volume, both now out of print.

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