I watched Jyu-Oh-Sei on Hulu. The reviews I read seem to put it down, primarily the ending, even though the consensus appear to be that it starts well and has potential. One reviewer's website in particular went on about how supposedly stupid JOS was but then went on to praise Wolf's Rain. Fucking Wolf's Rain. Granted, I liked Wolf's Rain. Didn't love it, but liked it. You'd think anyone that liked one series with a wonky ending would like another. If JOS was reminiscent of any other anime series, it's Wolf's Rain. JOS's even shorter at 11 eps, so it should get points for not wasting your time. Granted the female characters in JOS are pathetic jokes, which makes me wonder if whoever wrote the story has ever interacted with a woman before. All in all, it's not bad.
I revisited this series and didn't realize it's been fourteen years since I first watched this.
I feel like it's aged well. The Op and Ep are fantastic, I like the basic premise, world, and characters. It still feels like it crumbles apart in the end somewhat. Once the MC is an adult, it's pretty much a downhill ride.
I surprised myself at how much I actually liked Tiz (the female MC) in the beginning. By the ending, she's tiresome but on rewatch she's a livelier character in the first half or so. Even Chen improves a bit on rewatch. Karim's still fucking garbage though.
Edit: I forgot the add my comment about the ring system. In this show, people on the Beast Planet are divided up by skin color and put into groups called "rings." Blanc, Night, Sun, Ochre. Those in turn are sub-divided into gender. Like racist, sexist Harry Potter houses. But this system makes even less sense than Harry Potter houses do. The kicker being that what's the point of racial or gender segregation if people can just jump rings? The Blanc males have an Ochre female second. Ochre males have a pale dude with silver hair (who should be in Blanc) as their Top (leader) with a Sun female as a second. If this shit doesn't matter then why is it even here in the story? And then there's a bunch of ditched children. Which makes no fuckin' sense when you realize women are basically a protected class because there's so few women and they are necessary to make children. But then the children are ditched in the forest? What the fuck? Is this a riddle?
Granted, this shit wasn't even on my mind when I first watched this show. But the moment anyone (whether on their first viewing or on subsequent viewings) thinks it over, it makes no sense at all.
The ring names sound cool though. I could've seen the race angle if this was something actively enforced on the planet but it's not. Maybe this is all different in the manga or whatever.