12 of 12 · branch Hai (亥) · element Water · last Pig year 2019
亥时 is the deep of night and the last of the twelve windows, so the Pig closes the cycle. In the ranking story it arrived late because it stopped to eat and then fell asleep. That is read not as laziness but as contentment: the Pig is the animal associated with enough, and with not wanting more than enough.
The branch repeats every twelve years, but the stem in front of it moves by two each time, so the element cycles through all five. That is why two Pig years can feel quite different.
The table above treats a whole Gregorian year as one animal, which is true for most of it. January and early February are the exception: the zodiac turns at the Start of Spring (around 4 February, exact to the minute) in divination, and at the lunar new year in festival usage. Between those two dates the animal is still the previous one.
Pick the exact date in the zodiac lookup, or open this year’s New Year date to see where the line falls.