Anime Review
Synopsis
The series began as a seven episode OVA series entitled, El-Hazard: The Magnificent World. It was popular enough to be remade into a twenty-six episode TV series, The Wanderers, set in an alternate timeline. A second four episode OVA series, El-Hazard: The Magnificent World 2 and El-Hazard: The Alternative World, a thirteen episode TV series with a follow-up special later released on laserdisc, are continuations of the original OVA timeline. There is also a Sega Saturn visual novel videogame inspired from the TV series, with several possible endings.
The story focuses on four people from our world (High school students Makoto Mizuhara, Katsuhiko Jinnai and Nanami Jinnai, and History teacher Masamichi Fujisawa) who are mysteriously transported to the fantastical world of El-Hazard, which is threatened with a massive war between the human nations on one side and the insectoid Bugrom tribe on the other. To add further complexity, the quartet's transportation has a side effect, in that each of them gains a unique special ability. For instance, Katsuhiko gains the power to communicate with the Bugrom, and subsequently uses his power to become the Bugrom's military leader while his sister can see through illusions. The hard-drinking, chain-smoking Fujisawa, on the other hand, gains superhuman strength and athletic ability, but only when he's sober. Makoto's power comes much later but he learns he can control the ancient technology of that world which range from minor gadgets to the most powerful weapons.
The central conflict in El-Hazard: The Magnificent World focuses on Makoto, who along with Nanami, Mr. Fujisawa and human residents of El-Hazard fight against Jinnai's conquest, but other, more sinister machinations lie below the surface. The Wanderers is a simplified version of the original OVA storyline, stretched to twenty-six episodes and eliminates or alters several of the OVA's major characters. El-Hazard: The Magnificent World 2 sees Makoto and the others continuing on in their lives in El-Hazard, when Mr. Fujisawa suddenly runs off, having gotten cold feet the night before his wedding. El-Hazard: The Alternative World follows up with the actual wedding, but the cast is then thrust into another world for a second time; the militant world of Creteria.
Primary Characters
Makoto Mizuhara
Voiced by: Tetsuya Iwanaga (Japanese), Eddie Frierson (English)
Seventeen-year-old Makoto Mizuhara (水原 誠 Mizuhara Makoto) is the protagonist of the story. At the beginning of the first OVA, Makoto is to testify against Student Body President Katsuhiko Jinnai in an impeachment hearing. After school, Jinnai attacks him in an effort to prevent his testimony when time comes to a standstill. Making his way down to some ancient ruins underneath the school, Makoto discovers a mysterious, beautiful woman who sends him and the others still on the school campus to the world of El-Hazard.
Once in El-Hazard, Makoto meets up with his history teacher, Masamichi Fujisawa, and after a brief encounter with some Bugrom soldiers, the two rescue Princess Rune Venus of Roshtaria, who had been traveling to learn news of her missing sister, Fatora. As it turns out, Makoto bears an uncanny resemblance to the missing princess, and he's reluctantly recruited into impersonating Fatora. He goes along with the plan, hoping that doing so will allow him access to the Eye of God, which might have the power to return him to Earth. Over the course of the series, he becomes enthralled with Ifurita, and is oblivious to the advances that Nanami and Shayla-Shayla both make on him.
After Ifurita is catapulted far away into time and space, Makoto vows to uncover the secrets of the Eye of God in order to come rescue her. It apparently takes him several years to do so; when Makoto appears before Ifurita at the end of the first OVA, he seems to be in his late teens or early twenties.
Makoto's journey from Earth to El-Hazard endowed him with a special ability to activate and link with ancient devices of a lost El-Hazard civilization, including the Eye of God and the Demon God, Ifurita.
Makoto is notable as one of the few "harem anime" protagonists who actually becomes romantically involved with one of his admirers. Additionally, in the first OVA he showcases a certain strength of character, also notable among weak-willed, sturdy-as-wet-cardboard harem leaders. (Later series stripped him of these traits, returning him to "standard issue".)
Makoto in The Wanderers
Although considered more of an everyman in the OVA series, The Wanderers paints Makoto as more scientifically gifted. In the series, he creates a machine in the science lab to be on display at the start of the school's cultural festival, but when Jinnai sabotages it, it creates a portal to El-Hazard, pulling them in along with Nanami and Fujisawa. Because Fatora is not a part of The Wanderers, Makoto is never forced into impersonating her.
[edit] Masamichi Fujisawa
Voiced by: Kouji Ishii (Japanese), Michael Sorich (English)
Masamichi Fujisawa (藤沢 真理 Fujisawa Masamichi) is the alcoholic, chain-smoking history teacher at Shinonome High School.
Fujisawa is not widely respected among his students and has a very strong sense of school spirit. When he crosses over into El-Hazard, he gains super strength and athletic ability; he loses these powers if he has consumed too much alcohol. Also, if he does not smoke for a period of time, the stress amplifies his powers exponentially. Despite his vices, he is a good-hearted individual. He also gains the romantic interest of Miz Mishtal, but he is not quite sure how to handle the attention at first.
Fujisawa in The Wanderers
Fujisawa does not change very much, but his love of mountain climbing is emphasized a bit more than it is in the first OVA series. Also, he is not a smoker in this series and thus his "super" state doesn't exist.
[edit] Katsuhiko Jinnai
Voiced by: Ryotaro Okiayu (Japanese), R. Martin Klein (English)
Katsuhiko Jinnai (陣内 克彦 Jinnai Katsuhiko), manages to win the Student Body Presidential election by promising student government funds to campus clubs and organizations that voted for him.
When Makoto catches wind of this and plans are made for him to testify against Jinnai (who is called "Jinnai" by everyone except his sister), the egocentric, power-hungry and soon-to-be-impeached Student Body President attempts to thwart the process by attacking Makoto, intending to keep him tied up until a technicality in the bylaws prevents him from being thrown out of office. Before he can execute his plan, however, he's sent to El-Hazard, and once there encounters the Bugrom, a race of human-sized insectoid beings ruled by Queen Diva.
Jinnai's power granted to him by the trip is the ability to communicate with the Bugrom, allowing him to become their military commander under their belief that he is the messenger from God sent to lead the Bugrom to victory. A skilled tactician, he is able to reorganize the Bugrom forces into an effective army and comes close to conquering El-Hazard.
Although Jinnai is a power-hungry egomaniac, he's not without some level of humanity. When Galus attempts to stop Makoto and the others from halting the Eye of God's apocalyptic malfunction, he takes the leader of the Phantom Tribe by surprise with the help of a Bugrom soldier. Although Jinnai effectively comes to Makoto and Nanami's rescue, he does so more for the fact that a "true ruler doesn't destroy the land he wishes to conquer". Jinnai has a very distinctive laugh.
Jinnai suffers from an obsession with Makoto that borders of the psychotic. Over the course of both series, he consistently blames Makoto for essentially every single failure and disappointment he experiences. His sense of his own history is a montage of misfortune, the chief architect of which is Makoto. Though generally megalomaniacal, one of his primary motivations in gaining power is to subsequently gain the ability to best, or, even kill him.
Perhaps due to his megalomania, Jinnai has tremendous confidence in himself and his abilities. He allows little to faze or depress him, and is quick to bounce back from any setbacks. Even at the end of the original OAV series, where the Bugrom empire has apparently been reduced to himself, Diva and his personal squad, he never falters and instead vows that they will find the ideal place to construct a new colony, building themselves back up into a powerful force. In El Hazard 2, Jinnai discovers a mesa deep in the desert where he declares that they shall settle, while in The Alternative World the colony begins to be repopulated- firstly by bands of surviving Bugrom, then at the climax, where Diva takes the shocked Jinnai as her mate so that she can breed new Bugrom.
Jinnai in The Wanderers
Jinnai does not change much in the transition from OVA to TV series, either, but he seems to treat Ifurita with more care. Although he's threatened with impeachment from his position as Student Body President at the beginning of the series and Makoto plays no direct role in the trial, he is paranoid that Makoto will replace him as president once he is kicked out of office.
Additionally, Jinnai reveals a softer side at the end of the series, showing a certain fatherly affection towards Ifurita after she stops the Eye of God from plowing into Roshtaria.
[edit] Nanami Jinnai
Voiced by: Rio Natsuki (Japanese), Lia Sargent (English)
Nanami Jinnai (陣内 菜々美 Jinnai Nanami) is Jinnai's younger sister by about a year.
Nanami is highly independent and strongly entrepreneurial, going so far as to take payment from the high school's Broadcast Club to grill her brother over the fraudulent election results on campus television. When she's sent to El-Hazard, she's initially alone and is forced to take on a waitressing job to earn enough money to travel, but she eventually meets up with Makoto and Fujisawa at the Fountain of Arliman, where she is able to start a small business selling boxed lunches to the visiting priestesses. Nanami has feelings for Makoto, but she's never really had the opportunity to talk about a relationship with him.
Nanami's power gained upon entering El-Hazard is to see through the illusions of the Phantom Tribe, making her a viable defense against the greatest threat in the first OVA series.
Nanami in The Wanderers
The Phantom Tribe does not exist in the alternate timeline, and so instead Nanami has the same power to communicate with the Bugrom as her brother. Her past relationship with Makoto is also explored a bit more in detail, and she becomes good friends with Princess Rune Venus. As well, in the last episode of the TV series, Alielle describes Nanami and herself as "special friends", lending their relationship a certain homoerotic subtext, though this seems to be more along the lines of a big sister relationship.
[edit] Ifurita
Ifurita (イフリータ Ifurīta; spelled "Ifreeta" in the Etranger Tour Guide; possibly a reference to an ifritah, or female ifrit) is an ancient Demon God of El-Hazard. Although the specifics of her origin are never explained, it appears as though she is a biological machine designed to look like a beautiful young woman. When Makoto first encounters her under the high school, she seems to know him for some reason, and treats him warmly. However, later in the series, when Makoto and the others reach the Island of the Demon God, he discovers her still asleep, as she had been for centuries. Jinnai uses the Power Key Staff to wind-up Ifurita, awakening her, and because he is the master of the staff, she emotionlessly does his bidding. She has the destructive power to level entire cities, and because of her status as an ancient weapon she has knowledge of all the "ancient techniques" that the priestesses use and can therefore duplicate any attack or technique that's used against her, truly making her the most fearsome weapon in all of El-Hazard.
On occasions when Makoto's power allows his mind to synchronize with hers, she becomes aware that he somehow knows her, despite having never met him before. This leads her to question her existence as a weapon. When Makoto eventually disables the obedience circuit within her, she becomes free of Jinnai's control. At the end of the first OVA series, the Eye of God goes out of control, and she gives Makoto her staff, allowing her to tap into his power to control ancient technology. In stopping the Eye of God, Ifurita is thrown through time and space for thousands of years, eventually coming to rest under what would later become the site of Shinonome High School. After sending Makoto and the others to El-Hazard, she wanders the school, taking in memories that Makoto had passed along to her, and sadly leans against the fence outside the school as the sun rises, when a slightly older looking Makoto appears. After ten thousand years, the two are reunited with the key to recharge her and the ability to return to El-Hazard together.
In El-Hazard 2, there is another, identical looking Ifurita, belonging to a man called Yuba, another dimension-traveller who shares Makoto's powers.
Ifurita in The Wanderers
Ifurita underwent a complete makeover in The Wanderers. The tragic, mystifying and fearsome Demon God was given a totally different personality, making her a bubble-headed ditz along the lines of Mihoshi from Tenchi Muyo! She also underwent a major physical redesign, changing costume, hair and eye color, and facial shape, so that television Ifurita resembles a Japanese high school girl more than a woman from an exotic land. In The Wanderers, she does not become a love interest of Makoto's at all, but stays with Jinnai, cheerfully following his orders – and trying not to screw them up; where OVA Ifurita is lethally capable and efficient, the television version is not only shatterbrained but clumsy and incompetent. Unlike in the OVA, in which she stops the Eye of God after it goes out of control, this version of Ifurita is actually the key that controls the Eye and its destructive power.
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