Fushigi Yûgi

Original Title: ふしぎ遊戯
Romanized: Fushigi Yuugi
Literal: Mysterious Game

Plot Synopsis

Miyaka is a more or less average junior high school student, trying to do well enough on the entrance exams to join her top-of-the-class best friend Yui at a prestigious school. But when the two of them wander into a restricted part of the library and stumble upon an ancient book called "The Universe of the Four Gods," everything changes. You see, this book is actually a portal into ancient China, and it's story--the story of the Priestess of Suzaku and her quest to gather a group of seven holy warriors and bring peace to the land--is about to be written by none other than Miyaka. Thrust into another reality and faced with a series of challenges and the affections of more than one of the seven warriors she's trying to gather, Miyaka will have to find the strength to live up to her new role. And worst of all, Yui's trip into the story won't be as kind as Miyaka's...

Quick Review

Rating: 3 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2005-11-11

Fushigi Yuugi takes an entirely generic girls' anime storyline and gives it a bit of a schizophrenic twist, swinging violently between silly comedy and various degrees of tragedy almost constantly. On the whole, despite being unevenly put together, emotionally confusing, a little too soap-operatic, and rather obviously laid out, there is enough humor to make it enjoyable, enough dramatic twists and relatively believable emotional wrangling to make it interesting, a fair amount of reserve showed on the romantic end of the story, and strong enough characters (and performances) to hold it all together. The visuals aren't much, and the ancient China of the series looks like a stock fantasy locale, but neither is a huge issue.

It's a decidedly uneven series that's definitely most likely to appeal to younger teen girls (its target audience), but it offers enough interesting situations and occasionally involving storytelling to make it stand out in the genre as at least reasonably interesting to a broader audience.

US DVD Review

The two DVD sets, which cover the first and second season (26 episodes each) of this series are fine productions, among the best Pioneer had done at the time. To start with, they're packaged slickly in Pioneer's early for sets--a clear slipcase containing a (very nice looking) fold out case holding four discs and an informational booklet that provides a character rundown and one-sentence episode synopses. The discs themselves have very nice video, so-so audio (the Japanese digital tracks aren't terribly even, switching between a poorly separated 4-channel track and a 2-channel one), and simple menus providing access to the expected features and a few goodies. The on-disc extras include stills, character sketches, text interviews with the creator and director of the series, and (rather surprising coming from Pioneer) some translation/cultural notes on each disc. Episodes are broken up into opening, first half, second half, and end theme.

Content Guide

A few mature themes and an occasional bit of violence or nudity make for about 13-up on the whole, though many episodes are suitable for more ore less all ages.

Violence: 3 - The violence is sparse, but serious when it occurs.

Nudity: 1 - Brief and non-detailed.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - Generally mature themes, and some non-explicit physical activity.

Language: 1 - Fairly mild.

Notes and Trivia

Fushigi Yuugi (or "Yûgi", a prettier way of writing the long vowel) is based on (and parallels in story) a long-running shoujo comic book series of the same name by Yuu Watase (available from VIZ), though the creator didn't have a particularly direct hand in this production.

Availability

Available in the US from Geneon on two hybrid DVD box sets as well as a re-release on 8 individual volumes. Was originally available on 16 dubbed or subtitled VHS volumes.

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