Some anime franchises seem to be positively indestructible, and we've touched on many of those here, but there are others that were briefly a big deal, only to fade into relative obscurity. It's one of the latter we're considering this time around, fantasy show El-Hazard, which managed to stretch to three OVAs and a TV series within a brief five years, only to vanish and never return. What went wrong? Did El-Hazard suffer a terrible injustice or get what was coming to it? And why am I reviewing a TV series again when I swore that was the one thing I wouldn't do in these reviews?
The answers await! Let's take a look at El-Hazard: The Magnificent World, El-Hazard: The Wanderers, El-Hazard The Magnificent World 2, and El-Hazard: The Alternative World...
El-Hazard: The Magnificent World, 1995, dir: Hiroki HayashiWhat's most striking about El-Hazard: The Magnificent World, some twenty-five years on from its original release, is how fresh it feels. More than almost any anime from the decade I could point to, it's the little details that give away its age rather than the big picture: the colour palette, aspects of the designs, and such. But not its plot, or its world-building, or its attitudes, heck no; in those terms, it's on par with anything released in the subsequent two decades and change.
Our protagonist is Makoto Mizuhara, who early on encounters a mysterious woman in the basement of his school and finds himself transported, along with his teacher Fujisawa, his self-appointed arch rival Katsuhiko, and Katsuhiko's sister Nanami, to the land of El-Hazard - a fantastical, somewhat Middle East-inspired place of magic and science, poised on the brink of a war that of course our cast find themselves drawn into, with the mean-spirited, slightly mad Katsuhiko particularly eager to take sides.
So far, so half the fantasy stories of the last century or so, and it's in its specifics that El-Hazard the show begins to shine. A big part of the reason why, it's fair to say, is the presence of Hiroki Hayashi at the helm, the director also responsible for the first Tenchi Muyo OVA, a work that was similarly saved from being hackneyed by an unusual degree of inventiveness. The Magnificent World, if anything, leans farther in that direction: it's positively bloated with ideas. And whether it's sentient feline armour or militant bug people or clockwork goddesses or Fujisawa's splendid superpower, which sees him gaining in strength the soberer he gets, there are so many fun notions floating around that the show never seems stale. Along with that, every character's a distinctive creation, and most are intriguing enough to warrant more screen time than they get, even when they're present basically as a joke. And in many ways, they belong more to the twenty-first century than the twentieth; Makoto is forced to spend a good portion of the running time disguised as a woman, and there are a couple of openly gay characters, but if the show sometimes finds humour in those aspects, it's never mocking. Moreover, as with Tenchi, hints of harem anime conventions largely fall apart in the face of how satisfyingly written the female cast are. Sure, a couple of them have crushes on Makoto, but there's no bitchy rivalry and, thank goodness, not a single cooking contest.
All of that together would undoubtedly make for a decent show, but what pushes El-Hazard: The Magnificent World into the stratosphere is how gorgeous it looks. It really is at the top end of what an OVA could be in 1995, and many, many scenes would look completely appropriate on a cinema screen: indeed, much of the effects work, the marvellously evocative character designs, and the attention to detail are top notch by any standard. Because it is an OVA, the best is saved for the opening and closing episodes, the latter of which is particularly stunning, but never does it look remotely sloppy.
So with well-realised characters in an imaginative world wrapped up in some of the finest animation and design work the decade had to offer, we've got to be looking at a classic, right? Yes, I think we are, but I'd be remiss in not offering up a couple of caveats. One is that I'm not sure the OVA format does the material many favours; particularly toward the middle, I found myself wanting it to be either less episodic or less focused on its main arc, and it's easy to imagine this same material cut into two feature films and being better for it. But more importantly, while it's superbly told and laced with brilliant details, it's fair to say that the core story is The Magnificent World's least exciting aspect. This matters less than you might imagine: a solid story told superlatively is still pretty damn great, and the last forty-five minutes are so near to flawless that it seems petty to complain. Still, it's enough to keep one of my new favourite shows out of that handful of works I'd call basically perfect.
According to its Wikipedia article, the TV series El-Hazard: The Wanderers is a re-imagining of the Magnificent World OVA, and according to the dates both there and on the IMDB, that's clearly impossible, because they came out at the same time. But if we assume that, due perhaps to some sort of temporal loop of the sort El-Hazard itself delights in, this is true, it makes a degree of sense. If there was one criticism that could be applied to The Magnificent World, it's that its structure didn't quite fit its format, leaving aspects feeling rushed or detached from the grander narrative. And while the running time was sturdy enough for an OVA, you can easily see how the breathing room of twenty-six episodes might address those issues, while allowing the creators to dig deeper into their fascinating cast and world.
So it's a surprise that this isn't at all what El-Hazard: The Wanderers decides to do, and that, if anything, it strips away more than it adds. Though that isn't apparent for the first couple of episodes, which greatly decompress a beginning that's essentially identical to what we've seen before. This time, it's a scientific experiment Makota's been preparing that catapults him, Mr. Fujisawa, Nanami, and Katsuhiko to the magical world of El-Hazard, and Katsuhiko's spiteful interference with said experiment that's the catalyst, but we still wind up with Makota and Fujisawa in the land of Roshtaria and Katsuhiko joining that kingdom's enemies, the insectile Bugrom, while Nanami is stuck having her own adventures for a while.
Soon, however, changes become apparent. Roshtaria's princess Rune Venus is now Makota's primary love interest, and her openly gay sister Fatora has vanished from existence; the whole plot with Makota having to impersonate Fatora is likewise gone. Indeed, so is anything that might have been considered remotely radical, controversial, or particularly adult about The Magnificent World, to be replaced by an emphasis on light comedy and standalone stories. Amazingly, The Wanderers somehow manages to have less plot than its predecessor, and what there is can largely be boiled down to "Katsuhiko and the Bugrom make life difficult for the Roshtarians and Makota and his allies repeatedly foil them." It's late in the game when the Eye of God, so vital to the OVA, shows up, and only toward the very end when anything significant happens in relation to it, and though the principle theme in the first half is of Makoto and Fujisawa trying to get back to Earth, that quest loses steam fairly quickly.
Of course, a TV series not being the OVA it's drawing on isn't a crime, and if none of the changes are improvements, none of them are ruinous either, even if the removal of Fatora and the almost entire straightwashing of her partner Alielle feels depressingly censorious. This version of Makota is more interesting and proactive, the more comedic take on certain characters, notably Ifurita, frequently pays off, and a lot of the standalone episodes are plenty of fun. The Wanderers rarely sparkles - all else aside, the thoroughly middling TV animation sees to that - but it's generally pleasant and amusing, the sort of show that's easy to chill to for a fairly mindless twenty-two minutes. I can't imagine anyone preferring this to The Magnificent World, and I doubt I'll ever return to it as I'm sure I will the OVA, but as an opportunity to hang out with some of the cast at greater length and in more laid-back surroundings, I can't say I resented my time with it.
El-Hazard The Magnificent World 2, 1997, dir: Yoshiaki IwasakiYou remember those straight-to-video sequels Disney used to bang out with horrifying regularity? They were calculated to look just enough like proper movies, and indeed like the proper movies they were follow-ups to, that undiscriminating parents would pick them up for their undiscriminating children. But though the character designs would be basically the same, the animators would be guaranteed to have trouble sticking to them, since they were operating with a fraction of the talent and an even smaller fraction of the budget. And though occasionally they'd have the virtue of being hilariously weird - Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time, anyone? - they could be guaranteed not to add a damn thing to the movies they were supposed to be expanding on, most of which left no real room for sequels. The best that could be hoped would be that they didn't actively sabotage their predecessors.
El-Hazard: The Magnificent World 2 is what would happen if Disney had produced a straight-to-video sequel to the original El-Hazard OVA. From its eye-wateringly crappy animation to its utter lack of inspiration to its failure to enhance a story that was perfectly whole in its own right, no other comparison fits so well. Anime, after all, has never had quite the cash-in culture that's plagued Western cinema practically since its inception; there's no guarantee that a sequel will be cheaper than the original, or for that matter that it won't merrily chuck out half of what was crucial to the original's success. Which makes it all the more striking both that The Magnificent World 2 exists - that impossibly lazy title says it all - and that anyone felt it a worthy continuation of one of the most lavish OVAs of the nineties. Remember how I said there isn't a moment's sloppiness anywhere in The Magnificent World? Well, here the opposite is true: aside from some decent effects shots and a couple of solid action sequences, there isn't a frame without its flaws. And sometimes those flaws are appalling and unmissable; it seems no-one on the staff, for example, understood what eyes look like at a distance. If you ever wanted to teach someone the differences between stunningly realised animation and cheap, shabby animation then - well, go with those Disney straight to video films, I guess, but if none are to hand, this would be the ideal substitute.
The problem, I suspect, was that El-Hazard: The Magnificent World was a little too perfect, leaving no conspicuous threads that begged to be tied up and so no meaningful direction in which a series could develop. What we get instead is a tale that almost has to trample on the toes of its predecessor, making explicit what was gently implied, digging into aspects of the world-building that were more satisfying left vague, and outright ruining at least three of the characters, either by bringing them back in the most depressing ways imaginable or misrepresenting them so badly that they're unrecognisable. Even if that weren't the case, its reliance on outrageous coincidence and joyless comedy to get its ducks in a row, in service of a plot that couldn't dive harder into anime tropes if it tried, would make it shockingly lacklustre. Take this same material wrapped up in this same animation but peel away the El-Hazard brand and it would be middling at best, but try and present it as a meaningful follow-up to one of the finest OVAs of the decade and the result is a hard slap in the face.
The Alternative World, the final iteration of the El-Hazard franchise, certainly makes a promising initial impression. There's the sense, wholly absent from the second OVA and only there in part in the TV series, that the creators understood what made the original so successful. One vital point was that it wasn't so much the world of El-Hazard that was special, more its overt strangeness and the way the viewer was kept at a certain remove; here was a setting that never stopped feeling unfamiliar, and a steady enough stream of concepts and locations was thrown in for that alienation to carry through until the end. On the other hand, with so much hand-waving and vagueness in regards to the world-building, there was more need than ever for a strong cast to focus on, and The Magnificent World pulled that off too, while both the setting and characters benefited from being brought to life with such top-tier animation.
With The Alternative World, the creative team had sense enough to realise they couldn't pull the same trick twice: especially with the series being a thing by this point, there was little to be done that could bring back the exciting strangeness that made El-Hazard such an appealing setting. So instead, they cheated: a magical gizmo shunts the core cast, plus a couple of new members, into a new setting, Creteria, with its own distinct and notably more futuristic vibe. Not only that, they find themselves scattered into small groups that are perfectly suited for everyone to go off and have their own adventures before coming together in time for the finale. And while none of this looks anywhere near as good as the original OVA, it's a step up from where we've been since: the animation is crisp and polished, and if there aren't a great many wow moments, it's at least comfortable on the eyes.
Sadly, for all that The Alternative World gets off to a good start, that's not quite enough to carry it through to an equally good ending. Mostly the problem is the tale it's telling, which turns out not to be terribly interesting, and also falls back on rehashing a crucial aspect of the original in a manner that undoes much of the good work in stepping away from El-Hazard in the first place. That would be less hurtful if it wasn't happening at the expense of the various subplots, which largely fizzle out, having served as a means to show us the sights of Creteria and give a sense of how the place works. There's a big difference between keeping your cast busy and giving them meaningful plots to advance through, and by its end, The Alternative World has done lots of the former and too little of the latter.
With that said, even if this last gasp of the El-Hazard franchise isn't a perfect return to its lofty beginnings, it's probably the most successful attempt at reproducing them, and so the sequel that feels least dispensable. There's definite fun to be had in hanging out with these characters again, especially in the first half, when that means watching them come to grips with a new environment and unpredictable challenges, be it Fatora indulging in a castle break-in that feels like Ico played for laughs or Jinnai falling foul of a version of the Bugrom very different to the ones he's accustomed to. Therefore, even if the best material is bunched in those opening chapters, at least there is good material, and if you're fond enough of the El-Hazard gang to overlook a few wider failings, that's enough to make it worth seeking out.
-oOo-
Sad to say, it's fairly evident why El-Hazard didn't have a longer innings: only the original OVA was truly special. The TV series was fine and The Alternative World was somewhat better than that, but neither felt like a necessary extension of what had come before, and neither did a good job of opening up the El-Hazard universe in ways that would make the notion of further sequels appealing.
On the plus side for the purposes of this reviewing exercise, at least we have a clear result: The Magnificent World is brilliant and you absolutely ought to try and find a copy, but that's as far as you need to go. After that, if you're really in love with the characters, The Alternative World is worth a crack: go in with lowered expectations and there's plenty of engaging stuff there. And just for goodness' sake don't get mixed up and inadvertently watch The Magnificent World 2 instead!
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