Fushigi Yugi - The Mysterious Play: Box Set 1 - Suzaku (ep. 1-26)
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DVD details
Actor: Fushigi Yugi-Mysterious PlayDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Animated, Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 650 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-12-14
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Geneon [Pioneer]
DVD Reviews of Fushigi Yugi - The Mysterious Play: Box Set 1 - Suzaku (ep. 1-26)
DVD Review: Anime
Summary: 2 Stars
The storyline gets a little dark and the characters are more extreme than usual. This makes for a somewhat grating flick. DVD Review: Switch heroines and this would be pretty good
Summary: 3 Stars
Overall, I was pleased with this purchase. However, this is the first series where I actively wished bodily harm/death on the main character. LOL Miaka is possibly the most annoying heroine I've seen in anime. The lightning speed in which she falls in love with Tomahome is a major glitch in the storyline. I found myself rooting for Hotohori to win Miaka's affection over Tomahome the entire story. Hotohori was handsome, charming, vain, and honorable and oh yeah, the King. His vanity was hilarious. For some reason, he also fell in love with the whiny, average-looking, Miaka, who happen to already be in love with someone else. He should have had more on-screen time. Chichiri was engaging and funny. Nuriko was the most entertaining character, by far. Her/His humor helped the story along, even during highly irritable Miaka/Tomahoma love/yell fests. I watched the first and second box sets back to back, so I have the overall picture. The story itself could use some vast rewriting, but one cannot dispute the overall entertainment factor of Fushigi Yugi. I give this 3 1/2 stars only due to the ridiculousness of Miaka's and Tomahome's 'love'. Besides that, the story was actually pretty good.DVD Review: a great gift
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this as a gift for my girlfriend. it was the perfect gift. the product was in great condition. DVD Review: Remarkable!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the deepest anime I have ever seen. The artwork is clean, the animation is sensational...but! The plot is the major winner here. Fushigi Yuugi is romantic, action packed, emotional, exciting, and deep. The first time I watched it, I didn't take a single break through the entire anime series. The OVA's were kind of a let-down, but the series...fantastic!DVD Review: A wonderous tale of friendship, love, and the refusal to give up
Summary: 4 Stars
What is it that draws people to anime? For many it's the amazing fight sequences that can not take place except in the most expensive of Hollywood sets. For others it's giant robots and overly endowed women. For other still it's sweet girlish romance that portrays the essence of love without being caught up in "fan service." I, however, was drawn to anime for a very different reason. Anime can be extremely well written. Unlike Hollywood movies, anime can create powerful characters, rich settings, wonderful dialogue, and natural character interaction. There are very many such classy anime, epitomized by Fruits Basket, Full Metal Alchemist, His and Her Circumstances, and Twelve Kingdoms. A lot of this may have to do with the fact that much of anime comes from novels, while others come from manga (Japanese comics that seem to have a lot of literary elements). Fushigi Yugi, an anime adaption of a manga of the same name, is one such show.
The story of Fushigi Yugi excels in many things. It is very, very unpredictable. At times, it seems that the main character does exactly the opposite of what you're convinced she'll do. For the first twenty episodes it's fairly good, turning and twisting here and there. After that, however, it becomes excellent. Fushigi Yugi turns into a very dark, very mysterious show, one that at times leaves Miaka wishing she could just go back home and forget this ever happened. Needless to say, it's very enjoyable, and though many twists seem unnecessary and overplayed (like the many "fights" between Miaka and Tamahome), once the show is seen as an interaction between humans with personalities and not the narrator's magic hand guiding puppets to a conclusion, many of them make sense and actually add a lot to the characters.
Although the storyline really is excellent, the characters is really where Fushigi Yugi excels. The four main characters from the Suzaku side, Miaka, Tamahome, Hotohori, and Nuriko, are all very well explored. They have personalities that stem from their pasts, and not vice versa. Especially well developed are Miaka and Tamahome, whose inner lives and personalities we know like the back of our hands by the end of the show. Not too far behind is Hotohori. What really intrigued me is that, in the beginning, each character seemed like an archetype. The strong and noble leader, the money obsessed wandering fighter, the cute and ditsy main female lead. However, after the first few episodes, the archetypes turn into original characters shaped in reaction to their individual circumstances. Every character has a motive for every action. From Yui and Miaka (the main female roles) to Nakago (the main evil dude), each character is extremely well played out. Even Nakago, whom I would have been content had he been left an evil, evil character, was given a past and a present, as well as motivations that reacted with his past to create a very dark future. His last scene was one of the most touching scenes I have ever seen with an evil bad guy. The characters are absolutely amazing. I would definitely pick up a show with just these characters goofing around.
Another area of expertise for Fushigi Yugi is the humor of the show. It serves very many purposes. For the first twenty episodes it allows the creators of the anime to build up the world as meticulously as possible without the viewers loosing interest. By the time the first twenty episodes are completed, the characters haven't done much, but the world is fully set up and the real adventure is ready to begin. This wouldn't have been possible without the humor of the series- it would just be too slow to actually follow. After that, however, the humor is a welcome change from the sheer darkness of the series. The final twenty episodes have it all: rape, murder, massacre, lust, unfulfilled love. The characters you have grown to really love are thrown through so much pain, without the humor it would be fairly unbearable. In the beginning, the humor is what makes you come back for more, and then later on it's just what makes sure you can survive the intensity of the show.
The animation is called lacking, but I find it fairly perfect for the show. The show is centered around the characters, and the deformed, pint sized and funny looking version of the characters around which the humor is centered wouldn't fit in a beautifully animated, realistic world. Sure, the fights could have been nicer, but they're still intense and very suspenseful. But really, after watching three episodes, you'll forget that the detail of the show isn't all that great. It's all about character and plot; animation only matters when it's supposed to be funny, and it pulls that off brilliantly.
The only main aspect of the show that's lacking is the music. This is not Rurouni Kenshin. This is not Full Metal Alchemist. Don't even mistake this for Fruits Basket. The music outright sucks. Badly. There's only one song worth listening to, but that song is done extremely well (it's near the end and comes with a major spoiler, so I'll say no more). It really is the only thing that keeps it from a five star rating- yes, it's that bad.
Description of Fushigi Yugi - The Mysterious Play: Box Set 1 - Suzaku (ep. 1-26)
Deluxe DVD Box Set contains Four Dual-Layer DVD discs in a multi-fold package with a protective plastic slipcase. Special Features include: Image Gallery, Character Information, First Season (episodes 1-26), Dual Language.A sprawling mixture of mythical crises and slushy teenage romance, Fushigi Yugi: The Mysterious Play has the scale, but not the depth, of an epic.
Like the heroine of Sailor Moon, Miaka is a ditzy 15-year-old girl who's crazy about junk food and boys. She and her scholarly friend Yui find an ancient Chinese volume, The Universe of the Four Gods, about a girl "who made her dreams come true after she came to possess the seven stars of Suzaku," and are literally drawn into the book. Miaka is hailed as the girl from another world destined to become the priestess of Suzaku, the protecting deity of the Empire of Konan. She soon finds herself caught in a web of adventures, magic, deadly perils, intrigue, and counterintrigue.
Miaka gains the affection of the seven Celestial Warriors of Suzaku: martial artist Tamahome; the exquisite emperor of Konan, Hotohori; the transvestite Nuriko; sorcerer-in-training Chichiri; mountain bandit Tasuki; physician Mitsukake; and the flute-playing Chiriko. The Warriors and the Priestess are all needed to summon Suzaku to save Konan from an invasion from the rival kingdom of Kutuo. Complicating matters are Yui's estrangement from Miaka and their rivalry for the dashing Tamahome.
The animation is extremely limited, even by anime standards: director Hajime Kamegaki often uses pans over comic book-style artwork in place of character movements. But the adventures are enjoyable and the side characters are often engaging, especially Chichiri. The weakest aspect of the series is Miaka, who comes across as a whiny twit: Tamahome and Hotohori fall in love with her, but it's difficult to understand why.
Mysterious Play began as a girl's manga, then became a weekly TV program. It's more entertaining to watch one or two episodes at a time: after too many at one sitting, the story begins to feel repetitious and padded. This four-disc set includes only the first half of the story (the TV series' entire first season), ending on a real cliffhanger. The supplemental material offers a well-organized chart of the characters and their relationships, keyed to scenes in the story. --Charles Solomon
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