El Hazard follows geeky high school student Makoto Mizuhara as he discovers a sleeping woman buried beneath his school. He inadvertently wakes the woman named Ifurita, who claims to know him and says that she has been searching for him for a long time. She tells him that he must travel to the world of El Hazard and save it from destruction. He then finds himself in an unknown forest with one of his teachers, alcoholic chain smoking Masamachi Fujisawa. Right away they hear screams of distress from near by and rush to find Makoto’s classmate Nanami Jinnai being attacked by a group of large bug like creatures. The trio is rescued by humans who are from a nearby kingdom. They are brought to the palace and Makoto, given the canniness of appearance, is asked to pretend to be the missing princess, who has been captured by the leader of the bug like creatures, the Bugrom. The misplaced trio must now travel with a royal envoy to ask three elemental priestesses if they will allow them to use an ancient relic of war to defeat the Bugrom once and for all. At the same time Nanami’s brother, Katsuhiko has arrived in El-Hazard and joins forces with the Bugrom in order to obtain world domination. While Katsuhiko is happy where he is the others are desperately trying to find a way to return home, and hope the priestesses, who control the ancient technologies scattered through out the land, will know of a way to return them. Before they can complete their mission they must face off against Katsuhiko and the Bugrom horde as he unleashes a lost weapon of devastating power, the demon Ifurita.
This series coincides with Tenchi Muyo and was even worked on by some of the same people. The art is very similar and where Tenchi is heavy on the harem anime, this one is only slightly harem. Like Tenchi is still follows a typical, hapless high school student as he is thrust into incredible events that he ultimately is the only one which can succeed with. Makoto and Tenchi are very similar and both exude ultra human abilities even though they remain humble and unassuming. The formula is well worn, but El Hazard is one of its best gems, at least the original OAV set. The art is good for the period and the writing is moderate. The humor is what really draws you in and in the end the emotional attachment keeps you there. This is a series, like Tenchi, that is designed for the male viewer. There are plenty of adolescent fantasies and sticky situations, well endowed women in skimpy clothing and as always the power of the unassuming adolescent boy to become the hero of the day and get the girl, the hot one…not the next door neighbor one. Yes, it is a tiring genre and story line, but El Hazard is well worth the pain. It contains some pure gems of comedic sequence and the story is entertaining in general. Apparently it was entertaining enough to pull another Tenchi move and retell it again as a TV show. The TV show was ok, I’ll review that eventually, but luckily they came out with two more series’ to follow up the original OAV, which will be reviewed at some point in the future as well.
However, the original El Hazard is still good, worth a view, even though it has faded into the misty halls of semi popular anime. If you are a fan of the Tenchi Muyo franchise, it is a must. If you enjoy such titles as Photon, The Third or 3x3 Eyes this one will do nicely in your collection.
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