Arjuna

Earth Maiden Arjuna...it could be described as either you love it or you hate it. It's hard to say considering I'm one of those who loved it. I'll assume you have read the synopsis and at least have a basic idea of what this anime is about. Very good, on with the review! Story: The story of Arjuna had a lot of promise, I'll tell you that. With the first and second episodes I was mildly in shock at the premise set out before me. It could have been a true masterpiece, but when you think about it, this is a tricky story to dive into.I refuse to post spoilers, but a good majority of the show is about Juna's 'education' you could call it. With every new thing she learns about the world, another hint towards the ending is revealed. They do this well and I have no complaints about the ending. Although there are a few things I would have loved to know that they just seemed to refuse to reveal (origin of the Avatar of Time for one), though it was nothing that damaged my enjoyment of the series. Every so often the show would trail off and become (dare I say...) preachy. It goes just a tiny bit over the top with the whole "Save Nature!" thing it's got going on. Luckily this only happens a few times, and if you can get past that and just go with the flow (an open mind is essential), then I promise you'll have an enjoyable experience. If this is the anime for you anyway. Art: Wow, where Arjuna lacks in story-telling, it completely makes up for in the art. While I myself had a personal hatred for Juna's hair, the art is just downright beautiful. No complaints here. The second time I watched this show, I watched it purely for the eye-candy for a while. It's just so beautiful to watch, especially the few transformation scenes (there aren't many). Seeing the way Juna begins to view the world can be breath-taking. Sound: If you haven't heard this by now, it's about time someone told you. The music in this show is amazing. Absolutely amazing. Most of the music was done by Yokko Kanno, who I believe also did the music for Cowboy Bebop and Raxephon (don't quote me on that last one). Even if you go into this series feeling skepitcal of the plot presented to you, I believe it's worth it to stick with it just for the music. The music is haunting and fits the scenes beautifully. Combine the music with the art and you have the perfect reason to try this show right there. In this category especially, Arjuna does not disappoint. As for the voices, I will admit, I've only watched the English dub. Feel free to attack me or whatever. At first the voices for the dub seemed a bit...off, as most dubs usually do, but after a while you could tell they were starting to get a feel for the characters. Lip-synching was kind of off, but it was nothing noticeable in the later episodes. I especially loved the voice of the character Chris. :] Pardon me for being a fan-girl, but the voice made me love the character. Characters: Speaking of characters! There was some character development, but nothing out of this world. The most was seen for Juna and her boyfriend Tokio...and...yeah...I wasn't left hating any characters by the end, which is saying something because there was a girl who I wanted dead on that show. All of them were true to their personalities. I thought Juna's development from well-grounded spunky teenage girl to Avatar of Time was very good. Not at all like most shows in this genre where the girl gets powers and suddenly they're full of confidence and joy or whatever. That's about it for characters, go Chris! I'll admit, this show is NOT FOR EVERYONE. You will love it or you will hate it. I can't be responsible for either one. xD I recommend watching at least up to episode 4. Episode 4 is almost like a trial...if you can make it past that episode unscathed (I'm exaggerating, it's not bad) then you will most likely enjoy the rest of the show. I myself love it because the entire thing to me is just so beautiful. I'm a nature-loving girl, so this was just an anime after my own heart. Even if you're not too big on the whole nature deal, I suggest you give it a try anyway. Just remember to keep an open mind and enjoy it for what it's worth. This show should not be overlooked without at least a first glance.

Vacuous at its best, trite for the remainder. The “pro-environment” message is the culmination of scientific illiteracy. The theme behind the entire plot is an attack on intellectual thought, and a vitriolic tantrum demanding a return to the ignorant bliss of an agrarian society. It fails to support any claim it makes despite presenting pathetic straw men arguments that it pretends are the only refutation of the tired nonsense spewed throughout the show. Characters exist solely to deliver these one-off lines of dialogue in the interest of avoiding an actual counter, and this on its own deserves contempt. In addition, when they do make a claimit is simply untrue. A pro-environment message would have been fine, but this show is a celebration of the banal tropes of the intellectually bereft. It’s claims range from nominally positive pro-recycling, to utterly insane predictions about genetically modified crops. In a hilarious twist of irony one of the characters mentions what to do with their ashes after they’ve been cremated, as if feeding them to the birds will return any of the energy content of their body to the planetary ecosystem. Here is a science lesson about combustion. When something is burned, the energy content it contains is released as heat and light into the air. The action of combustion propels that energy content up into the atmosphere, and out of the planetary ecosystem. There are no concessions to be made, it’s a social commentary piece that is entirely ignorant of its conceit. PLOT: It tried to be avant-garde and unique, in the process it demonstrated a complete disregard for character motivation and interaction. Interconnectedness is cute, but it’s not at all unique. In combination with the thematic elements, it has no redeeming value. CHARACTERS: Some of them are developed, some of them are “mysterious”, most of them only exist to spit out straw man arguments for the theme to “refute.” ANIMATION: It’s inoffensive, and generally good quality. There are some uses of CGI that are slightly jarring, but the animation stands up well despite its age. SOUND: The soundtrack is quite good. Despite my recommendation that you literally kill yourself rather than watch this, I enjoyed this little portion of it.

The first impression that I got from this anime is that this anime is going to deal with a lot of environmental issues that still plague the world today but it’s going to have some sort of action in it. The art actually reminded me of something from “Tenchi Muyo!” but it’s a bit more messy than it. Plus, you can tell that the CGI didn’t age very well but it’s not detrimental of the story. It felt very much like it’s imcompleted, somehow but the landscapes are from from that. The landscapes are breathtaking and gorgeous and really pops out from the actual characters. Goingby the first episode by itself, it goes into it immediately along with the action of her powers, even if she’s not “truly” woken up. But the episodes after that seemed to grind to a halt; it’s mostly because Chris, the person who saved Juna’s life from death, who is gravely ill and disabled – when he fights, he doesn’t fight physically. Instead, his spirit seems to leave his body at will and fights for him. He’s also a telepathic and has a young girl, Cindy, to translate for him because he can’t talk on his own. The thing is – Juna keeps misunderstanding him. She, including the audience, assumes that by stopping the Raaja, she has to kill them. Raaja are demons from the earth who, after a period of time, cannot handle mankind’s pollution anymore so it retaliates by attacking the humans and whatever it is that’s hurting the planet. Juna’s job is to, really, retain these demons from causing anymore harm on the earth rather than actually killing it. However, she needs to understand why she retains them instead just of using the arrow and besides the obvious answers of protecting the earth and her loved ones. Along for the ride is Juna’s boyfriend, Tokio who is a typical rich kid and will follow Juna to the ends of the earth. The series mostly focuses on their relationship as Juna’s powers prevent her from doing the normal teenage stuff they used to do before (mostly eat hamburgers or consume junk food). He really doesn’t understand what’s going on and truly does love her but it’s hard for him to understand. Even if Juna attempts to explain it to him, it’s just gets lost under the muddle. But truly, her powers are hard to explain if you don’t understand why it’s so important for the Avatar of Time to defend the earth and it’s important to understand why the Avatar of Time to defend the humans. Unlike most series, this one goes really hard and seriously goes all out to make Juna and the viewer to understand that: all life is important. In one of the episodes, they talk about babies and hearing their voices before they’re born. Juna’s older sister, Kaine, whom Juna already has a strained relationship with, is pregnant and Juna tries hard to convince her not to abort the baby; but only because Juna could hear her son within her sister. A lot of the side stories and characters remain open ended and up for interpretation but for good reason. Something like this does not need a definitive answer from the side characters because the side characters are also real life human beings. Juna may have convinced her sister to keep the baby or maybe not. She never took away her sister’s agency to abort but only gave her a different train of thought – there’s an unheard baby in all of those who can conceive them. We may or may not be able to hear it but it’s really up to you what to do with it. Usually in magical girl anime, there’s a always some form of focus on the relationship. This anime does just that. A lot of it is introspection about the world around us, true, but it also focuses on the relationships Juna had or have. In the case of her father, he ran off with another woman and chose to stay with her because it was easier than facing her mother about the affair. Sayuri loves Tokio and even though she loves her friend Juna, she couldn’t help but strain that friendship because of Juna’s sudden shift in personality. Her feelings towards Tokio were just that much stronger and especially since Tokio was having trouble coping with Juna. Juna’s relationship with her mother and sister are so very important – after all, your mother is the one who kept you safe in her womb and your sister is your blood relative. If we are all connected, then it’s even more so important to consider your relationship with your family. SEED are those militant environmentalists that help people like Juna, Chris, and Cindy protect the earth from pollution, world hunger, and all those very important issues but they’re mostly put in the back burner since this is more about Juna’s awakening. They’re a great addition, nevertheless, and also add to the dire importance of Juna realizing the message sooner before anything worse could have happened. One of the things I really liked about this anime is that they mixed in a variation of live action and animation (however messy and out dated it actually is) to really drive home the point about saving the earth and how we’re all connected to everything and everyone around us. For some, this could be really out of place in regards to the tone of the anime or the current episode but it’s still really important. If we don’t make that connection and if we don’t truly understands what is the point of Juna even bothering saving the world, then there’s not a lot at stake. The stakes are not placed high enough for us, the audience, to fully understand why this earth is crumbling and dying a painful death. Juna, though, is still very much a high school girl and she’s very much still a human. She pushes Tokio away in an effort to protect him from danger but even with her own insistence, she just can’t leave him alone. She loves him so very much but she does not want him to put in danger because of her. Granted, there’s not a lot of action sequences in this anime that people can marvel at but that’s the whole point: what is Juna fighting for? Why is she fighting them? Why is she protecting them? Why is it so important that Juna knows how food is made and where it came from? Why do you kill? That’s the question that Chris always asked Juna and with Juna, the audience is just as annoyed and angry about its meaning until the very last episode. But because the audience is angry, it means that they’re thinking. It means that they’re considering everything that they’ve done – eating out at McDonalds, throwing away a meaningless piece of plastic on the ground, the boring rituals we do every day to make us think we’ve done a job well done. That’s not to say everything is fruitless and has no meaning. There is meaning in what we do. Maybe it’s not as deep as we liken it and maybe it isn’t. However, everything we do and don’t do is important in the grand scheme of things. Granted, this anime is extremely preachy when it comes to the environment of the earth but the message really is clear: we are one. We are one. The more pollution we put into our bodies, the more pollution we produce. We lose our meaning when we push aside our feelings and emotions for the sake of something mass produced. Maybe there’s a temporary joy in material items but, essentially, we’re not communicating with one another not because of technology – because we forgot that we are all one and the same. And it’s so important for Juna to understand that so she can protect those who are still alive from ourselves. (Part of Project Magic!!)

Looks like I'm adding another show to the 'visually interesting anime of the early 2000s' list. Otogizoushi came to mind almost immediately when I started this. So anyway, yeah, on the surface this is basically an environmentalism propaganda piece, but (and this is unusual) I wasn't turned off by it. Does it get preachy at times? Maybe. Is that a problem? Not at all. I think it works because all of the opinion spouting somehow meanders its way into, and melds with, the overall aesthetic of the anime. In other words, the message is an integral part of the experience; coupled with the imagery,nothing feels out of place. Because of this I see this as more of a mood piece than an 'An Inconvenient Truth,' "here are the facts" kind of thing. In this sense I don't think 'agreeing' with everything (or anything, for that matter) plays an important role in getting enjoyment out of this series. This is probably accomplished due to its above average writing and direction. And in the end, I don't think it is as quite propagandistic as a surface viewing would lead you to believe. As happy as I am that they did it that way, anyone actually interested in environmental issues is probably going to find fault with the execution: 1) There are no facts, spirituality trumps science in this one. Think, 'we are one with the planet' kind of stuff, which works well for the mood and art but not so much for compelling propaganda. Hell, some stuff they say seems like complete fiction, but I'm no expert. 2) There is nothing concrete, other than vague references to pollution (everywhere and everything), nuclear power (of all the things to go after) and the usual anti-capitalism (and a lot of flashing imagery to go with it) one can definitely feel some disconnect from this anime world and our real one. Because it doesn't try to tackle any one specific, pressing, environmental issue it eventually drowns in its own cynicism; thumbing its nose at almost everything we do in modern society. What this amounts to in the end is, 'all complaints, no solutions.' At least it's somewhat self-aware, our pal Tokio, after hearing Juna complain constantly about city life, eventually asks (paraphrasing obviously) "how the hell are we supposed to live?" Juna gives what amounts to a non-response: "live like that old guy we met in the mountains." That's something only a person living in the First World could say, which is ironic considering that those who suffer in poverty are shown sympathetically (as victims of the sick Earth). I guess they're trying to make a distinction between self-imposed and involuntary poverty but I never think is the best answer for this kind of stuff.And some of this is tempered in the end anyway where we see a little bit of optimism, all without Juna needing to re-evaluate her principles or compromise what she learned. Despite some complaints, I DO like how the anime tries to get its message across. The interplay of well-written dialogue and imagery are effective, moving, and interesting from an artistic perspective. Stuff like Juna being able to see herself in the food she is about to eat is a good way of getting the (little) idea across that what we eat becomes a part of us and that we should care about what we put in our bodies. Sometimes the little ideas go over better than the bigger picture. In this regard the quality of the message in the anime is more than the just the sum of its parts. In the end, this imagery ALSO finds its way into the bigger picture. Thus, I would consider this anime to have depth. And we are made aware of this depth in a compelling and organic manner. And I think if we detach ourselves from the message even more it is easy to see how important the radicalism is for the overall feeling of the show. Character opinions are simply character opinions, of course, but even beyond opinions, the dialogue is also there to put forth general philosophical ideas that require a bit of authority and directness from the characters to be effective. But what is the message, really? I think there's a lot there, the main thing being the idea that we are, as living things, a part of the universe as everything else is. To find happiness as humans then is to live as parts in harmony, like the rest. The idea is, that our trying to dictate our own roles in the the universe, according to our own whims, is what is making the world imbalanced. A simple life then, is to live the way nature dictates, and to live this way we need to come to an understanding about what we NEED. Coming to such an answer requires a sort of philosophical journey that can only be achieved via becoming intune with the earth itself. The anime is calling on us to try and learn from nature, ask questions about what we need to survive, what we really need for happiness. Live according to principle. Definitely, biologically deterministic. I'd say the anime has an aura of stoicism around it. To summarize: To understand ourselves at the most basic level, is to understand the world. There are two ways of looking at it, maybe it really isn't so "propagandistic" after all, and all of the 'complaining' is just to get us to that one simple truth. (In the end,this is how I see it). Conclusion of this part: watch this series as you would an art film, detach yourself from the politics of the message and let it impact your emotions not your rationality. Despite what the synopsis tells us, this is a character driven, dialogue heavy, and not an action or plot driven show (thank God). Juna and Tokio are great characters. The show gives them a relationship and makes me care about how it turns out, in fact I'd say their relationship and interactions make up about 80% of this anime (which I was pleasantly surprised by). A long conversation between them feels just as natural as a diatribe about our place on the planet. Not only is it a journey for Juna, and her understanding of life on earth, it is also a journey for her and Tokio's relationship. We really see how it effects them, and of course, how their love for each other effects the journey they take together. They really are a great couple. To put the importance of the "plot" into perspective, despite putting a lot of effort into making you think this would be a typical combat/magic based series in the first episode, we get two episodes of Juna and Tokio hanging out with the aforementioned old guy in the mountains (great episodes by the way). What might be the meat of the plot for any other series takes a back-seat in this one. This is a good thing because the Raaja stuff isn't all that interesting. However, Juna's psychological and philosophical journey IS interesting. In the end coming to terms with a truth that has been fluttering around in her mind (as we see) since the first scene of the first episode. The pacing also really got me. I already have a weakness for slow-moving, atmospheric shows and this one manages to maintain a consistent pace the entire run-time. Irregular episode lengths allow for some episodes to accomplish more without having to speed anything up. Wish i had the vocabulary to describe the art and visual direction. Let's just say it really works well. I think a lot of what is great about this show needs to be experienced. And I am writing this review because I think the overall low score is due to people literally WATCHING IT WRONG. Hopefully with the right perspective a new audience on this site could appreciate this anime a little better. Because if nothing else, this is absolutely an above average series. If I've managed to point out what to keep an eye out for, I think this review has done its job. (Also this anime is an instant favourite for me).