Disaster Report: EL HAZARD - THE WANDERERS

There are a lot of reasons I cover shows here on Disaster Report.  Some of them are famous failures.  Others are shows I wouldn’t even know about if not for friends and mutuals.  A few end up here because they manage to thread that magical, metaphorical “so bad it’s good” needle.

Sometimes, though, it’s entirely personal.  That is certainly the case for 1995’s El Hazard: The Wanderers.

El Hazard was yet another successful OVA from AIC, and it’s one that wouldn’t exist if not for Tenchi Muyo.  More specifically, it was the pet project of Tenchi co-creator and director Hiroki Hayashi.  After that initial OVA was complete, he felt he had exhausted all of his ideas for Tenchi and didn’t want to wrangle with Misaki Fujishima again over new ones.  Hayashi wanted to move on to something completely new, a fish-out-of-water adventure inspired by his childhood love of 1001 Arabian Nights and A Princess of Mars.  To help him realize his idea, he turned to Ryoe Tsukimura, a then up-and-coming writer who was making a name for himself at AIC on Tenchi Universe.  Fortunately for them both, the studio’s collaboration with Pioneer Entertainment on Tenchi went so well for both parties that Pioneer was more than willing to fund this OVA as well, allowing them to shape this new story at their own pace.

What they created was 1995’s El Hazard: The Magnificent World.  This seven episode OVA follows four ordinary folks (lead character/everyday high school student Makoto Mizuhara, alcoholic homeroom teacher Mr. Fujisawa, sneaky student council president/Makoto’s self-declared rival Katsuhiko Jinnai, and his money-hungry sister Nanami) as they whisked away to the world of El Hazard.  The four are scattered to the winds, each gaining strange new powers and end up on different sides of a war between the kingdom of El Hazard, the conquering insectoids known as the Bugrom, and a mysterious faction known as the Phantom Tribe who seek to destabilize both sides in order to access El Hazard’s most ancient and dangerous weapons. 

What makes The Magnificent World work so well is how well-balanced it is.  While it carries echoes of the exotic tales that inspired it, it’s got a perfectly balance of adventure, fantasy, and comedy that appeals to seasoned otaku and newcomers alike.  Personally speaking, I think it’s a better OVA than the original Tenchi Muyo!, as not only does it have an equally engaging cast of characters but its greater focus on plot gives it better pacing and focus. I also think it has a better dub than Tenchi Muyo!, one that benefits from a talented cast, the experienced hand of the late Kevin Seymour, and just the right amount of liberties taken with the script to give the dialogue more punch.  El Hazard: The Magnificent World would become an early landmark in the subgenre of fantasy we now know as “isekai,” and it was a humongous hit on both sides of the Pacific.

This was nothing new for AIC – they had seen this happen before with Tenchi Muyo!.  Indeed, by the time that the first episode of The Magnificent World came out, Tenchi’s transformation into a full-out franchise was underway as Tenchi Universe was already on TV and plans for many more installments were in progress.  Things were going so well for the producers at the studio that decided to test their growing hubris.  If turning Tenchi into an anime franchise worked so well, then surely it would just as well for their other successful OVAs!  They were determined to not waste any time, as pre-production on the first El Hazard TV series began before the original OVA had even reached its midpoint.

While Tsukimura would return to write a number of episodes of the TV series, Hayashi was still hard at work with the OVA and still deeply uninterested in pursuing any sequels or spinoffs.  Instead, the director’s seat was given to Katsuhito Akiyama.  On paper, this seems like a reasonable choice. Akiyama was one of AIC’s most prolific OVA directors, helming the likes of Ai no Kusabi, Bubblegum Crisis, Bastard!, and the Gall Force series.   The problem is that Akiyama was a very workman-like director without much of a particular style or vision of his own.  While that quality made it easy for him to jump from one project to another, it also meant that he didn’t tend to bring anything to those works that wasn’t already present in the script or source material.  That would prove to be a problem as he was working with only the plot notes for a half-finished OVA and a team of writers that included a tokusatsu writer from Toei, two staff writers from The Slayers, and the head writer of such classics as Machine Robo and Trouble Chocolate.

Things were already quite busy at AIC and their staff was already starting to stretch thin, so the producers would bring in E&G Films to help with the animation.  Keep in mind, this is many years before their dire work on Lost Universe and the Genma Wars anime I talked about before in this column.  At this point, they were just another sub-contractor studio, albeit one that was also busy with its own newly successful adaptation of The Slayers.  Nonetheless, both studios had to rush to get this series (dubbed “El Hazard: The Wanderers”) ready for its premiere in the jam-packed fall season of 1995.  The odds were against this show from the start, considering it was not only competing against big ongoing hits like Gundam Wing, Slam Dunk, Fushigi Yuugi, and the final arc of Dragon Ball Z but also with new shows like Saint Tail, Sorcerer Hunters, and this weird little mecha show called Neon Genesis Evangelion.

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At first glance, El Hazard: The Wanderers doesn’t seem as bad as the other two AIC shows I’ve covered thus far.  There are certainly some changes to the story, but nothing as drastic as we saw with Tenchi in Tokyo.  The animation is certainly a step down in quality from the OVA, but it’s much better looking than the Record of Lodoss War anime…well, save for a few episodes towards the middle where things get a bit dire.  With few exceptions, the Japanese and English voice casts were retained and the performances are as good as they ever were.  It’s only as the series progresses that the studio’s attempts to Tenchi-fy the show become plain.  The characters from the OVA are dumbed down, and those not shoved to the sidelines are shoved into increasingly stereotypical roles.  The plot revolves more and more around Makoto, even as he becomes less and less distinct as a protagonist.  What remains of the OVA’s plot is stretched out thinner and thinner, all to accommodate increasing amounts of lame comedy and episodic nonsense.  In retrospect, I should have seen it coming as early as Episode 2, when we are introduced to the character of Princess Rune Venus.

 

Rune Venus is a rather minor character in The Magnificent World, one who mostly exists to steer Makoto and Mr. Fujisawa towards the plot.  She’s not the most active character, but she has a pretty character design and a dignified air befitting the ruler of El Hazard.  Unfortunately, her plotlines from the OVA are either completely absent (such as her kidnapped sister and the machinations of the Phantom Tribe) or downplayed to the point of irrelevance (the political conflict between El Hazard and the Bugrom).  What could the writers do with this now extraneous character?  Why, turn her into the first member of Makoto’s brand new harem!

The Wanderers’ version of Rune Venus is not only aged down to her teens to better match Makoto in age but is completely reshaped into an innocent ingénue ready-made to be the primary love interest.  She’s so sheltered that she rarely leaves her palace and has no friends or confidantes beyond a dragon puppet she talks to in the bath.  She’s a helpless creature dependent entirely upon Makoto for rescue and motivation, even if there are awkward junior high dances with more romantic chemistry than these two.  She’s also objectified on a regular basis, as both the show and its promo art rarely miss an opportunity to pan up her scrawny body or ogle her cleavage.  She’s introduced by having her fall tits-first upon Makoto and things never get better for her from there.  Rune Venus is far from the only victim of this treatment, though.  Other female characters gain more traditionally feminine hobbies (such as Nanami) or have their tsundere tendencies cranked to 11 (in the case of fire priestess Shayla-Shayla) in order to better slot them into digestible, recognizable harem archetypes. 

Those cast members who manage to escape the harem vortex still end up losing their rougher, more ribald edges.  For example, Mr. Fujisawa’s rampant alcoholism (the only inhibitor of his isekai-induced super-strength) largely fades away after the first few episodes, replaced instead with a lot of tedious jokes about his obsession with mountaineering.  The scantily-clad, girl-crazy serving girl Alielle gains some pants as part of her transformation but at the cost of having her lesbianism turned into mere subtext.  Neither hero nor villain are spared from this treatment.  Makoto gains an interest in science, but becomes just another blandly earnest harem boy.  Meanwhile, Jinnai is transformed into the El Hazard equivalent of Snidely Whiplash through a combination of overexposure and removing any real malice from his schemes, a sad fate for what was once one of the great comic villains of 1990s anime.

Now, you could argue that these character changes aren’t noticeable unless the viewer has seen both versions of El Hazard and thus should not be held against it.  What is less debatable is the quality of the story itself.  The writers clearly only had plot notes for the first few episodes of the OVA to work with and were left to their own devices for the rest.  After the first four episodes, the pace slows to a crawl and the downtime between major plot points becomes increasingly padded with anime-original material.  I wouldn’t mind these additions if they expanded upon the cast, had any impact on the story at-large, or were just amusing in their own, and a few episodes manage that much.  Sadly, the rest rely on gags and premises that are either patently stupid or were hoary clichés even in 1995.  Who was clamoring for a story about Makoto and friends stopping Jinnai from stealing all of El Hazard’s vegetables?  Who needed an episode about Makoto, Mr. Fujisawa, and Rune Venus taking care of a bunch of little kids in a random orphanage?  And why is every joke punctuated with sound effects that sound like they were taken from a Hanna-Barbera sound library?

My issue with the story goes beyond the quality of the writing, though.  This sort of goofy, episodic nonsense is a better fit for something like Tenchi Muyo!, which from the start put more emphasis on its characters than its plot.  This approach was very flexible and allowed the franchise to better accommodate more comedic or episodic material as it expanded.  In comparison, El Hazard: The Magnificent World always prioritized its plot and its story and pacing were much more structured and purposeful.  Because of this, The Wanderers was kind of doomed from the start. Not only was it working with a half-finished story, but one that didn’t readily allow for the insertion of new material.  Furthermore, those half-baked additions only served to throw off the original story's careful balance of drama, comedy, and action, creating a goofier, more juvenile show in the process.

All of this is enough to merit disappointment, but not enough to declare El Hazard: The Wanderers a disaster.  That’s because the show doesn’t truly tip over that edge until its midpoint.  That’s when it introduces the character that serves as the culmination of all my previous criticism, a character who was drastically retooled in the service of cheap, pointless comedy at the expense of the show’s complexity and quality, as well as a character who tried my patience to its limits.  That is when it introduces the Demon God Ifurita.

More so than other character, I would say that Ifurita is the heart of El Hazard: The Magnificent World.  She is introduced as a cold, robotic doll, an artificial being who lives only to serve and whose only memories are of destruction.  These qualities are backed up by an elegant character design whose look and color scheme distinguishes her as something separate and unearthly.  Yet Makoto knows she can be more – after all, she’s the one who sent him and the others to El Hazard in the first place through a bit of time loop magic.  He spends the second half of the OVA trying to save Ifurita from herself, offering her not only forgiveness but a chance to use her power for good and a vision of a world without strife.  Their budding relationship is written with a surprising amount of tenderness which in turn gives the OVA’s ending a greater emotional impact.  It’s just one of many things about that OVA that has stuck with me over the years. 

So naturally The Wanderers had to go ahead and ruin her in the most baffling way possible.

The show began airing as Ifurita was being introduced in the OVA, so much of this later development was itself a work in progress.  As such, I can’t entirely blame the writers for doing their own thing with her when they had so little to work with at the time.  I can even somewhat forgive her radical re-design, even if I think her new look is a major step down from the original.  What I don’t understand is why they thought the best direction for this new Ifurita was to turn her into a ditz who is so ineffectual that she can’t even wield her terrible, destructive powers on purpose.  She and Makoto barely interact after her introduction, so his insistence in her innocence feels motivated more by her looks and the writers’ need to provoke some harem jealousy than any sincere belief in redemption.  It’s not like The Wanderers ever follows up on that idea, as this version of Ifurita blithely obeys Jinnai to the very end and never once considers switching sides.  This version of her is nothing more than the comic relief for the comic relief, in a show that is already overloaded with comedy.  It’s like the writers turned the show’s version of Rei Ayanami into its version of Tenchi Muyo’s Mihoshi, ripping out some of the heart of the story in the process.

The only thing more baffling than Ifurita’s transformation is that this version had enough of a following with otaku of the time to merit a bit of promotional art and even an audio drama starring both version of the character.  I guess there’s no accounting for taste when it comes to otaku, then or now.

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Of course, neither this nor any of the other AIC shows I’ve covered were the end for the studio.  AIC persists to this day, even if the collapse of the OVA market at the end of the last millennium forced them to adapt to the times.  They’ve produced a lot of under-the-radar gems over the last two decades such as Dangaioh, Bamboo Blade, My Bride Is a Mermaid, Wandering Son, Humanity Has Declined, Gun X Sword, and Astro Fighter Sunred.  They also produced their fair share of horny nonsense of debatable quality: Godannar, Heaven’s Lost Property, Girls Bravo, Cat Planet Cuties, and the unfortunately influential Oreimo, just to name a few.  The late nineties was perhaps not the best time for the studio, but AIC managed to weather those hard times and survive to the present day.  The same could be said for much of the staff that worked on The Wanderers, many of whom are still working to this day (albeit mostly on the Beyblade franchise).

The same could not be said for El Hazard as a franchise.  A year after The Wanderers wrapped up, AIC released the creatively titled OVA El Hazard 2: The Magnificent World.  This is arguably the least awful of the franchise’s spinoffs, even if its story and animation were decidedly lackluster and it mostly served as an excuse to introduce yet another version of Ifurita.  The last entry was 1998’s El Hazard: The Alternative World, which at least took the novel approach of doubling down on its isekai premise.  This time around, the main cast (plus a new girl) were scrambled up and whisked away to a completely different universe, where they had to face numerous new challenges.  I could have easily swapped this show for El Hazard: The Wanderers, but I’m inclined to go easy on it.  Part of that is because it at least attempted to do something different, but part of it is because its circumstances were far more tragic.  The Alternative World was a flop from the start, which led to its swift cancellation as its original 26 episode run was hastily cut in half.  As you watch it, you can feel the panic in the writers’ room from Episode 4 onward as any plot threads not involving Makoto are desperately dropped in the hopes of wrapping things as quickly as possible. 

The Alternative World's failure would mark the ignominious end of the El Hazard franchise.  There would be an attempt to resurrect it in 2018 with a Kickstarter-funded pilot film, but the campaign failed miserably and nothing has been heard of it since.  That’s probably for the best, considering both the sad, shambling state of the Tenchi franchise is currently in and that AIC’s more recent attempts to reboot old OVA franchises of theirs have fared very badly, to say the least. 

None of this is enough to ruin my love for the Magnificent World OVA.  I finally cracked open my Blu-ray for it as part of my preparation for this review and it reaffirmed all the things I liked about it, now in glorious high-definition.  This was also my second time watching The Wanderers, and all that reaffirmed was that this was an inane, pointless project rushed out the door entirely for the sake of money.  That short-sighted corporate greed turned a promising passion project of an OVA into bland animated sludge in just three short years.  AIC would end up learning this lesson over and over the hard way and it’s a process that benefited no one in the long run.