On Discovering El-Hazard:

Most everyone who likes anime can trace their beginnings to a particular series that really made them curious and drew them in(or were "forced" to sit through), and oftentimes, they can remember when and why it got them hooked. The same goes for me, mostly. I happened upon El-Hazard initially upon happening upon the Collectible Card Game Ani-Mayhem, which also served to introduce me to Armitage, Bubble Gum Crisis, and the work of Masamune Shirow... but I digress, It was this little card game, with it's odd scenes and situations that piqued my curiosity, particularly the taglines and cards pertaining to El-Hazard.

So one evening, bored and with nothing better to do, I went out on the net and looked for anything El-Hazard, and happened upon this little site, whose synopses of the first two nights got me completely and totally hooked on wanting to see the series. Time being a blur to me, I believe it was sometime in the last quarter of 1999 that I managed to acquire the dubbed OAV1 tapes, and was absolutely blown away by the art, storytelling, characters, everything. It immediately wrested top spot in my anime favorites, even among the works of Masamune Shirow and other cyberpunk series like Armitage and BGC, whose storytelling nature I'm generally biased towards.

Sometime after that, I got ahold of the Alternative World DVDs, and while they were still good, they didn't have near the magic of the original OAV series. Nor did El Hazard 2 hold that magic, and the TV series was just had too much of a Tenchi Muyo feel to it, wheras I preferred the more serious nature of the original(which is still pretty damned funny).

As it stands now, irony is being rather cruel, as Greyhound lost my OAV tapes this summer, leaving me with El-Hazard 2, Alternative World, and the TV series, hopefully a paycheck or two down the line I'll put other desires aside and grab the DVD set, but that's still a bit down the line, unfortunately. But when it does come about, I can finally listen to it in full Japanese audio, though that's definitely not to say the dub is bad, in fact, I think it's one of the best I've heard.

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