El Hazard: The Magnificent World Review
El-hazard: Magnificent World OVA 1
Shinpi no Sekai El Hazard
神秘の世界エルハザード

Since the Community Anime Reviews site frequently has outage issues, I’m republishing some of my OG reviews from there. I have corrected obvious spelling errors though. I will add new notes in parenthesis, labeled “ANB  note.”  😅 I won’t count these as part of the “Back to the Vaults” series as I have not rewatched them. That said, this title is a prime candidate for “Back to the Vaults”. I just gotta find the time.

–> Buy El-hazard: Magnificent World Ova 1 & 2 BD Collection on Amazon.com!

Community Anime Review of El Hazard: The Magnificent World

(ANB note: This series was originally reviewed on 01-May-2003.)

The Story, in Brief

At seven episodes, this first OAV of the El Hazard series is a very good one. Makoto is a high school student who is in the ruins of an ancient civilization which has been discovered under his school. He finds a woman who claims to have been waiting for him for 10,000 years and immediately sends him, two classmates, and a teacher to the land of El Hazard. There, they are find themselves gifted with special abilities with three ending up with the humans and one ending up with the Bugrom — a race of insects at war with the humans.

Thoughts/Review

The story is well done and there is no “filler”. The characters are all interesting and have important roles to fill. The only thing I wished for would have been an explanation of how the Bugrom came to be and why they are at war with the humans. But that’s only a minor concern.

So why only a “rent” (good, not great) rating? I’m in the minority here, but I was really bothered by some of the sexual content, especially considering it dealt with underage persons. The character of Alielle is clearly underage. However, she’s in a lesbian affair with one of the princesses and mistakes Makoto for the princess (Makoto having been kidnapped and thus sleeping in Alielle’s room) and begins to initiate sex.

Then throughout the series, she’s hitting on the adult women. Most people poo-poo this because it is a culture thing so who cares. It was too ecchi for my tastes. To make matters worse, the Phantom Tribe king is banging a 12-year old boy though they have this relationship very toned down (yuri/lesbians sell more videos you know).

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

That aside, the story of El Hazard: The Magnificent World is so well done that I do recommend seeing it. Even though I didn’t like the underage, lolita, nympho, lesbian tart, the other characters were done well and very memorable.