A sprawling mixture of mythical crises and slushy teenage romance, Fushigi Yugi: The Mysterious Play has the scale, but not the depth, of an epic. Like the heroine of Sailor Moon, Miaka is a ditzy 15-year-old girl who's crazy about junk food and boys. She and her scholarly friend Yui find an ancient Chinese volume, The Universe of the Four Gods, about a girl "who made her dreams come true after she came to possess the seven stars of Suzaku," and are literally drawn into the book. Miaka is hailed as the girl from another world destined to become the priestess of Suzaku, the protecting deity of the Empire of Konan. She soon finds herself caught in a web of adventures, magic, deadly perils, intrigue, and counterintrigue.
Miaka gains the affection of the seven Celestial Warriors of Suzaku: martial artist Tamahome; the exquisite emperor of Konan, Hotohori; the transvestite Nuriko; sorcerer-in-training Chichiri; mountain bandit Tasuki; physician Mitsukake; and the flute-playing Chiriko. The Warriors and the Priestess are all needed to summon Suzaku to save Konan from an invasion from the rival kingdom of Kutuo. Complicating matters are Yui's estrangement from Miaka and their rivalry for the dashing Tamahome.
The animation is extremely limited, even by anime standards: director Hajime Kamegaki often uses pans over comic book-style artwork in place of character movements. But the adventures are enjoyable and the side characters are often engaging, especially Chichiri. The weakest aspect of the series is Miaka, who comes across as a whiny twit: Tamahome and Hotohori fall in love with her, but it's difficult to understand why.
Mysterious Play began as a girl's manga, then became a weekly TV program. It's more entertaining to watch one or two episodes at a time: after too many at one sitting, the story begins to feel repetitious and padded. This four-disc set includes only the first half of the story (the TV series' entire first season), ending on a real cliffhanger. The supplemental material offers a well-organized chart of the characters and their relationships, keyed to scenes in the story. --Charles Solomon
