Eikoden

Why Eikoden stunk

Eikoden really bothered me for several reasons. To sum it up though, it was not very true to prior Fushigi Yuugi episodes. One reason that this could be is because the Eikoden series is based off of novels not done by Wutase Yu. The novels might not have fallen all entirely true to the series, which is fine. I believe that the ones who decided to use that particular story as the third OVA could have gone and reviewed prior episodes and OVAs and could have tweaked the story to match the series. But clearly it was not done. Here are the things I found wrong in my opinion, in either respect to the series, or out of logic, or stuffed that bugged me in general.

First and most importantly the least logical event that had happened, the book still was in the library. You would think that Keisuke, Taka, Tetsuya, Yui, and Miaka would've decided to keep the Universe of the Four Gods hidden under a bed mattress or something. After the trouble that happened in the first OVA when Yui was pulled back in, you'd think that they'd keep it hidden and out of the way of other people who would get access to it in a library. Also, isn't the book useless now anyway? In the first OVA Yui had closed the links from the book and the real world. That is why there were scrolls in the second OVA, because the book couldn't be used as a link. So why the heck is the book now fully able to send people in and out of the book world? It should not be possible.

Secondly, following logic from the first OVA, why did Mayo become Suzaku no Miko? When Yui went into the book in the first OVA she restarted the stories. Yui had become Genbu no Miko. Why did Mayo conveniently become Suzaku no Miko? Yui had wished for the characters to return to their proper alignment when she had been Genbu no Miko in OVA1. But that didn't mean it wasn't possible for another girl to pop in and become the Genbu no Miko all over again. It is the logic of previous episodes that basically spells out that Mayo should've been another person to restart the tales and become the new Genbu no Miko. No, let's be dumb and make her Suzaku no Miko. God only knows we need another one.

Mayo, now I'm going to not be nice with her. I think, the author of the novel this was based on had no idea how to handle an antagonist for the story. So she made someone similar to Yui. It's obvious. Mayo had loved Taka. Yui had her infatuation with Tamahome. Mayo was willing to do anything to get Taka, even as far as re-writing the book. Yui went as far as separating Tamahome from Miaka and trying to force him to love her instead (and thankfully failing miserably). Both were, and I hardly use this term when speaking of or about Yui, bitches. (Yui, you're still my favorite character!) Not just this, but eventually she turned from Yui to Miaka. We notice that Mayo's family was breaking up. Miaka (more apparent in the manga) has a mother who is seeing other men, which states either Miaka also has split parents, or a dead father (or, much to my own enjoyment, she was a bastard kid who didn't know her dad). Mayo tries to drown herself (sound familiar Miaka fans?), she gives up on something for a brief moment enough to do herself in, and then decides "Hey, maybe I will summon Suzaku."

Another thing, the whole Miaka and Taka's unborn child being the shinzaho to summon Suzaku was.... well...stupid to put it nicely. Again, this falls out of the story written by prior information. In OVA1, Tenkou had brought Yui into the book world for her to summon, also to lead Miaka in, WITH her shinzaho, Miaka's engagement/wedding ring. Now, Tenkou needed Miaka's and Yui's shinzahos to summon Genbu, which is fine and dandy. But, for one, why did Mayo need the shinzaho, and why did they change Miaka's shinzaho from her ring to the baby in the first place? The first was never explained, like so many other things, and if Mayo was declared the new priestess, why did she need a shinzaho to summon when Taka got all the other sieshi to help her summon? Bah, OVA1 made more sense than this, and that was a confusing bridge made by the animators!

Why did Miaka even help summon Suzaku when she isn't a virgin anymore? It was an issue that was in OVA2 as well. In OVA2 a scene was shown of a collage of pictures of Miaka and Taka lying around naked, and she still summoned Suzaku. Now, it can slip because we know that they might not have had sex and decided to just wrestle in these pictures. But in these episodes they can't just avoid it, Miaka was preaggers for darn sake. You can't have a baby without sex, so why was she able to help in the summoning? And why was it even agreed by Boushin to let Mayo be the new priestess when he knew she too was 'pregnant'. Wouldn't it have also been concluded that she had an unspoiled body as well?

One thing that really bothered me, and it is a biased opinion, but what Yui did the entire OVA. It's great she sat in Miaka's hospital room, it's good she was helping Keisuke and Tetsuya read the book, but what her dialogue was. It was very Yui typical. "It's my fault. It's my fault." Why is every negative event happening that involves the book Yui's fault? I mean, literally, it seems to be. Keisuke even seemed to conform that it was her fault because she was a miko the same time Miaka was. Cut her some slack.

Now, I'm going to talk about the special effects. Although it was pretty snazzy to see special effects like the digital fake gods, it wasn't right. It did not fit with the feel that the entire series had, and suddenly we see a weird trippy computer generated Seriyu somewhere. It was wrong; I felt that it just made everything look rather cheesy. Although it was nice to show that you could do the digital things, it wasn't meant for the series, and just made all the battle scenes ridiculous and stupid.

Sieshi as children. Although how disgustingly cute Mitsukake and Shoka were, and how much I absolutely adored Nuriko and how she (which is what they referred to him as when he was a child) adored Hotohori, was a bit odd. Why for one were they reincarnated to inside the book? Couldn't they have been reincarnated into the normal world? And for one, why? Why at all? The sieshi could have just as easily used the bodies of Nyan's again, like so many times before, and helped summon that way. It would've saved a lot of budget time and could have left open to some actual decent plot openings (you know what I mean, that Hotohori/brother/Houki curve ball was dumb) and more interesting character development. Instead because of going around to find the four reincarnated sieshi, the squashed it all into four episodes, making it cramped and jumpy. Not even the second or first OVA were that crammed. Also, if the Suzaku dead sieshi were running around as kids, what about the Seriyu, Genbu, or Byaku sieshi? Were they running around too?

One thing of note about the art, for some reason, every time I looked at Tasuki the entire four episodes, I couldn't stop thinking her was Keisuke. Look at Tasuki's jaw structure, and the length of his bangs and compare it to the way Keisuke looked in this OVA, and you'll see the same thing. And for once Tasuki went without doing anything alcoholic related, out of character or what?

Lastly, one more gripe about how this series ended. Miaka having a baby. It was done before, fans would remember the scene at the end of OVA2, where Miaka and Taka are star gazing with a child. This makes the ending to this particular OVA horribly uncreative and lacking. This is just like the ending with the anime, leaving off that Tamahome out of nowhere somehow managed a way into the real world, never explained. The second OVA was all right in it's ending, showing the child scene, and the Miaka and Taka could go to any time they had wanted together. The First OVA, to me, had the best ending, it had it's depressive separation ending, and leaves the viewers with a little bit of hope and content during the credits when it is shown Taka in the restaurant. But this OVA's ending was bad. Going back to the child, I thought that it was heavily implied this child was male in OVA1. Although, it's never really proven since there's only a silhouette and since a child could have a female voice despite gender. The child's hair was short, another note, and in the akugi, a child resembling Tasuki was there. And so out of nowhere they pull a female baby out of Miaka's butt (pun was kind of intended, all though we really don't know whether or not the baby was pulled so to speak). This kind of disappointed me when Miaka had made known the gender was female by naming it Hikari. This scene just over all should've never been there. And what about Mayo in the end? She was left, very much similar to Yui, with unrequited love (I'm referring to the Suboshi issue here). Nothing is ever mentioned of her, or shown of her after the summoning. Why is it always lovey dovey happy for Miaka and Taka and not for anyone else who seems to be involved with them. Yui didn't entirely have a happy ending, and Mayo certainly didn't either. At least Yui fans were given something when it's discovered that Yui and Tetsuya are kind of together, Mayo is just thrown out when her use for the plot is over. No closure what so ever besides a possible hint to a crush with Keisuke.

And one more thing, because we all know how much I love the protagonists, Taka was such a dork. As usual, but even more of a dork. He seemed to have done absolutely nothing, running around with Hotohori's sword for one. Why didn't he use his powers? He certainly could when he did face against the fake Suzaku (by the way, this scene erked me because he pulled the same stunt almost as he did with Nakago, the only difference being he went through all of Suzaku's body instead of his hand). Taka ran around with a sword doing nothing but look like his normal pretty boy self. Why, if they were reincarnated, was Hotohori's spirit able to use the sword, at all, during the confrontation of Byaku's spirit that had taken over Mitsukake? There was nothing wrong with Nuriko from what I noticed; the ball scenario was very true to a scene he had been in during the series. Mitsukake surprisingly, out of character, talked, for once. Chiriko...well, what they did was just wrong. The whole back-story of Hotohori's true origin was horrible. It was dumb for him to have come from the same poor town village that Houki was from. To find Hotohori was adopted, that wasn't right.

Over all, I was upset after seeing this. It wasn't right, the plot lacked, the antagonists really lacked, the graphics were too powerful for the over all effect (art was still nice, just the computer graphics were out of place). I was pleased Miaka was in a coma for all the episodes, but than again, that's the Yui fangirl speaking. I wished that more time was focused and given to Keisuke, Tetsuya, Yui, Saori, and even Mayo. They could've done more with her, but they shoved her off in backdrop and left the entire four episodes to Taka stumbling around finding children. More could've been done to the plot than just that. The only comfort to this and interesting tidbit was Houki and Boushin. It was nice to see that Boushin had very beautiful lavender hair instead of his father's chestnut brown. One more thing of amusement is the little maid running around for Mayo. If you are a fan of Watase Yu's work, you will recognize the maid being almost like Q-san of Ayashi no Ceres. It wasn't much of a bonus, those three things (four if you include Miaka's coma, and five considering how cool Yui looked) in comparison to the rest of the crap. I wouldn't recommend buying this. It's a waste of 30 bucks, it's boring, it strays from the series. If you're a FY nut and you really need to see it, go a head. But I felt it wasn't worth it.