Earth Girl Arjuna (contains spoilers)

I

im such a grumpy bastard

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I finished the series last night and I felt it warranted a thread of its own. So voila!

For those who saw it, what did you think of it? I found the music and art entrancing but that the morals were kind of slamming into my face. I reeeeally liked the character designs and development because they were both startlingly realistic--Juna is NOT a babe, she is a girl with flippy hair that's a little messy and she's not every guy's aesthetic fantasy. I really loved the relationship between her and Tokio.

So! some spoilery stuff now...
I hated the ending, how everything with Japan happened so abruptly and in the end Juna becomes like Chris. In a way it's kind of like a nice circle but at the same time it's a little farfetched. Call me cliche, but I wanted a relatively good/happy ending. I don't normally, but I felt that this one at least warranted having Japan return relatively intact.

Also: someone mentioned that the scene on the beach with Tokio and Juna was the lead up and the afterbit of them having had sex. I don't know if I believe this or not... what are your thoughts?

Lastly, I must commend the English VAs on their incredible work. Andrew Francis is a great guy and he really pulled off Tokio well. Maggie Blue Ohara did a fantastic job of created a lost 16 year-old girl. Cindy was annoying as her character, and Sayuri was decent. Brad as Chris took some getting used to and I didn't like Teresa's VA but now that I know her *koff* history, it makes more sense why they chose it.

So, comments? Questions? Answers?
 
like many, I scoffed at overbearing preachiness of the story. It's been some time since I saw this anime. However, i wrote a review about it shortly after I saw it and I remeraber the character development to be rather shallow. Also, I did not think much of the love story most likely because it was overshadowed by the constant shower of proper environmental ethics. I would've liked to know more about the Juna's family or Chris's past and power. This is one anime where it probably would have been better to go 26 eps rather than 13. At the very least we would get to hear more of Yoko Kanno's wonderful melodies.

As for the English voice acting, I've only heard it a couple times and was neither impressed or dissapointed. That seems to often be the case when I see the entire series with the Japanese audio.
 
I thought about starting a new thread to ask about this series but since there were a couple and I'm not sure if belongs in fantasy/supernatural or magical girl genres I decided to revive an old thread that discussed it.

I like this series despite the preachy and overbearing nature of the story. It's got some very good ideas explored in it and most are quite sensible (with the exception of the whole maiden of time thing) plus the graphics and music are just entrancing. I love the music.

The ending was rather surprising to me, mostly for how it played out some aspects. The pace got rather frantic in the last few episodes but I don't think it would have benefited much from more episodes, it was slow starting so a little rebalancing could have evened it out.

It has a great musical score and the dub and sub are very good.

I loved the animation and along with the music they are probably enough to justify giving it a look whatever your opinion of the story.

Not a great series (too many dislikeable elements and/or characters) but a notable and memorable one for me.
 
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