El Hazard Ova, Vol. 1

The discovery of extraordinary ruins beneath the high school becomes the adventure of a lifetime when several students and their teacher are transported to the magical world of El-Hazard! There, each learns to cope with strange new powers and even stranger surroundings. Beautiful women, insane rivalries and bugs the size of people are everyday features in this new world that promises adventure and excitement - but no way home... Product Description

A Guilty Pleasure...

El-Hazard was one of the first animes that I ever watched back in the late 90's. I liked the adventure, story and most importantly, the comedy! I had both OVAs and both TV runs on VHS and would watch them quite often. When anime started to be released on DVD, I never upgraded my collection of El-Hazard. I was aware of the boxsets that were out, but now that i'm in my 20's I pretty much only stick to dark, more serious anime (Witch Hunter Robin, The Twelve Kingdoms, Ergo Proxy, etc.). However I recently noticed that Geneon was re-releasing the El-Hazard OVAs in single DVD volumes and much cheaper then their previous boxset version... So I decided to pick up volume 1.

Watching these 4 episodes brought back a lot of memories as I haven't watched the series in over 6 years. Mr. Fujisawa's drinking problem, Jinnai's laugh and Makoto's struggling fight to get all the women off of him made me remember how classic of a series this is. It is my belief that every anime fan should have at least one comedy in their collection and for me its El-Hazard. I never was a fan of it's so called "sister" show, Tenchi Muyo. El-Hazard always did a better job of grabbing my attention with its fantasy world.

The DVD itself is pretty bare... No special features aside from an art gallery. However the DVD artwork and menus are pretty top notch. And the picture and sound quality is better then that of the original VHS versions. If you're a fan and don't already own the 2001 boxset for the OVAs then I strongly recommend picking up these cheaper volumes. I'm curious if Geneon will re-release the 2 TV shows after the OVAs... July 27, 2007

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