The world is in trouble. Everywhere in the world, Raaja start to appear along with the pollution, caused by humans and something needs to be done. This is the message that Earth Girl Arjuna tries to bring. It features a high-school girl who receives the power of the earth in order to protect it. Unfortunately, though, she remains a high-school girl, and so she also has her own problems.
And that’s where the problem with this anime lies. The two major focuses of this anime, the endangered environment and Juna’s personal problems don’t really mix together. They’re constantly trying to get the centre of attention, not to mention that the love triangle, that takes up quite a bit of airtime just gets nowhere because of this. The individual parts are good, yes, but this anime really had an identity crisis throughout its run of 13 episodes.
There’s also this matter of the rather disappointing ending, shamelessly ripped off from Nausicaa. If you’re looking for an anime about human pollution, Nausicaa definitely is a better choice, as Earth Girl Arjuna comes with a bunch of theories that just don’t make any sense at all. Also, we never really get to know why Juna got her powers in the first place. The closest reason we get is “there was no other choice”. It’s also a bit too coincidental that the “big boss” is caused by none other than Juna’s boyfriend’s father.
Still, Earth Girl Arjuna isn’t all that bad. One thing it did right was character-development. The cast of characters gets well developed and explored throughout the anime, and I overall had a good time watching. It’s just that now that I started writing this review, I’m beginning to notice more and more flaws and plotholes. You’ll probably enjoy this if you don’t get too much bothered by these.
The graphics look quite interesting, Juna’s designs are done with quite some creativity, and the entire anime sparkles with imaginative choreography. The music also is quite unique. It’s not really memorable, but I can see myself going after the soundtrack, as there are quite a number of interesting tunes worth listening to.
Overall, Earth Girl Arjuna is not a bad anime; it just has a lot of flaws. Let me just warn you to skip the final episode, though, as it’s the worst episode in the entire series, and the perfect example of a bad and rushed ending.]]>
Earth Girl Arjuna Review – 72/100
I need to rewatch this show because I don’t really remember which plotholes you are talking about…it’s been a few years. It’s also one of my all-time favs, but I think that’s because I get all the different silly ideas in the show. It’s rather new-agey and definitely about as preachy as the typical Miyazaki environmentalist flick. A lot of people don’t like that.
Yeah, the preach part, especially of the final episode was a major turn-off for me. The plotholes I’m talking about were those centred around the main characters: who is Chris, for example. The answer in the final episode just wasn’t satisfying.
.-. i laughed when juna bit into a burger and then cried in the middle of the resturaunt
This is actually one of my favorite series, I liked some of the preachyness, it was pretty informative and let you know some important problems that can be addressed but it was the extreme preachyness that annoyed me and made me hate some episodes. I actual own the soundtracks to this show, one of my faves but I only listen to the slower tracks which are beautiful in my mind. I liked this show not for its environmental message but the coming of age and romance stories that were apparent in a good amount of episodes. I liked how everyone had certain issues and how Juna and Tokio struggle to establish a relationship and the somber moments were very well done, if the creators had done a high school drama this show would have been PERFECT, but the director screwed us over with the ending but despite all that I still loved the show.
This indeed could have been a great anime, if only the creators either managed to pick Juna’s situation or the dying earth. It seemed too much that these two focuses were fighting for the centre of attention, instead of cooperating. Still, I can imagine you people like it, as I really enjoyed some of the episodes myself as well.
Rumors were that the director Shoji Kawamori was actually influenced by some environmentalist cult that he’s a member of in Japan when he made this anime. Which is probably why most of its themes are so heavy-handed. Subsequently a lot of Kawamori’s anime since Arjuna also smacks of the same problems (re: Macross Zero).
Beautiful animation and music though. Sigh.
Am I the only one who finds it extremely unfortunate that people can’t watch a show without appreciating it’s value for being informative and having a strong message – getting you to THINK, because you’re scared of having something shoved down your throat? If hippies ‘preaching’ about how we’ve fucked up the Earth scares the hell out of you and your cozy little mindset, you clearly only watched this anime at face value.
The one major flaw of this anime is how short it is… if the production team had had more funding, time, etc. they would have been able to explain how Chris got his powers, the ancient people who made the Drop of Time, the origin of psychics and how their powers work… there were many things that could have been elaborated upon, but each of the existing episodes was equally as important as the next in the anime as a whole.
I just only recently finished the series and was curious of what people thought of it and stumbled upon this review.
All I have to say is, I agree with Devon. 🙂