Majutsushi Orphen

Six years ago at the magic school known as the Tower of Fang, a grave accident happened involving the magical sword Baltanders and the magic user Azalie. Unable to control the sword's power, Azalie was transformed into the shape of a great dragon who since that day became known as Bloody August. Krilancelo, a young magician at the Tower who cared greatly for Azalie found much to his disgust that the elders of the Tower of Fang were less than willing to save Azalie and wanted rather to pretend the accident never happened. Angered by their stand, Krilanceloa swore that he would find a way to return Azalie to her former self. Thus he forsook the name Krilancelo and declared himself Orphen, leaving the Tower and his magical studies behind to wander the world...

(Source: ANN, edited)

Orphen Main

Morikubo, Shoutarou Japanese

Everlasting, Cleao Main

Iizuka, Mayumi Japanese

Lin, Majic Main

Minami, Omi Japanese

Volkan Main

Ikura, Kazue Japanese

Dortin Main

Shiina, Hekiru Japanese

Cait-Sith, Azalie Supporting

Shinohara, Emi Japanese

Leki Supporting

Yoshida, Konami Japanese

Allenford, Hartia Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Powderfield, Childman Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Rai Supporting

Toriumi, Katsumi Japanese

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Abe, Michihisa Producer

Watanabe, Hiroshi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Tsuruoka, Youta Sound Director

Reviews

Jul 2, 2016

YouAreMySquishy

Recommended

A protagonist who gave up his name
Searching for a dragon out of affection
Accompanied by a rich girl and apprentice
Who seek guidance for a better life direction

With two trolls as comic relief
And a organization out to stop the hero
A story of trust and betrayal unfolds
With chances of success being zero

... What might sound as a familiar story
One you've heard time and again
Watch and you'll see what a nice story this is
Here is Majutsushi Orphen

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This is my first review on MAL and, to start this off, I chose a slow paced fantasy light-novel adaption that I recommend for those who enjoy adventure stories in search of forsaken loved ones.

Score Synopsis:
Story - 7
Art - 6
Sound - 7
Character - 8
Enjoyment - 6
Overall - 35/5 = 7

Story - 7
The story takes a while to get going and, a lot of the time, the majority of the situations for some episodes are only brought about for the sake of comic relief. However, as the story progresses, the emotional buildup begins to improve quite well once the backstory for the protagonist, Orphen, is told. With simple but decent magic fights and a likable trio to follow, I came to enjoy the romance and the internal struggles each character undergoes. The biggest issue is the slow pacing for the overall series.

Art - 6
As an anime that aired between 1998 and 1999, the art style was clearly dated but well done as a whole. Given how some scenes lasts for a long time, one would focus quite a bit on the scenery which was actually well done for its time. Still, in comparison to other anime of this time, this one wasn't able to stand out as much.

Sound - 7
For those of you that have spend lots of time listening to 90's anime music, you can guess what kind of music this show had. The usual endings are calming but I personally liked how upbeat the openings were with the first opening being Jazz. Voice acting was as you would expect from most 90's anime, okay but nothing spectacular.

Characters - 8
The characters are where the story really shines as the majority of this anime seemed more character driven than plot driven. Orphen, unlike most light-novel protagonists, is a cool protagonist who is a decent fighter and is sometimes a jerk to many of those he encounters. The most reoccurring female figure, Cleao, who I will admit is just there for comic relief was okay and, once the emotional aspect of the story came around, she actually became both likable and relatable. And then there's the try hard apprentice Majic who actually is the pinnacle of character development over the course of this series. As a whole, the lineup takes a while to get used to but, unlike many of the more recent light-novel adaptations, this group was quite solid.

Enjoyment - 6
I'll admit that the slow pace is not for everyone including myself and the two "comic relief" trolls will actually get annoying rather quickly. And I mean REALLY annoying for some occasions. Still, I enjoyed how each character developed as the story progressed as well as how much more relatable they became. No harems, no fancy battles, just pure and well-developed character development.

Overall - 7
This anime might not be for everyone given how slow and behind the times it is, but if good 90's music, a decent plot, and eventual "feels" is what you want, then I would recommend this to you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Nov 29, 2007

PregnantOrc

Mixed Feelings

Orphen is not something that will leave you thinking you just watched one of the greatest animes of all time. It's a good fantasy story presented in a nice way. The opening statement might sound negative but it's better to be blunt about it, it's not.

The story is enjoyable and the best thing about the anime. Some nice changes to pretty common story elements make Orphen get a story that is good and solid. The mix of humorus sceens and action and battle scenes it done very well and in a way that helps the story along and doesn't feel like it has been put ... there just for the heck of it. There are fightscenes but they are generaly not long. They are far from the battles of animes such as Dragon Ball or Bleach where they stretch on for several episodes with one episode dedicated to the yelling needed to power up. If you are a fan of these battles I whould not recomend Orphen to you for it's fight scenes. The battles mostly over after a few strikes. If you have read the Lord of the Rings trillogy you can expect the battles to be much in the same way when it comes to presentation. More focus on what happens before and after a fight than the actuall battle. They are not overly short but no longer than they need to be since they are not the main focus of the story. That is the hunt for the relics needed to transform Azalie back to her normal form before the Tower of Fang (called Talon`s Peak in the story synopsis) can kill her.

I like the art style of this anime. You can see that it's not a very new anime by just looking at it but with a fantasy story it doesn't hurt to think old. The backgrounds are detailed without having any real details. It might sound odd but it's the best way I can describe it. Everything has a good amount of colours in diffrent shades. Grass and stone are not one colour with another shade for shadows and highlights. They are done in the same style as paintings or the old disney films.
The characters are done in the three shades way mentioned above with the addition of another colour for lighting effects and fit very good onto the background.
The magic spells could have done with some more detail, they are very simply drawn but then it's pretty hard to add shadows to something that glows strong enough to make make all other shadows look weak.

The characters fullfill their roles very well even if they are very sterotypical in most cases. Despite that they are fun and fit into the story and they don't feel to sterotypical untill you start to analyze them. It whould have been fun to see a bit more character development from Majic and a bit more so from Cleo. It whould have been fun looking back at the anime but nothing I found myself thinking about while watching it. The others are done nicely enough.

The soundtrack did what it's supposed to. Be in the back but wasn't very intresting with the exeption of one track which was great. I also liked the opening and closing songs especially the closing ones. More personal taste than anything else in this case I'd guess since they are pretty standard. You'll like or love them while you watch but forget them after a while when they get replaced by the next thing you watch.

I whould highly recomend it to people who want to watch a good fantasy anime that has a good mix of story development, action and humor.
If you want a anime with lot's of actions and battles or a very deep and serious (in terms of theme) anime you should continue your search.
If you are looking for something good to watch in general, you could could easily do worse than watch Sorcerous Stabber Orphen.

Also for those who are not to elitist to watch dubbed anime. The english dubs are good.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 24, 2024

whatever5464

Not Recommended

Spoiler

The only good thing about the story was the whole twist of Azalie not being the damsel in distress but a borderline antagonist until the every end when she is persuaded to switch to the "good side" again.

Aside from that very specific core of the plot, everything else was bad, bad bad and bad.

The characters first of all are mostly rubbish:

Orphen is the generic MC with mostly no flaws aside from some teenager crisis there and there

Cleao is useless, totally, completely, utterly useless of a character, she does nothing except making the situation worse in some episodes even.

Majic... the only good thing about Majic that ... makes him slightly better than Cleao is that at the very least he carries Orphen's bags, so at least he tries to be useful.

Lekki is useless, she is just there to sell merchandises and making annoying noises.

Childman is the classic "Good person that sucks at explaining himself", if he had be more direct and tell Orphen everything from the start things would have been 300% easier, but then the whole plot wouldn't happen so...make your character act like an idiot because you cannot write a natural way to make the plot happen.

Azalie is a horrible person that made a huge mess and then got angry when she thought Childman was trying to kill her; I'm sorry, but Azalie aka Bloody August at the beginning of the show was attacking random villagers, does ANYBODY remember that? How many people did she kill? How many lives did she ruin? she well deserved to be killed, such a stupid entitled brat.

The two dwarves - if there was such a thing as cancer characters in a story - these two are just that, they're the annoyance incarnate, their only role in the story is to just cause troubles and be utterly insufferable, I simply hate them.

The sound is generic and repetitive - there is a sound effect of a dragon's cry that is used like 30 to 40 times throughout the anime, always the same effect repeated, so frigging annoying, considering it takes so little work to alter the same sound effect just a little so not make it sound exactly the same shows just how crappy was the sound director here,shame on him/her.
The only good thing about the sound is the ending music "Last Kiss" which is the only thing I remembered of this anime when I watched it in the late 90's

The art direction is awful, God knows just how much I hate stereotypical ambience to try to improve the pathos of emotions in a scene - why the stupid damn moon is always full when it's needed to be in the shot? why in that episode there are like 30 thunder sounds in 30 seconds just to accommodate the drama of the moment? why Orphen in that episode have to walk all the way to the end of a cliff to stare at the sunset? Because otherwise it won't be the stereotypical scene of the character pondering in the distance like, can you be any more stereotypical than this?

Overall, super boring anime, hard pass.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 10 Discussion Krayzel - Jun 1, 2011	5 replies	by Curarpikt93 »» Jan 14, 2023 3:14 AM
	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 23 Discussion Unkrowned - Jun 12, 2021	1 replies	by whatever5464 »» Jul 9, 2022 1:37 PM
	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 22 Discussion Unkrowned - Jun 12, 2021	1 replies	by whatever5464 »» Jul 8, 2022 11:23 AM
	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 20 Discussion Unkrowned - Jun 12, 2021	1 replies	by whatever5464 »» Jul 6, 2022 12:59 PM
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