Fushigi Yuugi

I see this anime has quite good notes, so i think I should add my opinion.

I've seen some anime by now, and I have to tell that they aren't a lot of series that were such a pain to watch like this one. I mean I'm not a big fan of shoujo or romance, but to be honest: it's not the point.

Story isn't bad. I like fantasy, magic, alternative worlds etc. Maybe it's not super duper complicated but I don't have too high expectations either.

Art
Well, let's say Pierrot.
But not Naruto-like, a little bit better than usually. Drawing was like you should expect from ... 13 years old anime. Animation in fights is so-so, scenes are colorful...

Sound
Opening and ending aren't anything special. Soundtrack? I didn't notice, nut maybe it's better.

Characters
It's the biggest vice here. Romance thread is really important here so, unfortunately, we have to cope with main character Miaka all the time. Miaka is an idiot. First she resembled me Usagi form Sailor Moon: she eats a lot, she's cute (but not pretty anyway), but she's even more hopeless and helpless. But it's not a reason to do nothing, right? So Miaka doesn't listen to anybody who ask her to wait or stay somewhere and then she tries to fight enemy alone and then she's captured and then rest of team have to rescue her. It happens over and over a-gain. Miaka is indecisive too. She love Tamahome and wants to spend all her life by his side only to realize taht their relationship is impossible and break up in the next episode. Later they make-up but not for too long. Reasons are always the same. Rest of characters isn't bad, but there's too much of Miaka and her problems in 52 episodes.

Enjoyment: it was a pain. Reason is mentioned above.
Well, my english isn't good enough to express all my feelings, negative I guess, but I think you have to watch it yourself. How you will rate it depends IMO on your gender prefrences and audience's sex.

Fushigi Yuugi was one of the cartoon shows I watched in AXN when I was a kid. It was fun to watch but now I'm older, I have a different perspective. The art and animation was ok. The fighting scenes are ok as well but the problem lies within the main character of the show.

Miaka Yuki:

She is greedy, stupid, coward, crybaby. Everytime when she wants to rescue Yui, she always thinks of Tamahome. She keeps saying "Tamahome! Tamahome!" many times until I got tired of it. Just like characters keep saying the name of a person who he or she loves like Yuka Minase from ... 11eyes, Orihime Inoue from Bleach. She also becomes vulnerable in situations and becomes the damsel in distress. She always do not want to accept the difficulties in life and she easily cries all the time.

I really just don't understand why the characters like Miaka.

So because of her, she screwed the whole show for me and I am not going to watch it again. As a note, I really hate whiny and crybaby anime characters like her. If you enjoy the series, that's cool. But I just couldn't dwell in it.

Fushigi Yuugi gets some passes because of it's age and because of the nature of the shoujo genre in the 90's.

This being said, the main character is still utterly stupid and unacceptable. The characters are a real shortcoming in this anime. Miaka is not a heroine. She is a cipher for the viewer to place themselves in. Even when she finally attains the ability to defend herself she ends up being AWFUL at it. Her main jobs in the anime is to serve as a global taunt for the enemies, eat food, and be the cipher/object of the reverse harem's affections. This is literally ... all she does for 50 episodes. It blows me away how characters like Bella Swan are so rejected and torn apart by most fandoms but characters like Miaka are acceptable.

The characters I found most interesting weren't even the "good guys". Yui had the potential for MASSIVE development in the series due to her experiences but she was never really given any chances. She's vastly ignored for a part of it and ends up getting defined by one bad thing that happened to her. At that point, she isn't really a person, as much as she is "That girl that had the bad thing happen and now she's bad too."

Also, if you're a victim of sexual assault, I suggest staying away from this anime. I dropped the series a couple times throughout because of how poorly and insultingly that subject is dealt with. Unless you like it being implied that you're damaged goods.

If you're looking for a lighthearted "girl out of place" type anime, I suggest trying something like Inuyasha and staying far away from this. It has not aged well.

Story: Has real potential but gets totally botched by bad characters.

Art: Fine. I with there had been more animated combat.

Sound: Fine. Nothing stand out as good or bad.

Characters: ...Awful.

Enjoyment: While I did complete the anime, I would hesitate to say I "enjoyed" it. More so I was hoping the heroine would redeem herself for 50 episodes of shame. She never did.

Overall: Mediocre

Fushigi Yûgi is like if The Neverending Story was a melodramatic soap opera. It literally has the same precurser to The Neverending Story: two girls go to an antiquated library and then get rabbit holed into a magical storybook, but in this variation, it isn’t a high fantasy world, but a mystical version of ancient China. This series would have been much stronger if Yu Watase could write a story without leaning on the same old, tired reverse harem tropes.

• As far as the characters are concerned, there are a multitudinous amount in this series. There are seven Celestial Warriors to protecting the priestesses of fate ... from the opposing factionsーthe warring territories of the Gods: Suzaku & Seiryuu; exactly like the rivalry between the Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth in X/1999 (CLAMP). Unfortunately, I found the main two love interests DREADFULLY annoying.

• The main girl, Miaka, is an air-head who’s only talent is eating and having a pure heart―and since this is a shoujo manga, the “mary-sue” trope makes the female lead the most desirable to all of the male characters, even if she does nothing to earn the power of priestess and her main superpower isn’t kicking ass, but rather, whimpering about her boyfriend and turning down other men who make advances towards her. Admittedly, she does develop a little bit as the story goes on and becomes a little less whiny when the war causes families to be slaughtered and leavess villages in ruin, but through 95% of the series, all she does is whine about Tamahome (the first person who saved her when she was transported into a celestial Chinese world).

• Tamahome, on the other hand, is more likable, I guess? He at least has a motivation for his actions: he’s greedy because he’s feeding his impoverished family. That’s great, but he’s a really terrible boyfriend to Miaka, breaking up with her and repeating the same old, tired Twilight tropes of “we can’t be together” and then dramatically leaving Miaka to swoon in her overly-dramatized heartbreak. They had as much conflict as a couple as Inuyasha and Kagome; one of them is being seduced by another person, OH NO, but it turns out that it’s just a huge misunderstanding or the character is brainwashed and they get back together.

• I’m not a huge proponent of stories having a good “message,” because I personally feel that a story should be able to stand on its own without shoving some kind of “life lesson” propaganda down your throat, but when there’s an elderly lady narrating the beginning of every episode, talking as if this is a story that has merit because of the character’s strong and tenacious spirits, then I expect a female lead would dump a male protagonist who gets brainwashed and cheats on her, while beating the crap out of her and breaking her arm, AND she still whines about it instead of getting pissed, even though she doesn’t even KNOW that Tamahome is brainwashed. It’s like the lonely James Cameron, Titanic fantasy of, “I’ll always wait for you,” because that’s apparently what docile shoujo heroines are supposed to do―sigh and stare out the window until their long-lost love returns.

• Two particularly likable characters in this series is a trans-woman named Nuriko and one of Miaka’s love interests, Tasuki; Tasuki was refreshing as suitor because he actually focused on his duties as the protector of the priestess and wasn’t pinning her down on a bed and confessing his love to her every other episode, not until the OVA at least. Nuriko is a badass who has super strength, but still manages to stay feminine and refined. She also is still an incredible best friend and protector of Miaka; despite the man that she’s in love with, Hotohori, having the hots for her friend. After watching and reading, Fushigi Yuugi, I wanted Nuriko to be my friend!

• There’s an interesting dynamic with the war between Suzaku and Seiryuu; during the last half of the series, it is revealed that two identical twin brothers were chosen to be on opposite sides of the war, it was something that was supposedly decided by fate and I thought that plot twist made a better statement towards to cruelty of pre-ordained destinies than the other chipper warriors. The series focuses on this with another twist that’s revealed, but I won’t ruin it the people who want to be surprised about it later. The most irritating thing about this series is that the “plot,” for the most part seems to accommodate romantic tensions and drama rather than focusing on the actual horrors of war. It’s more like the two factions are houses in the Hogwarts dormitory, rather than soldiers forced to risk their lives in battle, for the vague motive of having the priestesses’ wish granted by the Gods.

• Overall, Fushigi Yuugi is an iconic series of its generation, but it has so much contrived drama that it’s hard to take seriously. I have nostalgia of plugging my earbuds in and listening to the MIDI version of “I Wish” on the way to school, but I believe that this series is a relic that only the young could enjoy with all of the juvenile stereotypes laid into its framework; unless you’re an older person with the tastes of a prepubescent who’s constantly tormented about their unrequited love and sniffling into a tissue somberly while writing a fujoshi fanfiction about twincest. I honestly think that Yu Watase’s best work was Ayashi no Ceres, Fushigi Yugi never made me get emotional, but Ceres did. Volume 8 of the manga made me sob like a baby when I was fifteen. I liked her other “dark” series, Alice 19th, as well, but I felt like it was short-lived and could have been more than what it was, since it was invoking a Kaori Yuki style of dark dreamscapes. Fushigi Yuugi is admittedly better than ONE other series in Yu Watase’s mangaography: Absolute Boyfriend, which is a reverse harem version of Chobits and pure terribad trash. Overall, Fushigi Yuugi is like an animated fanfiction, I give the TV series a 4/10, the two OVA(s) a 3/10 because of feeling that they were unnecessary after the series’ conclusion, Fushigi Yuugi: Eikoden a 1/10 because it’s filler trash, and I give the manga for Fushigi Yuugi a 5/10 because Yu Watase has pretty art and the Miaka’s whininess doesn’t have a voice.