Chikyuu Shoujo Arjuna

Juna Ariyoshi is an ordinary Japanese schoolgirl, who possesses a childlike curiosity and a strong iration toward nature. One day, while on a trip with her boyfriend, Tokio Oshima, Juna dies from a motorcycle accident. However, she is given a chance to live by an individual named Chris Hawken. He offers her powers that make her the avatar of time; in exchange, she must fight to protect the Earth from evil forces called raaja, which are born out of the toxic pollution human beings have caused.

She soon discovers that this is no easy task. While trying to master her newfound powers, she must also seek answers to deep questions about the ways science and technology have taken away humans' primal and instinctive connections with nature. With the help of Chris, his assistant Cindy Klein, and a powerful international organization named SEED, it is up to Juna to overcome her fears and find a way to stop the raaja from destroying everyone and everything she cares for.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ariyoshi, Juna Main

Higashiyama, Mami Japanese

Hawken, Chris Main

Ueda, Yuuji Japanese

Oshima, Tokio Main

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Klein, Cindy Main

Shintani, Mayumi Japanese

Shirakawa, Hiroshi ing

Hirose, Masashi Japanese

Ooshima, Akio ing

Ishizuka, Unshou Japanese

Shirakawa, Kimitoshi ing

Uwagawa, Emi Japanese

Shirakawa, Yukari ing

Araki, Kae Japanese

Inshi ing

Otsuka, Chikao Japanese

Doujima ing

Akimoto, Yousuke Japanese

Yukawa, Jun Producer

Satou, Michiaki Producer

Itabashi, Hidenori Producer

Takanashi, Minoru Producer

Reviews

Apr 9, 2009

Skadi

Recommended

Message films or those with controversial or social commentary often don’t seem to fair well with the general public. That is honestly the only reason I can see for this series having such a small base of viewers. Arjuna from an art and production standpoint is really one of the better shows I have seen and one that I think everyone should check out. It attempts to deal with some very important issues facing our planet from ecology issues to the over medication of society. For the most part it does a really good job at this, even though at times ... I felt it got overly preachy.

The story starts out with Juna, out heroine, being involved in an accident which leaves her dead. She feels her spirit slipping away when she is by another mysterious spirit who offers to save her life if she will help to save the planet and become the Avatar of Time. She accepts and much to the surprise of her mourning boyfriend, mother, and medical personal she jumps from her death bed and into action. Overall it’s a good start and we are treated to some good action right off the bat. From these beginnings you might think that this anime is going to be a pretty exciting action series. But the action soon lets up and slows down to a crawl. This is sure to disappoint some people who were expecting more action based story. Eventually it becomes a very endearing romance as well. I found this part of the series to be the most rewarding personally. The social commentary is also interesting as Juna learns about the world and what is damaging it and what could be done to fix it. Whether or not you agree with the conclusions or "facts" expressed in the show I think everyone can agree that the problems do exist. Many of these are hot political issues that have strong feelings on both sides of the debate. While I believe that some of the statements made in the show are naive and only tell partial truths at times, I still think it allows you to make up your own mind about what it is saying.

The relationship between Juna and Tokio is one of the best I have seen in a series to date. We get plenty of character development and a lot of back story on the both of them. They both feel like very real and relatable. Juna's struggle to be able to fit in with modern society after some of the changes her body goes through was interesting. This became a major part of the plot for most of the series as well as Tokio trying to understand what she is going through. Most of the ing characters are left in the background. This is good and bad. Good because it did allow the extra screen time to our leads and was what lead to them being so interesting to me. We do get to see some important side stories regarding Juna's and Tokio's family but some of these stories are left open towards the end without any real resolution. It wasn’t overly important to the story in the end but some of it I would have liked to know how it turned out. Particularly the side story involving Juna's older sister. The most irritating character to me was definitely Chris. I found him to be a pompous know it all who is constantly telling Juna one thing and then when she does it asking her why she did it.

The production values of Arjuna are quite spectacular. From the beautiful artwork to the epic feeling of the music, this series feels like a movie in a sense. The background music in particular really makes the story feel like a grand experience and is really one of the best music scores I’ve ever heard. The animation uses a lot of CG effects which are for the most part very good. Though I am not a fan of this style it did mostly flow seamlessly with the rest of the animation.

Where my score of Arjuna really drops is in my overall enjoyment, this is mainly due to the ending. While it’s not a bad ending, I just didn’t like it and was disappointed almost across the board. There was too much uncertainty regarding the fate of most of the cast and I was left confused by many of the sudden revelations at the end. Also the social commentary got fairly intense and overbearing towards the end too which affected my enjoyment. I felt my intelligence was being insulted to some extent as characters would lament the starvation of millions in Africa yet their policies on farming and livestock production would lead to millions or perhaps billions more starving. I also found it a bit naive that simply turning off ones air conditioner for two weeks in the summer or eating a little less meat would somehow solve the energy crisis or end world hunger.

Despite my problems with how things ended and with some the series opinions, I still found this to be a show well worth seeing. If you just look at it as a work of fiction and a story and not try to take what is said as the absolute truth you are sure to enjoy it for what it is, a wonderful romance and adventure. Those looking for action and intense special effects will be disappointed however. Arjuna is anime that should be viewed by more than it has been to this date.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 6, 2013

Fujaku

Mixed Feelings

I don't have much experience with the magical girl genre, and the magical girl anime I have seen aren't your typical magical girl anime. However, the few magical girl anime I have seen, I do not like very much, and Arjuna is no expectation.

Works that try to make someone care about a world issue, like the environment, are typically pulled down by the fact that it's very tough to get people nowadays to relate to it. I mean, sure I'm slightly concerned about pollution and stuff, but it doesn't directly affect me, so why should I do anything to stop it? Sure people are chopping ... down trees, but I'm not an animal living in a forest, so how does it affect me? I'm not a plant, so how does putting insecticides and other stuff like that on there affect me? If you can't relate to it, then you can't really care about it. I believe that the goal of an environmental work, or any preachy work for that matter, is to try and get the normal person to relate to whatever environmental problem there is, as these problems don't affect the lives of most people. The only thing I have ever seen do that right is the Ghilbi movie Pom Poko, which managed to get you to relate to the problems by showing you how the animals see things. How does Arjuna try to get you to care about the environment? It preaches it you.

Arjuna stuffs its morals down your throat instead of letting them sink in. Instead of showing you exactly how insecticides affect plants, it will put a dull four minute rant at the end of the episode about the episode that has little to do with the rest of the episode (which it does, like, three times.) And even when Arjuna does attempt to show you how we're harming the environment, its by having the main character not be able to eat fruit juice as it was processed. No, really. According to this anime, you can't eat anything apparently as it had something done to it to make it not natural. You can't even eat fruit you buy at the store as that has chemicals used on it. And guess what? Arjuna has more excellent morals to tell you along the way besides ones about the environment! Did you know its wrong to have babies in hospitals (*cough* Clannad After Story. By the way, this episode also shows an incredibly hilarious scene of a baby being born in the middle of the ocean and then somehow floating up to the surface. Yes, this is as dumb as it sounds/)? No? Well, how about how talking pulls us further apart? How about the evils of medicine? (and the next episode, they then proceed to go on a life-threatening journey to get some medicine. No comment.) I have a feeling that if we followed all of the side morals Arjuna offers along the way, we would all be dead.

But once you get past the ridiculousness of what this show is trying to tell you, shall we look at our plot? Plot? What plot? Well, okay, maybe the Rajaa do tie this show together barely, but for the most part, this show is an episodic show! With lame episodic plots that typically evolve Tokio and Juna arguing somewhere in there and of course Juna's best friend has a crush on Tokio and of course Juan sees them together at McDonalds and suspects the worse, as we all know that anime boys can't hang out with other girls without cheating on them! And when this show isn't throwing cheesy morals at you or offering your typical cheesy shoujo romance drama (of which I hate, by the way), it's offering some confusing rant by one of the characters with no point or a fight or just some mystery surrounding everything. And when the plot starts picking up in the final three episodes or so, it manages to be a total mess that makes no sense whatsoever, leading to a rather dumb ending that will have you shaking your heads to how dumb it is! Hooray!

Speaking of characters, they're very... Annoying, Juna just wants to know what's going on, is tomboyish, and is somewhat relaxed too. Tokio is an idiot who doesn't care about the environment and gets sick fast of Juna's inability to eat anything on this planet. Cindy is stuck-up and only cares about Chris, but has a sweet side to her, and Chris is just plain mysterious. All development is forced and doesn't feel very natural and several of the characters are a slight annoyance, like poor Tokio, who really wants to get transferred to a different anime. He's the one I relate to in this.

However, it is not a lost cause fully! The terrible plot and characters are slightly redeemed by two things! One- This show looks awesome. It has awesome animation and the character designs are the character designs I tend to lean towards liking more, ones without much detail around the hair and clothes but still look wonderful. Everything moves beautifully and fluidly. Two- This show has an awesome soundtrack by Yoko Kanno! Filled with beautiful vocal songs and an ending theme that changes often to make up for the fact it lacks an opening theme (which did kind of bother me as I like opening themes a lot and listen to several outside of when I'm watching anime),and the voice acting is decent enough too! This show has a budget! … If only it can get better writers.

All right! Arjuna Final Consensus
Story- Too preachy, dumb dumb side morals, sloppy ending caused by wasting too much time on episodic episodes- 4.
Characters- Never truly develop, Tokio gets annoying- 5.
Animation- Beautiful. Nothing more needs to be said- 10.
Sound- See above- 9.
Unfortunately, if you cover a broken window with a really pretty sheet, your window is still broken, and that's just terrible. If you're a fan of pretty visuals and can ignore the plot, try this, but everyone else should definitely skip this. I give Arjuna an overall score of 6, and even then that's being really much nicer than I should.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 5, 2017

street_carp

Not Recommended

Vacuous at its best, trite for the remainder.

The “pro-environment” message is the culmination of scientific illiteracy. The theme behind the entire plot is an attack on intellectual thought, and a vitriolic tantrum demanding a return to the ignorant bliss of an agrarian society. It fails to any claim it makes despite presenting pathetic straw men arguments that it pretends are the only refutation of the tired nonsense spewed throughout the show. Characters exist solely to deliver these one-off lines of dialogue in the interest of avoiding an actual counter, and this on its own deserves contempt. In addition, when they do make a claim ... it is simply untrue.

A pro-environment message would have been fine, but this show is a celebration of the banal tropes of the intellectually bereft. It’s claims range from nominally positive pro-recycling, to utterly insane predictions about genetically modified crops.

In a hilarious twist of irony one of the characters mentions what to do with their ashes after they’ve been cremated, as if feeding them to the birds will return any of the energy content of their body to the planetary ecosystem. Here is a science lesson about combustion. When something is burned, the energy content it contains is released as heat and light into the air. The action of combustion propels that energy content up into the atmosphere, and out of the planetary ecosystem.

There are no concessions to be made, it’s a social commentary piece that is entirely ignorant of its conceit.

PLOT: It tried to be avant-garde and unique, in the process it demonstrated a complete disregard for character motivation and interaction. Interconnectedness is cute, but it’s not at all unique. In combination with the thematic elements, it has no redeeming value.

CHARACTERS: Some of them are developed, some of them are “mysterious”, most of them only exist to spit out straw man arguments for the theme to “refute.”

ANIMATION: It’s inoffensive, and generally good quality. There are some uses of CGI that are slightly jarring, but the animation stands up well despite its age.

SOUND: The soundtrack is quite good. Despite my recommendation that you literally kill yourself rather than watch this, I enjoyed this little portion of it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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