Kaitou Saint Tail

Saint Tail is a pleasant, light hearted series about a teenage girl, Meimi, who (between having a magician father and an ex/thief mother) disguises herself as Saint Tail to do good deeds, usually returning something that was wrongfully stolen to its rightful owner. She does this with the help of her best friend Seira, a nun in training.

Along the way, she manages to pick up the attention of Asuka Jr, a detectives son who is determined to catch her, originally for justice, then to just prove he can, and then for even more complicated reasons. Meimi finds herself developing a crush on Asuka, which complicates things, as she has to hide her secret identity.

Not an incredibly plausible premise, and perhaps not very original. But it is well executed, with entertaining characters and nice artwork. In order to stretch the plotline from the book series that it's based on, the animators decided to come up with more random things for her to steal, and more foolish mistakes for Asuka and the classmates to make. This can get rather repetitive, but the episodes that are directly pulled from the books are very well done, and the relationship between Meimi and Asuka is sweet and touching, as well as confusing and at times down right comical.

If you are into the kind of "magical girl" anime style, don't pass it up. If you're not a fan of that, it's probably not for you. I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Tokyopop has just released the English-language version of this 1995 TV show. Not to be confused with the 1999 show Kamikaze Thief Jeanne, Kaitou Saint Tail also deals with a teenage thief who uses her skills for good purposes. The tone of the stories and the character designs makes me think this show is aimed at a very young viewer, someone who might like Pokemon for instance. The premise of the story is a little shakey. Meimi and Seira are both students at St. Paulia, a Catholic school and Seira also hears confessions as a nun-in-training. In reality she wouldn't be hearing any confessions but the story demands that Seira pass on information to her friend Meimi so she can right wrongs as Saint Tail. Saint Tail uses stage magic as her gimmick and her costume reminds you of a stage magician with her top hat and cane. I've seen the first three episodes and the Tokyopop title "Sweet Tales of Saint Tail" describes the series well even though that is not exactly the right translation.

When I first started collecting this series on DVD,I have to say out of all the Magical girl anime that I've seen,this is the best. It had a great story line,and was very entertaining. I have to say Saint Tail is kinda doing the right thing of getting the item back,and return to it's rightful owner. What this series also tells us is,we should never steal and take stuff that does not belong to us. It's very important and when we do wrong,not only would we hurt them,we would even feel bad about it ourselves. But however,this series is one of a kind,and the best for children. So in closing,if you like to see something good,then see this series. It's the best.

I have a lot of anime titles, and this one is my favorite. I only wish they would have finished translating the series into English instead of releasing the remaining episodes in one big set with the subtitles. The plot is catchy and pretty funny, and there is a some love/hate romance that is just hilarious. The whole modern day Robin Hood storyline is funny as are Askua Jr.'s attempts at catching Saint Tail. If I have one criticism of the storyline, it is that EVERYBODY with a problem seems to find their way to the church located on the school grounds. That is a little tiring after 40 episodes or so, but the stories are innovative and that makes up for it. If you are going to watch one animated series, this is the one!