Seirei Tsukai

Based on the manga by Okazaki Takeshi begun in 1990.

After a family tragedy, Kagura is left with only his beloved friend Asami for consolation. Meanwhile, there is a war beginning in the spiritual world. Beings known as "Elementalors" call upon power from spirits to maintain harmony in the world by balancing individual forces of nature. Lord Shiki, a water Elementalor, kidnaps Asami in order to use special powers she posesses to retrieve his daughter, who has been imprisioned for nearly destroying the Earth. Kagura discovers that he is also an Elementalor—a very powerful one. He must join forces with other Elementalors to save Asami and prevent Lord Shiki from causing a great imbalance by releasing his daughter.

(Source: ANN)

Shiki Main

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

Asami Main

Shiina, Hekiru Japanese

Tsuyuha Main

Sakuma, Rei Japanese

Kagura Main

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Sai Supporting

Matsumoto, Yasunori Japanese

Akiyama, Katsuhito Producer, Director

Hasegawa, Yasuo Producer

Iwanami, Yoshikazu Sound Director

Gouda, Hiroaki Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Apr 9, 2013

Tomah

Mixed Feelings

Seirei Tsukai leads us to a nostalgia trip to the 1990's and its typical battle shounen series: corny, cheesy and flashy, but ultimately engaging, with charismatic characters and awesome battles. Unfortunately, Seirei Tsukai takes only the lame elements from the shounen formula and slams them all into a 48 minutes mess.

The plot is very standard, as you can read in the synopsis: normal guy receives the "call to adventure" after his friend has been captured, and it turns out he is some kind of "chosen one". Thus, he needs to defeat the bad guy. The problem is not the lack of originality, specially since there ... are some pretty interesting ideas, but the lazy storytelling. There's not enough time to actually care about what's going on, yet the movie insists on throwing plot element after plot element, until it simply ends, without even having a proper sense of closure. It's not an open ending, just a sub-par ending.

The animation itself is not bad, though obviously dated, and the battle sequences have some nice fluidity. However, none of this helps a lot when everything seems so bland. Have you ever seen the stereotypical shounen heroes that teen boys create when they are learning how to draw inspired by manga/anime? That's Seirei Tsukai's character designs for you. Odds are, you'll forget the characters' faces within 48 hours after watching it. As for the soundtrack, it's nothing spectacular, but decent enough.

It's possible that the lack of engagement is not because of the plot, but rather the characters. There are lots of examples of characters who are capable of stealing the spotlights and carrying the plot all by themselves due to their charisma, while some works choose to develop the main cast as a whole and offer meaningful relationships which the reader/viewer cares about. Similarly, poor characters can ruin the entire experience.

You'll probably not hate the characters, but you won't like them either. They are just actors fulfilling their roles on the stage, bi-dimensional figures moving around. This is supposed to be a sort of coming of age for Kagura, who sees himself completely alone in the world now that his sole emotional support has been gone and must awaken his inner powers to get the girl back, as a man. It could be charming, if it wasn't so literal. Kagura has no visible signs of actually maturing or coming to terms with his problems, he just pulls a magical power out of his ass and saves the day.

Yet, after all of this, Seirei Tsukai manages not keeping the viewer entirely bored. But don't give it much credit, as most of it derives from a feeling of nostalgia which summons the "inner kid" inside of people. It is, after all, an adventure filled with dangers, abilities and battles, such as Dragon Ball, Hokuto no Ken, Yu Yu Hakusho and other classics.

But the ultimate question for a battle shounen is: are the battles interesting? Well... they are nice to see, but hardly memorable or unique. And that's a shame, because the characters have such huge and almost unlimited abilities due to being able to manipulate elements. Compare this to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which can consistently deliver exciting battles with simple abilities used in extremely clever ways, and you'll see that there's no real competition. Still, you shouldn't be very disappointed if you want to see some powerful warriors kicking each others' butts.

So, who is Seirei Tsukai recommendable to? Mostly nostalgia fans from the 1990's, and even so with some caution. Ultimately, however, it's just a superficial journey to the past, without anything remarkable on its own.

(Reviewed for the club "Reviews for the unreviewed")

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Nov 26, 2024

Gsarthotegga

Not Recommended

After coming to appreciate Silent Mobius, I rummaged through AIC's other OVA and movie credits, and this short, action-packed OVA is one that I've had my eye on for a while, though the art is much more muddy and dated but not without a degree of charm. Your average wimpy main turns out to be the "chosen one." He has sad sack syndrome and survivor's guilt from being a rejected siscon whom everyone hates due to a melodramatic string of deaths that he's loosely associated with and for being an adopted bastard. Everyone, that is, except his little cutie moeblob who is trying to pull ... up his big boy pants for him, of course.

A bunch of elemental clans—the individual members being called ELEMENTALORS! SUPER COOOOOOOOL!!!—crossover into the boring human world to wreck the place and engage in stylish and creative fight sequences because... that's just what they do. Gotta keep the balance or some other vague fantasy cliche something something or other, you know?

Speaking of balance: there isn't time for any natural development of anything, at only 48 minutes, so it remains a sketch of a formulaic shonen, complete with abysmal storytelling and shallow characters. At least it's not too much of a slog and thankfully has a few sequences of enjoyable animation and fight scenes. There are directorial touches that make it watchable enough, but one would probably be better off viewing the best scenes on Sakugabooru. The pacing is too fast, but if you were to expand this series, the aesthetic would suffer, and it would probably be too slow and boring. The eternal catch-22 of shonen and vintage OVAs.

Finally, the ending is garbage. MC just has the most absurd amount of power without even trying and corrects everything in what amounts to the blandest kind of I BELIEVE IN MYSELF ending, which comes right after the cucked line to his moeblob about how he can endure as long as she's alive. If you weren't the chosen one, she'd dump you in less than a week.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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