Fushigi Yuugi : The Legend of Four Gods

It's been so long when I was first hooked by the fushigi yuugi series being shown in TV. As far as I remember, I was in Grade 4 when I first saw this anime in a local TV network here in the Philippines where the voices of the characters were dubbed in Filipino language, and where every episode was being aired every Friday nights around 8:30 pm. That time, the series was about the legends of Suzaku and Seiryuu, two of the 4 great beasts who said to protect the four main regions of the ancient China and where being included in mystical book of The Universe of the Four Gods. The series tells  the myth of a maiden coming from the other world who will be chosen to enter the book and who will have the power to summon the mythical beast to save its designated region from its conquerors. But to do this, she has to find the 7 celestial warriors who will protect here in her journey. In the Suzaku/Seiryuu series, two maidens had entered the book at the same time making each one of them to represent the rival empires for Suzaku and Seiryuu. The story is somehow the combination of the adventures of these two ordinary girls who became the priestess of the two rival empires causing there friendship to be broken by the opposing principles and ideology of the wars between the two empires.

Well, although the story includes the complicated events because of the wars, emotional influences of one character to one another and other sorrowful things happened to the characters, I still enjoyed the humorous scenes of each character making some events in the series to be so funny. The series had also showed the awesome special powers of each celestial warrior as they go along with the maiden with her journey and of course, the romantic scenes of the maiden to some of the members of her celestial warriors who felt something special to her, much special to be just her protector.

The Maidens of Suzaku and Seiryuu with their Celestial Warriors

Fushigi Yuugi Opening Theme



Fushigi Yuugi Closing Theme

After many years of being fan of this anime series, last week as I was browsing the net, I visited a "manga-series" site where I found another fushigi yuugi legend and this time it's about the adventures of the maiden of the Genbu (Genbu is also one of the 4 mythical beast included in the book of The Universe of the Four Gods along with Suzaku, Seiryuu and Biakku). And since, the Legend of Genbu was partially included in the Suzaku/Seiryuu series that I watched during my childhood days, I was really curious about its story. Definitely, this was my first try of reading a manga series and I'm not really sure if I can really enjoy reading a story out of those comic-type sketches and dialogues. But as I was reading this,  I just started to continue loving it and also enjoyed it.

So what about the story? Well, the Legend of Genbu compared to the first released legends of Suzaku and Seiryuu had some similarities when it comes to the way how the author associated Love between the maiden to a celestial warrior, and the same with the first released installments of this series, the empire where the god Seiryuu was worshiped, was the bad empire-conqueror in this story (known to be the empire of Kotou, a powerful military empire where its emperor wanted to conquer all the other 3 regions of the ancient China). But then, the characters of the maiden herself and the celestial warriors are totally different in this story. The time-setting also of the story is different because the appearance of the maiden of Genbu in that book occured 200 years before the maidens of Suzaku and Seiryuu entered that book (as what had included in the Suzaku/Seiryuu series) and of course, the maiden of Genbu was said to be the first one to enter the book before the 3 other maidens were chosen. The manga still includes humorous, tragic and a lot of fighting scenes from the characters; but this legend, has a different sets of twists in the story that will really capture the attention of its readers and will keep them thinking after reading every chapter of it. At this point, I'm not yet done reading the series (since the author is not yet finished with the story) and I cant' really wait what will happen next. So far, the Biakku series is not yet released and I hope the author will start working on it as soon as he is finished with the Genbu series.

Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden Series