Ellcia features I guess a kinda standard ‘chosen one’ story but there’s a few surprises nevertheless.

Ellcia (Gensō Jodan Elicia) 1992

This OVA never gripped me fully – but I still enjoyed it; there’s a nice mix of humour and action throughout, along with some striking visuals, even if the animation might not look through-the-roof-good.

I also enjoyed the way the storyline opened up a little to reveal how certain characters were at cross-purposes, adding an extra element to what starts off as fairly a straight forward Good vs Evil tale.

At times, some aspects tended to feel a little rushed, particularly in the final episode, and maybe if Ellcia was closer to 12 shorter episodes that could have alleviated the issue for me, however, seeing the magical ship in action was always interesting and I loved its design.

So too, for one of the main (somewhat) panther-like villains, who managed to make whiskers seem evil! On a related note, I couldn’t help feeling that the ‘motley’ look to the costumes of Ellcia’s crew didn’t signal ‘pirate’ as much as ‘circus clown’ at times?

Maybe that’s a minor quibble – but the sum of the shortcomings as I saw them weren’t enough to ‘ruin’ this lesser-known OAV series by any stretch, and so it’s a definitely ‘3 star’ kinda show I reckon.

One of the reasonably early works of J.C.Staff, who you might recognise as being behind (among many others) shows like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Excel Saga.  

3 Stars