Majutsushi Orphen

Six years ago at the magic school known as the Tower of Fang, a grave accident happened involving the magical sword Baltanders and the magic user Azalie. Unable to control the sword's power, Azalie was transformed into the shape of a great dragon who since that day became known as Bloody August. Krilancelo, a young magician at the Tower who cared greatly for Azalie found much to his disgust that the elders of the Tower of Fang were less than willing to save Azalie and wanted rather to pretend the accident never happened. Angered by their stand, Krilanceloa swore that he would find a way to return Azalie to her former self. Thus he forsook the name Krilancelo and declared himself Orphen, leaving the Tower and his magical studies behind to wander the world...

(Source: ANN, edited)

Orphen Main

Morikubo, Shoutarou Japanese

Everlasting, Cleao Main

Iizuka, Mayumi Japanese

Lin, Majic Main

Minami, Omi Japanese

Volkan Main

Ikura, Kazue Japanese

Dortin Main

Shiina, Hekiru Japanese

Cait-Sith, Azalie Supporting

Shinohara, Emi Japanese

Leki Supporting

Yoshida, Konami Japanese

Allenford, Hartia Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Powderfield, Childman Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Rai Supporting

Toriumi, Katsumi Japanese

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Abe, Michihisa Producer

Watanabe, Hiroshi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Tsuruoka, Youta Sound Director

Reviews

Jan 15, 2021

sakura3509

Recommended

After having watched all of the 1998 adaptation of Orphen, I felt compelled to sign up for MAL in an attempt to articulate my own review of this series. While this is by no means a perfect series, I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed watching this first season. Little did I know that this would become such a lengthy review.

The majority of anime that I have watched is more recent, from around 2010 and onwards. I knew that this being a bit of an older series, there may be some things that are more dated. But this anime really worked for me. In ... my opinion, it highlights some of the best things from the 90s era of anime: art, sound/music, hand drawn animation, and comedic charm.

Ok, so the story isn't something we've never heard of before. Protagonist embarks on a quest to fulfill a certain goal. But it's all about the journey! The episodes start off as primarily self-contained, but they build into a larger plot. (one that I will not go into detail about because, y'know, spoilers)

The art and animation are on point when it's considered a priority. Unfortunately, there are a few episodes where the art and animation are noticeably inconsistent. But when these two necessities are given the due care that they deserve, it was a beauty for me to look at. Especially the character art for our main leads.

For the Japanese dub, I found no issues with the sound. I especially enjoyed the different sound tracks that were used for the different tones of the show. Azalie's theme was probably my favorite. Both openings were solid with some great animation. The endings were nice, poppy bits that sort of softened whatever action/drama had taken place earlier in the episode. Character acting was nicely done, too. As for the English dub, I have come to understand that this was at one time a divisive topic. I can understand why. This anime received quite a few critiques for having parts of the script changed. This particularly happened a lot in the first twelve episodes. And there were a few times where I even found that off-putting. Like, why change the initial reason for why Cleao decided to join Orphen and Majic? And yet, there was something that kept me coming back to the dub. Maybe it was a curiosity to see what they would change this time? But I also will say that I think the script changes worked for the comedic bits. And the character acting, for the most part, charmed me. I'll admit that Cleao and Majic took a little bit of getting used to. But I felt like the dub actors acted their hearts out to portray their version of these characters. It became fun for me to compare the two different language versions. Where I take issue with the English dub is that there were times where the volume for a character in a scene was so quiet that I had to go back and replay that moment more than a couple times just to hear what was said. (Hopefully that's not my hearing becoming an issue.)

Ok, characters. For me, this was probably where Orphen wasn't as strong. I wish that a few of our more prominent characters received a bit more development. Not to say that there is no character development. And I'm sure a lot of people found the Volkan and Dortin scenes to be more annoying than anything else. Somehow, I didn't mind the two trolls. Also, Hartia is precious and must be protected at all costs. Orphen's development was handled really nicely. I came to really like him as a character. And even bratty Cleao became someone endearing.

Even though this anime has its flaws, my overall enjoyment was a 10. I finished all 24 episodes of this first season in both subbed and dubbed in one week. That's technically 48 episodes. Now for some, I know that's mere pocket change. But for me, that's a fast consumption rate. I laughed. I...might have cried. Bopped my head to some of the music. Also, without giving spoilers, I had a "wtf" moment with the resolution for one character at the end. It forced my hand to dock a point.If you don't find yourself enjoying the first five episodes, then this probably isn't an anime you want to continue. But man, I got a kick out of Orphen!

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jan 30, 2016

Redache

Mixed Feelings

Orphen is mostly your typical adventure/fantasy series. It doesn't stray far from it's genre, which in this case I don't really mind. It isn't trying to be more than it should be. However, that doesn't mean that it is a good series. Overall the series is slightly above average and has alot of the standard cliches that you would expect from a series in this genre.

The series stays close to the typical "I'm going to save the one I love" story. It isn't anything spectacular at first glance, but it does it's job pretty well by creating a goal and purpose for our main cast. ... I did appreciate the little twists in the plot, but it wasn't anything that will blow you away. Sometimes I even felt that it was executed and handled poorly.
The series explained parts of the story though the use of flashbacks, which I didn't really mind. The flashbacks were pretty well placed and it didn't made the viewer forget about the events in the present. The ending was predictable, but I didn't expect anything major or groundbreaking.
The story had it's fun moments, but when you look at the big picture it was mediocre at best.

The series dates back to 1998 and it showed when looking at the art. The art was dated, but is wasn't irritating to look at. The background were for the most part pretty dull and dark, but at the beginning of the series it looked very refreshing and sometimes beautifull. The character design were pretty cool, but the overuse of robes for most characters didn't give them any uniqueness in design and appearance-wise.

The sound is this series strongest point. There wasn't much OST which I didn't like and it fitted really well in the many scenes, but the different OST were starting to get overused as times past on. Both openings were really catchy and nice to listen to. The endings were average in my opinion. The voice actors did their jobs as they should have done. They all sounded allright and they could convey the emotions in a good way.

The characters were a downside for me. Our main cast got hardly any development through the series. At first I had high hopes for our main character Orphen, but he slowly began to feel like your typical shonen character which dissapointed me. Majic didn't change in a way or form. Cleao was the only main character with some development, but it wasn't anything big.
The series also had a comedic duo consisting of the brothers Volcan and Dortin. This kind of comedy is normally a hit or miss and in mine case it was a miss. It didn't make me laugh and because of the repetitiveness, I started to get irritated by our "comedic" duo.
The villians were pretty shallow in my opinion. It was very confusing at the end what actually the main reasoning behind their goals were.

In the end, I did enjoy this series in a way. The twists in the story and the nice music gave me the motivation to keep watching and see what happened next. The poor character development and overall predictable and mediocre story made me almost drop it, but in a way I'm happy that I continued to watch it.

I wouldn't reccomend this immediatly when someone wants to watch a series in this genre, but I would advise you to check it out when you have some spare time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 24, 2024

whatever5464

Not Recommended

Spoiler

The only good thing about the story was the whole twist of Azalie not being the damsel in distress but a borderline antagonist until the every end when she is persuaded to switch to the "good side" again.

Aside from that very specific core of the plot, everything else was bad, bad bad and bad.

The characters first of all are mostly rubbish:

Orphen is the generic MC with mostly no flaws aside from some teenager crisis there and there

Cleao is useless, totally, completely, utterly useless of a character, she does nothing except making the situation worse in some episodes even.

Majic... the only good thing about Majic that ... makes him slightly better than Cleao is that at the very least he carries Orphen's bags, so at least he tries to be useful.

Lekki is useless, she is just there to sell merchandises and making annoying noises.

Childman is the classic "Good person that sucks at explaining himself", if he had be more direct and tell Orphen everything from the start things would have been 300% easier, but then the whole plot wouldn't happen so...make your character act like an idiot because you cannot write a natural way to make the plot happen.

Azalie is a horrible person that made a huge mess and then got angry when she thought Childman was trying to kill her; I'm sorry, but Azalie aka Bloody August at the beginning of the show was attacking random villagers, does ANYBODY remember that? How many people did she kill? How many lives did she ruin? she well deserved to be killed, such a stupid entitled brat.

The two dwarves - if there was such a thing as cancer characters in a story - these two are just that, they're the annoyance incarnate, their only role in the story is to just cause troubles and be utterly insufferable, I simply hate them.

The sound is generic and repetitive - there is a sound effect of a dragon's cry that is used like 30 to 40 times throughout the anime, always the same effect repeated, so frigging annoying, considering it takes so little work to alter the same sound effect just a little so not make it sound exactly the same shows just how crappy was the sound director here,shame on him/her.
The only good thing about the sound is the ending music "Last Kiss" which is the only thing I remembered of this anime when I watched it in the late 90's

The art direction is awful, God knows just how much I hate stereotypical ambience to try to improve the pathos of emotions in a scene - why the stupid damn moon is always full when it's needed to be in the shot? why in that episode there are like 30 thunder sounds in 30 seconds just to accommodate the drama of the moment? why Orphen in that episode have to walk all the way to the end of a cliff to stare at the sunset? Because otherwise it won't be the stereotypical scene of the character pondering in the distance like, can you be any more stereotypical than this?

Overall, super boring anime, hard pass.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 10 Discussion Krayzel - Jun 1, 2011	5 replies	by Curarpikt93 »» Jan 14, 2023 3:14 AM
	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 23 Discussion Unkrowned - Jun 12, 2021	1 replies	by whatever5464 »» Jul 9, 2022 1:37 PM
	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 22 Discussion Unkrowned - Jun 12, 2021	1 replies	by whatever5464 »» Jul 8, 2022 11:23 AM
	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 20 Discussion Unkrowned - Jun 12, 2021	1 replies	by whatever5464 »» Jul 6, 2022 12:59 PM
	Poll: Majutsushi Orphen Episode 18 Discussion Unkrowned - Jun 12, 2021	1 replies	by whatever5464 »» Jul 5, 2022 2:49 PM

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