YMMV / Earth Maiden Arjuna

• Awesome Art: Back then, it had some impressive animation - it shows.
• Awesome Music: The whole soundtrack is amazing. Unexpectedly, because the soundtrack was made by Yoko Freakin' Kanno, but when "Kakusei" comes on during episode 8, well damn.
• Harsher in Hindsight: This anime was created at the turn of the millennium, and it makes a lot of dramatised and allegorical predictions about the kind of effect mankind has had on the earth coupled with the supposition of how natural disasters and destruction will become more prevalent in the future as nature attempts to "correct the imbalance". Despite the obviously fictional context, the suggestion of the potential of human suffering at the hands of natural disasters cuts very close to the bone, particularly in the wake of hurricane Katrina, the tidal wave in Haiti, the hurricane in Chile, cyclone Yasi, and, as of 2011, the earthquake and subsequent tidal wave and nuclear instability in Japan. It is fairly obvious from the outset that this anime isn't based on a pointedly cautionary warning or a "We told you so" type underlay - it more draws on a discussion of naturalistic ethics and principles in an existential context, looking at the place of the human body and mind within the harmony of nature rather than anything else (with some very long Author Tracts and Character Filibusters to that effect) - but in retrospect, it gains a far harsher backlighting.
  • More specifically, Juna’s own grappling with her mortality in the face of environmental disaster can come across as this in light of Mami Higashiyama’s suffering from allergies to synthetic compounds in the air.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the penultimate episode, there’s a brief gag where Jin’s switches over to an English-language channel and quickly changes over because she doesn’t understand English. Mami Higashiyama later went on to become an English teacher for a few years.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Mushroom Samba-esque sequence in the forest when Juna starts freaking out after ingesting some fungi. And the ants. Oh boy, the ANTS!!
• Values Resonance: Due a raising concern to environmental issues during the last years, the discussion about the effect mankind has on earth life from this series are more likely to resonate with modern viewers.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Chris is very androgynous looking. In the Latin American dub, he is even voiced by a woman.

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