Introduction

What is "Please Save My Earth"?

Please Save My Earth, known in Japan as Boku no Chikyuu o Mamotte (fondly abbreviated by Japanese fans as "Bokutama"), is at its core a story about aliens, reincarnation, E.S.P., and the meaning of life and love. Sound a little weighty and perhaps bizarre? Not really. This is also a love story; it could even be considered a typical shoujo high school fare, and the manga had a 21-volume run in the popular teenage shoujo magazine"Hana to Yume". However, this series has twist so profound that the series became an instant classic, beloved in Japan, and inspired some of the greatest artists, authors, and directors to create series that have become classics in their own right. The impact was so great that the author, Hiwatari Saki, had to start off her books with a disclaimer that "Bokutama" was fiction.

One of the most famous examples, Sailormoon by Takeuchi Naoko, was inspired by the reincarnation and moon themes of Please Save My Earth.

To fully appreciate "Please Save My Earth", I strongly suggest reading the manga, available in several different languages including Japanese, English, French, Chinese, Korean, and more. Although an excellent OVA series, a Music Video, and a Movie were made for Bokutama, those beautiful videos were essentially only a fraction of the entire manga series.

Often those who have only seen the "Please Save My Earth" OVAs are frustrated by the incomplete story, and cannot see why this series is so popular in Japan. Essentially, the OVA series only covers the first 8 volumes of the 21 volume series. The movie and music video, never released in the USA, have integrated footage from all 21 volumes of the series, but these are merely whispers of the whole story and are best suited as companion pieces for those who have read the manga.

A Brief History of the OVA

In the 1990s, the widespread practice was to create OVA (Original Video Animation) also known as OAV (Original Animated Video) companion movies for popular manga series as well as for original straight-to-video creations. OVAs were funded by the sales of the VHS tapes and LDs, so they were a popular market especially for series deemed "too mature" for TV audiences. TV series were funded for 26 episodes, whereas OVA series were given the same amount of money as a TV series but for a smaller number of episodes. Because of the high budget, low episode count, and greater project time, OVAs were often far superior in the technique and detail of the artwork. Many of the most famous OVAs from this era (Record of Lodoss War, Vampire Princess Miyu, Bubblegum Crisis for example) have incredibly beautiful hand-painted cel artwork, and the cels from the series command top dollar. Often the original "genga" (cel concept sketches) were done with input from the key artist, which was in some cases the manga artist. Please Save My Earth was given an OVA budget, and the director, Kazuo Yamazaki, opted to go with the highest quality series possible even if the entire story could not be told. Read an interview with Kazuo Yamazaki here.

What happened to OVAs? Due to rising costs, increased piracy, and the advent of the "information now" age, the sales of OVAs dwindled. The price point became too high for many people, and the production companies found that they could not make back in sales what it cost to produce a series. It was more commercially viable to produce TV series which would reach a larger audience, bring in advertising, and also help sell tie-in products. One of the changes to produce high-quality artwork series was to take a 26-episode TV budget and instead use it to produce a 13-episode high-quality TV series. Generally 13-episode TV series are today what OVAs were in the 1980s and 1990s. OVAs virtually disappeared for several years, only recently making a comeback but in an entirely different format: they are included as "bonus" videos, generally one episode only, and packaged with movies, games, and manga magazines. These new OVAs often have substandard animation, are often created with CG (computer graphics) and are given away for free.

An Introduction to Please Save My Earth

The story is about a shy young girl from Hokkaido named Sakaguchi Alice who moves to the large city of Tokyo after her father is transferred. Alice, named for "Alice in Wonderland", has always been an odd child. She noticed at a young age that the plants seem to speak to her, and that she can understand the thoughts of animals, and because of her eccentricities she has always had a difficult time making friends. One of the first people she meets in Tokyo is her 7-year-old neighbor, Kobayashi Ring, who seems fascinated with her and often torments her in the way a young boy typically teases a girl he likes.

Ring's mother requests that Alice baby sit Ring, as he is so fond of her, and Alice takes the job even though Ring is someone she would rather avoid. Alice discovers that Ring is afraid of animals, and decides to take Ring to the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo. The day at the zoo goes very well, and Alice and Ring seem to be forming a solid friendship, and she buys him a crocus bulb (a type of flowering bulb) that he can take home and let bloom. Ring is happy and much more agreeable than he has been in the past, until the two of them run into two of Alice's classmates, Ogura Jinpachi and Nishikori Issei.

Alice is at first startled by the two because she saw the two at school the day before in what appeared to be a compromising position. Considering that both are boys, Alice was not sure what to think about the scene she witnessed where Jinpachi and Issei looked as if they were about to kiss. Issei and Jinpachi tell her that she misunderstood, and they ask to tell her their story. Alice reluctantly agrees, and Ring grows jealous that Alice is taking time out of their "date" to spend with the two older boys.

Jinpachi and Issei tell an astounding story. The two had been having dreams where they are human-looking alien scientists from a distant galaxy who lived in a base on the Earth's Moon with five other scientists. Jinpachi is a male named "Gyokuran" and Issei is a female named "Enju". At first their dreams were interesting, and the two friends were astounded to find out that they were both having the same dreams, until a couple of nights ago when they had a dream about Gyokuran and Enju consummating their relationship. This confused both of them, and they were discussing that dream when Alice came across them at school.

Alice and Ring are not sure what to believe, and Ring grows increasingly jealous as Jinpachi mentions that they shared this story with Alice because there was a sense of deja vu with them for her. Alice and Ring leave, and he grows more troublesome as the evening passes, asking Alice if Jinpachi is the kind of guy she likes. Alice admits that she might, and Ring becomes enraged, taking the crocus bulb she had bought for him and running over to the balcony of his apartment, sitting on the edge of the wall of the balcony, prepared to drop the bulb to the ground below.

Alice, a staunch friend of plants, is horrified and slaps Ring for his bad behavior. Unfortunately, he loses his balance after she slaps him and he goes falling off the balcony -- which is several stories off of the ground. Ring almost dies, Alice's heart is broken over her actions, and this "near death" sets in motion the events of the rest of the series. Ring wakes from his coma after the accident with "moon dreams" too, and discovers that he as E.S.P. and his new memories and powers change the entire tone of the series, despite the fact that he hides his memories and powers from the others. Alice herself has a dream of the moon, where she is a stunningly beautiful blonde kichess (a type of priestess with the ability to make the plants grown and communicate with animals) named Mokuren and she is married to a handsome dark-skinned man named Shion.

Alice shares her dream with Issei and Jinpachi, and draws pictures of the two people in her dream. Jinpachi and Issei are stunned, recognizing instantly that the pictures are of Mokuren and Shion. Not believing that shy Alice could possibly be the vibrant and stunning Mokuren, they ask her if she was Shion in the dream. Alice shyly admits that she was Mokuren instead, shocking both boys, but especially Jinpachi whose "Gyokuran" had been in love with Mokuren. The three of them decide to try and find the "others" who had been with them in the moon dreams, Shusuran, Hiragi, Shukaido, and Shion. They put an advertisement in the supernatural magazine "Boo!" and quickly discover Shusuran and Hiragi who live in a different part of Tokyo.

Shusuren is one Kokushou Sakura, and Hiragi is Dobashi Daisuke. The two of them had been having moon dreams since they were small children, and discovered that they shared these dreams on an elementary school field trip. They have had many more dreams than the others, and they share the fact that the dreams are actually memories of a previous life on the moon. All of the "moon characters" are dead from a disease that affected the alien scientists, and they have been reincarnated as the "earth characters". They also reveal that the home galaxy of the scientists had also been destroyed by a great interstellar war.

As the series goes on, we discover far more about the past lives of the main characters, and the search is on for the human identities of Shion and Shukaido. And who is Ring the reincarnation of? The answer to that question, as well as his motivations, are the core of "Please Save My Earth". Nothing is as it seems, the relationships between the characters in both their past and present lives become the core of the story.

To reveal more would be too much of a spoiler, so I have opted to put these items on the character pages. The spoilers are hidden unless you choose to view them, but for more information on "who's who" and "who ends up with who", etc., please check the character pages.