Saint Tail: Moonlight (aka Kitou Saint Tail) (2002)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Published by Tokyopop

Features:

• Textless ending
  
• Animated menus
  
• English and Japanese audio
  
• English subtitles
  
• Contains episodes 12-15 of the TV series
  

Dindrane's Anime Warnings:

• very large moon in the background will cause huge tidal upheavals and wide-spread destruction
• large lizard dressed as Santa, flying by balloons

Rating: unrated, safe for all ages

Anamorphic: N/A

My Advice: Borrow it.

Meimi is just your average private school student... except that at night, she becomes a magical thief, Saint Tail, complete with top hat and tails. Saint Tail is more the Robin Hood sort of thief, stealing things back from robbers who have stolen from innocents, often children. Meimi's best friend Seira is a novice nun, and she provides good advice and encouragement to our heroine. One of Meimi's school friends is Asuka Jr., the son of the chief of police. Junior is obsessed with capturing Saint Tail, and she enjoys leaving him clues about where she will be, kind of like the Riddler with Batman.

The plot of Saint Tail is very episodic. Without seeing the end of the series, it's difficult to assert that there is no over-arching storyline, but it seems to be one caper after another. Though the relationship between Saint Tail/Meimi and Junior does develop, this title is, on the whole, just innocent fun. It's even rather creative, given the inclusion of a nun and the interesting stage magician persona of Saint Tail.

The visuals of the series were taken from the original TV show and apparently not retouched, so there is some graininess. The colors are bright without being grating, and the art is attractive. The characters are drawn in typical shoujo style, with Saint Tail's superhero costume a magician's ensemble of black and pink. There was no noticeable artifacting or cross-coloration.

The sound is also decent enough, with the dubbed English voices doing a nice job of representing the character's personality and emotional state. Seira's voice is particularly appealing to me, as she succeeds in sounding moral and kind without just being a self-righteous shrew. The Japanese voices were also well-chosen, though a couple of the male voices were a bit similar in tone.

The case is attractive with a nice image of Meimi as Saint Tail, superimposed over the moon. It's plainer than many DVD covers are, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, given how tacky many covers are. The back has a couple other nice images, along with a listing of the episodes and brief synopses.

The features are pretty non-existent. The animated menus by Nightjar are nice, but that's it. Four episodes per disk is nice, especially when some production companies persist in putting only two on a disk.

Fans of the Sailor Moon and Cardcaptors school of Anime should give Saint Tail a shot. It lacks some of the punch and cuteness of Cardcaptors and the relative sophistication of Sailor Moon's complex storylines, but it's still a lot of fun, and a nice change from angsty everyday life. When you're tired of blood and sex, or of life just being hard, reaching for something like Saint Tail can be very rewarding.