Alternate Title: St. Luminous Mission High School | 聖ルミナス女学院
Genre: Mystery | Supernatural | Psychological | Drama | Shoujo | Shoujo-Ai
Company: Pioneer
American Liscensing Company: None
Format: 13 episodes
Dates: 10/05/98 - 12/30/98
Original Creator: Kenji Terada
Age Rating: 15-18 and up
Synopsis: Kaihei is a highschool student himself when he finds that his deceased grandfather has left the chairman position for him of his all girls school, St. Luminous Mission High School. Now Kaihei is the only male student on campus (well...almost. Let's just say that Kaihei's best friend, who is male, is also enrolled at the school by funny circumstances). Besides being the only male student, he's also now the young chairman in charge of campus rules, happenings and punishments. However, when Kaihei arrives, it seems a student has gone missing. And soon after, more and more students disappear, literally vanishing into thin air! Can Kaihei recover the missing girls without police help and before graduation?

SCORE: 73%

This series most certainly wasn't the best animated, but it is the first mystery anime I've ever seen that kept my attention. It is also the first I've seen that handled the shoujo-ai genre well too. This series was a bizarre little number.

Plot: If you need one word to describe this anime's atmosphere, it is strange. It never ceased to amaze me (and aggravate me a tad) on how little people reacted when the girls would disappear. But then again, it is a big school, and at first it was only a few girls that just as well may have run off campus. But it still bugged me.

Any hoo, Kaihei was cute, if not a little spineless and non-personality. I LOVED RYUU! Ryuu kicks ass! LOL Ryuu's personality and mannerisms are awesome. You should check this series out just to check out Ryuu. It's great. ^_^

The plot does string a person along. I was really curious to see what had happened to the girls, and it was actually a pretty interesting concept with what the answer was, even if it was a bit cliche.

And of course, the prescence of shoujo-ai. You all must know what a rabid fan of shounen-ai/yaoi I am, so I was trying to be fair and find a shoujo-ai series to review. Well, all shoujo-ai/yuri titles tend to suck, but this one had a nice little shoujo-ai added in (you almost miss it early in the series, but you really see it the last episodes) without being plotless. Well done!

I was afraid that the fan service of this show would run rampant. However, the fan service was usually never out of context. Also, hinted nudity was very equal between genders, so I can't complain (afterall, that's only fair).

This series had an interesting concept. I wouldn't mind a sequel, since it could very much continue, although it's not necessary.

Visual: I'll be honest. Even with cute character designs and whatnot, this series was poorly animated. I even heard that quite a bit was re-animated when the show was either re-released or released on video. I didn't notice the poor animation at first (since I was reading subtitling after all), but it did get worst at times, and then would pick up the slack again. This show did have some neat viusals and nice colors, but in all truthfulness, this series was very poor in visual quality. See this series for a strange atmosphere and odd characters, but not for excellent visuals.

Sound: Sound effects weren't extraordinary. Just what was needed, although the sounds of water were pretty good.

The voice seiyuu were pretty good, even though I do think a couple supporting characters may had needed voice acting lessons, if even I, who can't understand Japanese, thought they sounded a bit off. However, this may not be a mistake; many of the students are suppose to be foreign, and you can hear their accents in their Japanese. So, the voice were well done.

The music was very repetitive, but I liked it myself. If you like the music, then you won't mind the pieces being played over and over. However, if you don't like the music initially, be prepared to hear it all again and again several times throughout the series.

The Dub: Is there a dub? I highly doubt there is acutally.

Extra Rants and Bitching: Ryuu! RYUU KICKS SO MUCH ASS! ^_^ I just like Ryuu because. :P

It's a shame there isn't much more info on this series. Finding pics for this series was a feat in itself. I hope a few more websites for this series will come up eventually, as well as a bit more information.

Websites:

Have a website about this series, or do you know of a good one? Want me to link to it on this review? Well, the feel free to email the sucker to me! Just make sure to put "Review Link" in the subject.