MERMAID SAGA

is a series of manga graphic novels in three volumes by Japanese mangaka Rumiko Takahashi. Two of the stories from the series, ''Mermaid Forest'' and ''Mermaid's Scar'', have been adapted as anime OVAs, and all of the tales, except one, were later produced as an anime TV series.

Contents

History

Summary

Manga volumes

List of TV Episodes

Episode Summary

Characters

Main characters

Other characters

References

External links

History

The original manga was serialised in Shōnen Sunday, starting in 1984. The first tankōbon was ''Ningyo no Mori'', named after the third story within it, or ''Rumic World: Ningyo no Mori'' in it's OVA adaptation.^[1]
This first OVA was released in Japan in August of 1991 and was picked up surprisingly quickly in the United States. It was distributed by Central Park Media and was marketed as one of the "Rumik World" anime (along with ''Maris the Chojo'', ''Fire Tripper'', and ''Laughing Target''). ''Mermaid Forest'' is available subtitled only.
''Mermaid's Scar'', released in September 1993 has the distinction of being one of the two titles which launched VIZ Media's anime line, VIZ Video. Along with ''Ranma ½'', Mermaid's Scar broke ground for VIZ and set them along the path as one of the leading anime producers in America. ''Mermaid's Scar'' is available dubbed only.
In 2003 the animation company Tōkyō Movie Shinsha produced a 13 episodes TV series based on Takahashi's short stories as part of the Takahashi Rumiko Gekijō series. All but ''Mermaid's Gaze'' were animated. While closely following the story of the original manga (more so than the OVA versions), many of the violent aspects of the stories were toned down. Only 11 episodes were shown on Japanese TV, with the final two episodes (''Mermaid's Scar'') released direct to video, allegedly because this particular story was too violent for TV. It was released in North America by Geneon.

Summary

Legend has it that those who eat the flesh of a mermaid may become immortal. However, there is a small chance of that happening, with a much greater chance that the consumer will die or become a damned creature known as a Lost Soul. Mermaid Saga tells the tale of two immortals, Yuta and Mana, who travel across Japan and meet others whose lives have been ruined by mermaid flesh.

Manga volumes

{|class="wikitable"
! |Vol#
! width=20%|Volume Name
! width=30%|Japanese Story Name
! width=30%|English Story Name
! width=20%|Alternate Story Name
|-
|1 || Ningyo no Mori || Ningyo wa Warawanai || A Mermaid Never Smiles || Mermaid's Smile
|-
| || || Togyo no Sato || The Village of Fighting Fish || Mermaid's Village
|-
| || || Ningyo no Mori || Mermaid's Forest ||
|-
|2 || Ningyo no Kizu || Yume no Owari || Dream's End || Mermaid's Dream
|-
| || || Yakusoku no Ashita || Mermaid's Promise ||
|-
| || || Ningyo no Kizu || Mermaid's Scar ||
|-
|3 || Yasha no Hitomi || Shari-Hime || The Ash Princess ||
|-
| || || Yasha no Hitomi || Mermaid's Gaze ||
|-
| || || Saigo no Kao || Mermaid's Mask ||
|-

List of TV Episodes

#A Mermaid Never Smiles
#The Village of Fighting Fish Part 1
#The Village of Fighting Fish Part 2
#Mermaid's Forest Part 1
#Mermaid's Forest Part 2
#The End of the Dream
#Sacred Bone Princess
#The Final Face Part 1
#The Final Face Part 2
#The Promised Tomorrow Part 1
#The Promised Tomorrow Part 2
#Mermaid's Scar Part 1
#Mermaid's Scar Part 2

Episode Summary

'''1: A Mermaid Never Smiles'''

★ Baba: voiced by Roko Takisawa (Japanese); Louise Chamis (English)

★ Ayu: voiced by Yukari Honma (Japanese); Amy Kincaid (English)
Around midnight, a 15 year-old girl named Mana watches out the window with the moonlight along with a mysterious moaning ghost-like noises. She calls out the woman named Baba (means "old hag" in Japanese) and orders her to stop the noises. Baba tells Mana that there is nothing they can do to stop the noises. The noises only happen when there is a full moon or a new moon out.
A traveler named Yuta asks for directions to go to the mountains. He is searching for a mermaid.
Later at dusk, while Mana is eating her dinner, Baba complimented her as the most beautiful woman ever been in the world, but Mana is tired of hearing those compliments that she threw her entire meal at her.
At night, Mana lies in bed, having flashbacks that Baba and the women from the village adopted her as a little girl, they all they do is carry her around, never letting her walk and go outside. She wishes she can walk. Meanwhile, Baba called on a meeting about Mana. Half of the woman are young and half are old and all of them each have the same face. Baba announced that this is a time for one of the women's sacrifice. They chose a woman named Ayu, as the women said that Ayu has lived the longest.
In a hidden cave, Ayu takes off all of her clothes and enters the pool as the women wastes no time in harpooning her to death. It turns out that Ayu is a mermaid! One of the women then butchered the mermaid flesh out from the tail.
On the next day, on the afternoon, Baba brings in Mana's lunch with mermaid's flesh as a dish. Mana asked what kind of fish is it and Baba told her that this is the rarest fish the women had caught. Mana then slowly eats the meat. Mana enjoys the rich taste of the fish and eats more and more. She caught Baba's sudden expression that she threw her bowl of rice at Baba for staring at her.
The women were full of excitement when they hear of Mana's survival of the mermaid flesh. But the happiness were interrupted when they hear a man has entered their side of the mountains.
Yuta arrives on top of the mountain is startled to find so many women living in such a deserted place. They suddenly killed Yuta and throws his body down to the pit of the cave with the remains of Ayu. Within a few hours, the tribe have decided to take Mana outside, when revived Yuta bursts into her room, carrying the carcass of a mermaid. The women try to attack him again. Yuta wastes no time on taking Mana hostage but discovers that her legs were locked. They hid in the cave with Yuta explains his story to Mana to why he is searching for a mermaid--he is an immortal for 500 years, in desperate need of regaining his mortality by meeting a mermaid.
Suddenly, a horrifying creature called a Lost Soul invaded Yuta and Mana, escaping out the cave with Mana's crippling legs. Yuta leaves Mana to talk with the women and discovers that the women in the village are in fact mermaids in need of regaining their youth. But then, the women found Mana and plots to kill them once again.
Yuta and Mana hid in the cave again when Yuta has been poisoned by the harpooned dipped with poison from the decaying mermaid. Mana spits the poison out of Yuta as he passes out.
Baba decides to flood the area, and drive them out to the ocean where they can easily catch them and devour Mana. As they are pushed out to sea Yuta sees dozens of mermaids coming to attack. He manages to fend them off until morning, when the old woman says that now that they have become mermaids again they have no chance of regaining their human forms. She then tells them that she too is an immortal human and that she will stay with the mermaids until the end of time.

Characters

''Note: In some cases a character is portrayed by a different voice actor in the OVAs. These voice actors are also added.''

Main characters

;Yuta
:
:''Mermaid Scar OVA'' (English)
:A 500 year old immortal. He ate the flesh of a mermaid out of curiosity when he and his fellow fishermen had captured one, but out of all the fishermen who ate a piece, only Yuta had survived. His comrades had either been poisoned or turned into soul-less monsters. Yuta, being scared that he will meet the same fate, goes into withdraw before simply forgetting about ever eating the mermaid's flesh. He takes a wife and lives normally until he discovers that while she grew older as the years go by, he hasn't aged since the day he ate the flesh. He hears that a mermaid will be able to help him turn normal again, thus, travels endlessly in search of a way to become mortal. Along his travels, he meets a girl named Mana, another immortal who was fed mermaid flesh by the ones who raised her. He saves Mana from the mermaids who were planning to devour her and takes her in as a traveling companion.
;Mana
:
:''Mermaid Scar OVA'' (English)
:An immortal companion of Yuta. She was raised by a group of old women that kept her captive and incapacitated in a hut. They were really mermaids that sought to eat Mana once she reached her adolescence to regain their youth. She travels with Yuta since, and possesses a large sense of loyalty and feelings towards him, but due to her somewhat naive and spoiled nature, she doesn't seem to truly realize that her emotions towards him are possibly love or just simple affection.

Other characters

;Masato
:
:
:''Mermaid Scar OVA'' (English)
:A young boy who has been immortal for 800 years. He has a face of an angel, but the soul of the devil. Masato would give mermaid flesh to a woman and have her pose as his mother until she was deemed useless. Despite his childlike appearance, eight hundred years of loneliness and wandering have turned Masato into a soulless monster. His latest mother figure, Misa, actually gave him the name Masato. He found her during WWII after she had lost real son in an air-raid. Sixty years later, Mana and Yuta came across Misa and Masato, and Masato set his sights on making Mana his latest mother-figure. He drove off in a car and plowed right into a truck but it was implied that he was still out there searching for another mother.

;Misa
:
:''Mermaid Scar OVA'' (English)
:She lost her husband and child during World War II, and nearly died herself when she met a little boy who offered her a strange piece of meat. The child was Masato and the meat mermaid flesh. At first Misa was happy to have a new child in her life, but she grew afraid of the fact that neither were aging, and became terrified of what Masato was capable of. After escaping from him five years ago, she was taken in by an old man whom she later married. About one month ago, the two were in a boating accident and Misa was thought dead until a week later when she appeared with no wounds. She died after being attacked by a Lost Soul which was formerly Masato's nanny, Yukie.
;Yukie
:
:''Mermaid Scar OVA'' (English)
:Masato's nanny. She is loving and caring and a excellent choice for Masato to choose as his new mother. Yukie doesn't know anything about Masato's immortality and Misa's dreadful past when she became an immortal. Later in the story, Yukie got engaged but worries that she might leave Masato forever. To prevent her from leaving, Masato gives Yukie a piece of meat in which it turns out to be mermaid's flesh and then she eats it. She didn't become an immortal, however. She transformed into a Lost Soul. After Yuta kills the monster, he discovers that it is Yukie who ate the mermaid flesh by finding her ring lying on the floor. Yuta possesses Yukie's ring during his travels to help him remember Yukie as his friend (in Mermaid Scar OVA, he throws the ring to the ocean in the end).
;Rin
:
:She is a daughter of Toba Island's headman, but due to the headman's sickness, Rin has to take over his leadership. Rin has been searching for a mermaid to cure her father. By that time, she meets Yuta when he came back to life from a terrible battle he is in. Rin and Yuta fell in love each other and Yuta promised to stay in Toba Island if he has turned back into a mortal. Isago, the Sakagami headman's wife, wounded the Toba headman and makes Rin and Yuta to go back into a mermaid hunt. They found on but Rin has been captured before Yuta manages to save her. In the end, Rin and Yuta learned that Isago is a mermaid and they cannot be together due to Yuta's failure of asking a mermaid to grant him his mortality. Rin continues her father's leadership.
;Isago
:
:A wife of a Sakagami Island headman. Isago told her husband the immortality of the mermaid's flesh and encouraged him to find one. Isago is pregnant from her former husband who was murdered by the Sakagami pirates. In order to give birth to a healthy child, Isago needs to eat the mermaid flesh, because she is in fact a mermaid. She tells Rin that there are mermaids can walk on land and those who swims at sea. The ones who walk on land eats mermaid flesh, including pregnancy. Isago finally ate the mermaid flesh, dives into the ocean, transforms back into a mermaid, and gives birth to her healthy baby.
;Towa Kannagi
:
:''Mermaid Forest OVA''
:She suffered from a deadly illness when she was a young girl. Her twin sister Sawa fed Towa the blood of a mermaid. The blood made her better, but unfortunately, she developed a deformed arm, similar of a Lost Soul's and her hair turned pure white. She didn't age on the outside, but her insides were the same. When Towa's father learned of what Sawa did to her, Towa locked up in a cell underneath the house and was never allowed to come out. Sawa had a life of her own; getting married and having a child of her own while Towa lived alone in the world except for her fiancée, Dr. Shiina. Her deformed arm caused her terrible pain. She asks Dr. Shiina to dissect the arms of dead girls and re-attach them onto her. But every arm has turned deformed and the pain gets worse. She is about to lose hope until Mana is killed in a car accident. Dr. Shiina is about to cut off Mana's arm, but when Mana came back to life, she comes up with a plan. She will replace her body into Mana's unless Sawa tells her where the mermaid mound is. Towa had shown a small love interest for Mana, but it is unknown if she loved her for the fact that she has an immortal body or the anything else. Towa found the mermaid and wants to give the flesh to Sawa to fulfill her revenge, but Sawa dies of a cardiac arrest, leaving her with nothing to show her life. In the end, Towa joins her sister in death.
;Sawa Kannagi
:
:''Young''
:Towa's twin sister who is in charge of protecting the mermaid mound. When Towa was dying, she fed her the blood of a mermaid. Towa recovered from her illness, but Towa's arm begin to deform and her hair has turned completely white. Sawa's father decided that Towa will be locked up in a basement for the rest of her life while Sawa begin to age. As years pass, Sawa got married and gave birth to a child, but they suddenly died in the battle field of World War II. When Mana came along, Dr. Shiina, Towa's fiancée, is about to dissect her arm however she came back to life. Towa plans to replace her body into Mana's unless Sawa tells her where the mermaid mound is. Sawa reveal the mound to Towa and she learns that Towa is going to feed her the flesh. But suddenly and sadly, Sawa died of a cardiac arrest. Towa then joins her sister in death, grieving for her life.
;Dr. Shiina
:
:Towa Kannagi's fiancée. Dr Shiina is about to lost hope that Towa is dying from a deadly illness, but her life is safe when she drank mermaid blood. Unfortunately, her arm begin to develop a deformed arm and her hair turned white. She didn't age on the outside, but her internal organs remained the same. Under Towa's transformation, she is forced to be locked up in the cell for the rest of her life, watching her twin sister Sawa and her fiancée to age. Dr. Shiina always begged Towa to go out to the world with him, but she always refuses. However, Towa asked her fiancée to dissect the arms of dead girls and replace her arm. But when Mana came back to life, Towa plans to use her into letting Sawa tell her where the mermaid mound is. Towa found the mermaid and plans to feed Sawa the flesh to fulfill her revenge, but Sawa suddenly died of cardiac arrest. Towa later joins her sister in death, asking Dr. Shiina to burn the mound and the Kannagi residence. Dr. Shiina tells a story to Yuta and Mana and confesses to them that he is Towa's fiancée.
;"Big Eyes"
:
:He is once a mortal, but becoming an immortal overtook him. While he was walking down to the beach, he found a mermaid corpse lying on shore. He heard about the legend so he ate the mermaid flesh. But unfortunately, the flesh turned him into a monster. He is almost like a Lost Soul, only that he can speak and has human feelings and his eyes are big and swollen. When he woke up from a concussion during the transformation, he saw that his village has been destroyed and so is his family along with everybody who lived in the village has been murdered. He is now called "Big Eyes". He is without company for a long time until Mana came along. He found her and Yuta dead in the cliffs. He took her to his cave and feeds her. He wants Mana to stay with him for company and to be prevented from being hunted. The most hunter is a man who lost his eye to "Big Eyes" 40 years ago. When Yuta and the hunter found "Big Eyes" and Mana, they attacked him. All the attack turned "Big Eyes" into a fierce monster. Mana tries to protect him, but Yuta and the hunter had no choice but to kill him. As he lay dying, he called out Mana's name from his last breath. Yuta tells her that "Big Eyes" died as a human.
;Natsume
:
:She died as a young girl. Her father is in mourning of his only daughter. A monk found the heartbroken man when he heard the story. The monk invited the man to bring his daughter's bones to his temple where he would attempt to resurrect Natsume with an ancient art called "Hangon". Even though he is inexperienced, the monk used mermaid's liver in the process. Hangon and mermaid's liver not only gave Natsume back to life, she has granted immortality. As years pass by, Natsume meets Yuta while he's on a quest to find a mermaid and meets the monk who is planning to hunt down Natsume. When Yuta meets the monk, he agrees that he'll try and help the situation, but Natsume already befriends with Yuta and asks if she can come with Yuta on a journey. But her father became angry with this and tries to kill Yuta to prevent Natsume from leaving him. With her father dealing with Yuta, Natsume is now unprotected from the monk, who is able to rip out her liver. Natsume saves Yuta from getting killed, but she and her father fell on the cliff. Her father died from the fall, but Natsume was able to live a little bit longer. She tells Yuta a good-bye and she said that she'll always be with Yuta in his journey and then returned to bones.
;Nanao
:
:''Young'' (English)
:A young boy who seems to be a kidnapping victim. Yuta and Mana found him terribly injured when he escape from the moving car. Nanao swallows his mother's medicine and suddenly, his wounds healed fast. Yuta and Mana takes Nanao home where they meets his mother and grandmother. Nanao's grandmother is behaving strangely and tells Yuta and Mana that they shouldn't bring Nanao back home. She then shows them a picture of the boy and his mother. Yuta looks at the woman's face and said that this woman is different from Nanao's mother and the boy is much different than Nanao. By that time, Yuta discovers that man who kidnapped Nanao is actually Nanao's father, who is also named Nanao. Nanao's "mother" is actually Nanao's grandmother who became an immortal 25 years ago and plans to feed the mermaid's flesh to him. The medicine Nanao's mother gave him is actually mermaid's ashes to build up his immunity to the mermaid flesh. Nanao is about to eat the flesh but stopped by Yuta and Mana while Nanao's mother didn't have the strength to stop him from eating it. Nanao's mother then leaves Nanao's father her gift and the boy back and went off to the world.
;Nanao's mother
:
:She became an immortal in 1969 after her divorce with her husband and about to be separated with her son, Nanao. She fed her son mermaid flesh and she ate it, but Nanao spit out the flesh and left him scarred. However, Nanao's mother became an immortal, but she has a scar on her face, making her feel the pain for all enternal. Years pass, she sees her son all grown up, got married, and has a baby son. With the baby as a reminder, she kidnaps the baby, naming him Nanao and raising him as her own son. By that time, she saw a dead woman lying on the beach, replacing her face into another's, making her look like a different person and hide away the scar and she lived in almost constant pain. When she met Yuta and Mana when they bring "Nanao" back home, "Nanao"'s grandmother showed them a photograph with a woman and her son. Both "Nanao" and his mother are much different. They has learned that "Nanao"'s mother has fed him mermaid ashes all along, but they're not sure why. Mana and Yuta learns that the two people are the same person who switches faces. "Nanao" is her grandson as a replace of her real son, who is also named Nanao. She plans to feed the mermaid flesh to her grandson, but could not because of what happened to her real son. She finally gives up her gift from her real son and gives him back the boy and went off to the world.
;Nae Kogure
:
:She met Yuta years before World War II. When she learned about Yuta's curse of immortality, she tells him a secret about mermaid's ashes. She spread the ashes all around the field of red flowers, causing to bloom all year long, never to wilt or die by season, including winter. She calls the field "red valley". Soon. she and Yuta fell in love and began meeting in the red valley in private. Her fiancée, Eijiro, got jealous of Yuta falling for Nae, but never believed that she would betray him. He learned about Nae's signal of metting Yuta in the red valley, so he went there to meet her. When she arrived at the valley, Eijiro became shocked of her betrayal that he strangled her to death. As years pass, Eijiro learns his mistake and sadness of what he done to Nae. But he learns about mermaid ashes and found it. The ashes brought Nae back to life, but she became a shadow of her former self. When Yuta came back to Nae's hometown with Mana, she plans to reunite with him, but Eijiro prevents it. Sometimes, Nae goes into murderous trances because of her shadow form. But to overlook it, Eijiro is deeply in love with her. As Yuta and Nae reunite once again, she tells Yuta that she is having a nightmare. Then Yuta remembers that there is a village legend that a priestess came to the village, carrying a jar of mermaid ashes. And then a man murdered the preistess, but the ashes went into her mouth, brought her back to life as a shadow, but then wears as she went to the mountains as her deathbed. Nae's affect of the ashes wears off, left her to die once again in the red valley as her deathbed.
;Eijiro
:
:Before WWII, Eijiro was a young, bright man who fell in love with Nae Kogure, who is from a wealthy family. Unfortunately, when Yuta came to town, Nae falls in love with him, planning to meet him in the red valley. When Eijiro discovers that Nae is planning to run away with Yuta, he refused to believe that she would go wander off to a world with a wanderer like Yuta. So he staged a meeting to test her loyalty to him. When she failed and tried to go to Yuta, Eijiro became enraged and strangled her to death. After realizing what he had done, Eijiro buried her body in the red valley. He then dedicated his life to finding the rest of the ashes to use on Nae, and when he did he used them on Nae's body, bringing her back to life. When Yuta and Mana return and learn of Nae's resurrection Eijiro stops at nothing to destroy them and keep Nae safe. When he learns that Nae will never love him the way she loves Yuta, he orders his men to kill her too, finally rejecting the monster that he created.
;Akiko Kiryu
:Akiko is the sister of Shingo Kiryu, but unlike him she does not have his violent nature. She is a sweet girl who blames herself for Shingo's disturbing behavior. When they were young, Shingo liked to kill small animals with his knife. Akiko was sickened by this and tried to stop him, but accidentally hit him in the face with his knife and caused him to lose an eye. Shingo continued hurting animals and eventually people, but always blamed it on the lose of his eye. Akiko felt responsible for Shingo and always defended him whenever he did something wrong. Eventually even Akiko grew disgusted by Shingo's behavior and decided to poison him. Because she felt responsible for the way he turned out though, she poisoned herself as well. The poison she used was the flesh of a mermaid, but instead of becoming an immortal, Akiko continued living in an almost comatose state. Many people have come to believe that she is actually a life-sized doll, and she is sitting in a chair in her home to this day. Shingo returns to his childhood home hoping to find his sister. Akiko Kiryu only appears on the manga.
;Shingo Kiryu
:Shingo is the insane brother of Akiko Kiryu. They lived together in the Kiryu Manor shortly before the Russo-Japanese War. Yuta worked there temporarily and saw Shingo's cruel and sadistic behavior firsthand. Akiko tried to prevent her brother from hurting anymore people by poisoning him. She did not realize though that the poison was actually the flesh of a mermaid. Shingo seemed to die after eating it, but he was able to dig himself out of his grave and return home. His father was so upset to see him that he tried to kill him again. Because of Shingo's insanity he was kept in a cell in the basement of the Kiryu home. Once he was released he ripped the eye out of his sisters corpse and fled. Because it is his sisters eye, every time he murders someone he sees the last thing that she saw, his own twisted face reaching down to rip her eye out. Shingo believes that by killing his sister he can finally make the visions stop, so he continually harasses the elderly women who now live in his home. Shingo Kiryu only appears on the manga.

References

1. Clements, Jonathan. McCarthy Helen. [2006] (2006). The Anime Encyclopedia: Revised & Expanded Edition. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1-933330-10-5

External links

★ Rumiko No Sekai's Ningyo section Featuring summaries, analysis, characters, pictures galleries and many more.

★ Mermaid Saga page at Furinkan.com

★ Mermaid Volumes Info