MISC. MANGA, *El-Hazard

The original El-Hazard OVA was an anime reimagining of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Warlords Of Mars(i.e. John Carter), which was followed up by an OVA sequel, plus two TV series, the second of which continues the OVA storyline, all of which were produced by Pioneer Entertainment. With their Tenchi Muyo OVA carrying on to a successful manga, Pioneer got Hidetomo Tsubura to put together a comic combining elements from the El-Hazard OVA, and its TV series remake El-Hazard: The Wanderers.

Makoto is a high school student being chased by his self-proclaimed rival Jinnai, and then escapes into some ruins underneath the school's campus. He finds a beautiful girl locked in stasis who awakens claiming to know him. She then uses her apparent magic powers to send Makoto, Jinnai, Jinnai's sister Nanami, and their teacher Mr. Fujisawa to the alien world of El-Hazard. However, in the manga, all four of them don't end up there at the exact same time, as Makoto ends up there several weeks after the rest had. Jinnai ended up in the land of insect humanoids called the Bugrom, and becomes their general bent on taking over the world. Makoto meets up with Fujisawa and Namami who have allied with the kingdom of Roshtaria, lead by the slightly younger Princess Rune Venus. Along with three feisty elemental priestesses, our heroes fail to prevent Jinnai from gaining control of an ancient weapon as the Demon God, who it turns out is the Ifurita, an android similar to Amazo from DC Comics who can copy the attacks of anything thrown at her. Ifurita is also the same one who sent Makoto to El-Hazard in the first place, but has no memory of him. Another neighboring clan called the Phantom Tribe happens to have two of their own Demon Gods(both original to the manga), and the plot becomes a big arms race to claim power to a mini-Death Star known as the Eye Of God between the three warring kingdoms.

The manga tries to plug a lot of elements from the original OVA, along with Makoto's flirtation from The Wanderers with Rune Venus, as well as the addition of two more Demon God powerhouses that mainly act as an extra target for the heroes and other villains to deal with. Visually it works very well, with anime-accurate portrayals of the original characters. The downside is the plot of a 7-episode OVA series(some of which were double-length)into a 3-volume manga makes it seem rushed and condensed. The plus side is that there is a bonus chapter of El-H Campus featuring all the characters in high school parody, which was a concept that was used later on by several other series such as My Little Pony and Attack On Titan, and is actually quite funny. The manga was originally first put out in three single-issues mini-series from Viz, and then later on as a trio of trade paperbacks. If you really dug the original OVA anime, then the manga adaptation is worth considering.