As you know already, Fushigi is about two girls, Miaka and Yui, who get sucked into a magical book, "Four Gods Heaven and Earth". Actually, the main character of the series seems to be Miaka. She's feeling really pressured and everything, because her mom totally wants her to make it into a #1 high school (this is typical for Asian families, wouldn't you agree). So she's studying really hard and everything, but she's only doing it for her mother because she herself doesn't really care. But anyways, her parents were divorced when she was little and she has an older (very emotional and wussy if you ask me, but it makes his character funny) brother, Keisuke. She's been best friends with Yui since they were in kindergarten, and they've made a promise that they'll go to the same high school. Well anyways, one day they're at the library and find that book ("Four Gods...") in one of those "Important literature", "Employees Only" rooms, and are enveloped in red light and literally sucked into the book.
They end up in this weird-looking place and are about to be captured by these weirdo slave trader (?? I've said before that my Chinese-reading skills aren't all that great) guys (Miaka mistakes them for dancers), when a guy with the word "oni" on his forehead ("oni" means something like monster/ghost) saves them. After he beats up those weird dancer-guys (hehe), he leaves because the girls have no money to thank him with (he has this obsession with money). Just then, Yui gets sucked back into the library in their own world, and sits there reading the book, in which Miaka has now become the main character. Miaka learns that the guy with the "oni" on his forehead is called Tamahome, and because she can't find Yui, she latches onto him because, of course, she has no idea where she is. And then, along comes this litter and a whole bunch of soldiers...the emperor, supposedly a very kind and wealthy person, is inside the litter. Miaka figures that if she could just get a jewel or something from the emperor, Tamahome will let her follow him around [like a dog..not that this means anything].
So she tries to ask the emperor to give her a jewel, but the soldiers angrily catch her and are about to kill her when (surprise surprise) Tamahome saves her again. Miaka gets enveloped in red light again, and almost fades away in front of their eyes. But she comes back, and both her and Tamahome get locked up in the dungeon. They manage to escape (Miaka scares the guard unconscious by blowing a bubble with bubble gum), but they get split up because Miaka smells food. (Did I mention that Miaka has this obsession with food? She has like six helpings for dinner and things like that...anytime, all you have to do to trap Miaka is lay out a feast inside of a cage and she'll run right into it....very sad. And unfortunately, she can't cook to save her life)
On the way back from her quest for food, Miaka meets Hotohori, who she thinks is a beautiful girl...until she and Tamahome find out that Hotohori is male...he's the 18-year-old emperor! Hotohori saw the red light around Miaka, and by reading the scroll "Four Gods Heaven and Earth", finds out that Miaka is the Suzaku no Miko, or the priestess of Suzaku. Hotohori is emperor of the southern country (there are four countries, north, south, east and west, and there are four gods that act as guardians of each country; the gods correspond with sets of constellations in the sky), whose god is Suzaku. It's Miaka's role, as the miko, to summon forth Suzaku to protect the country in times of need. She has to do this before she can return to her world. But first of all, she needs to find the seven seishi that are sworn to protect the miko. The seven are named after constellations in the sky: Tamahome, Hotohori, Nuriko, Chichiri, Tasuki, Mitsukake, Chiriko. It turns out that Tamahome and Hotohori are both seishi, and so Miaka sets out to find the other five.
The whole thing is extremely funny because the characters are all so different, and also because right in the middle of the most serious scenes and stuff, Watase Yuu puts in these little by-plays where the characters are all SDs and it's hilarious :)
Later on, Yui gets sucked into the book-- Miaka has found Tamahome, Hotohori, and Nuriko(and has confessed to Tamahome that she's fallen for him...only he doesn't feel the same), but she gets sick and the only way for her to totally recover is to go back to her world. With the help of the three seishi and also this withered old granny Taiitsukun (who's supposedly like really powerful or something, and who scares Tamahome to death every time), as well as Yui who's been in the library reading the book the whole time, Miaka gets back. Only thing is, Yui gets sucked in instead. Miaka doesn't know this, but later figures that Yui got sucked in.
She goes back into the book to find Yui...she tells her brother about the whole thing first, though, and he follows her to the library in an attempt to stop her. When she gets sucked back in, however, her brother remains in the library reading (instead of Yui...you know, by this time you're getting sick of seeing Yui reading the book so it's just as well) and eventually just steals the book and takes it home to read. (he also carries it with him when he goes out, which is funny cuz he starts yelling at Miaka while he reads and all the people around him look at him funny)
Meanwhile, Tamahome has fallen for Miaka, so now there they are, this happy couple...only thing is, he kinda confesses at the wrong time.... Yui had been taken in by troops from the eastern country, where they claimed she was the Seiryuu no Miko, or the priestess of Seiryuu. Miaka, Tamahome, and the new-found Chichiri (waaah! he's so cute! one of my fav characters..^_^ ehhe) went to the country to get Yui, but Yui (she had a crush on Tamahome too) got mad at Miaka because she thought the reason Miaka came back to the world was just to see Tamahome-- that she didn't care about Yui at all. (That's cuz Tamahome confesses his love to Miaka and Yui comes back to hear Miaka say she "came back to this world for him" and sees them kissing.) The thing was, when Yui first appeared in the world, she had gotten captured by some strange ucky men on the street and they had attempted to rape her. She had fainted, but nothing had actually happened to her because just then, Nakago (one of the Seiryuu seishi) had come and killed the men. But Yui had believed that the men had actually done something to her, and out of despair she even attempted suicide.
Yui and Miaka became enemies, with the help of Nakago (evil-looking blonde guy with the deep voice and the word "shin" on his forehead, meaning "heart". He's very cruel and heartless and has a horrible singing voice, but you realize later that he only lusted for power because he had been abused when he was little, and had to watch his mother get raped and killed by the soldiers of the eastern country. I think he was a homosexual as well...oh wait that was Tomo...sorry..). Nakago wanted to become a god, and got Yui to promise that she'd use one of her three wishes, when she summoned Seiryuu, to make him a god. I think Yui fell for Nakago. He used her, though, and made trouble between Yui and Miaka so Yui would do whatever he wanted her to do (hard to explain).
Yui wanted to steal Tamahome from Miaka, so the people of eastern country sent a warning to that southern country telling them to give up Tamahome or have the eastern country wage war on them. Tamahome left for the eastern country while Miaka was asleep so she couldn't stop him. However, he remained loyal to Miaka the whole time (how sweeeeet..*cough*) until the very end when he was planning to escape back to the southern country with Miaka; he FINALLY discovered that Yui and Miaka were enemies, but Yui fed him this drug that kind of brainwashed him and he became totally different...(personally, by this time, I begin to think Tamahome is rather dense...sorry to all you Tamahome fans)
After a while, they got Tamahome back. See what happens is that Miaka finds that Tamahome is totally different, so she says good-bye and breaks it off =(. Then she tries to commit suicide, but Hotohori saves her. (now THAT was sweet) Tamahome is sent to their country to kill Suzaku no miko (Miaka), and ends up doing one-on-one combat with Hotohori. Hotohori has this incredible ki ("..must...protect..miaka...") and kills Tamahome right in front of Miaka's eyes. Miaka shrieks ("DAAMEEEEE!!!") and runs to Tamahome, and he is still trying to kill her so she hands him a sword and kisses him. I guess the kiss did it, and he snapped out of his trance. He couldn't remember anything he'd done while brainwashed, and the other seishi welcomed him back. Mitsukake heals his wound.(In his absence they had found Mitsukake, Tasuki, Chiriko...these were rather interesting and I'll talk about it later...no actually, go read the manga yourself! or look up translations online, i think the Tasuki no Miko site has them, scroll down)
After these many hardships were overcome and the seven Suzaku seishi were found, Miaka tried to summon Suzaku. It didn't work, because the seventh seishi, Chiriko, was a fake! It turns out that he's one of the Seiryuu seishi masquerading as a Suzaku seishi, and he nearly killed the Suzaku seishi by playing a horrible melody on his horrible little flute. (actually, I thought he was kinda cute ^_- hehe...wouldn't you agree, Amiboshi fans?) The real Chiriko stops him from killing everyone with his song, and he tries to run away...the seishi corner him by a rapidly flowing waterway and he slips and is about to fall in when Miaka catches his flute, which he is holding. She tells him that his music was supposed to calm people, not hurt them. He saw the truth in what she was saying and so he let go of the flute and let himself fall into the water to drown. Everyone thought he died, including the Seiryuu seishi-- one of which was his twin brother. In reality his (fake Chiriko's) name was Amiboshi, and his twin was Suboshi, and when Amiboshi fell into the water his ki disappeared and everyone thought he kicked the bucket. He turns up later in a peaceful little village and saves Miaka when things get pretty hectic. (That's later. Again, refer to manga.)
To make a long story short (I'm getting lazy), both Miaka and Yui are unable to call forth gods (Miaka cuz she burned the scroll the first time she tried to call Suzaku, with the fake Chiriko [Amiboshi], and Yui because Amiboshi was supposedly dead and so they were missing a seishi.). So they go on another quest for these weird talismans left by the other two countries' mikos (the northern and western countries, Genbu no miko, Byakko no miko). Miaka gets ahold of both first, but Yui manages to steal them both away from her (Not hard...all you'd have to do is like, feed Miaka a steak dinner and then poof, take the talisman. Not that that was what she did.).
SURPRISE SURPRISE
Yui summons Seiryuu (you expected those nice Suzaku seishi to win out, didn't you? aha...another reason this series is so good), and wishes first to seal Suzaku and take away the powers of the Suzaku seishi. Next, she sees how well Miaka and Tamahome are getting along and so she wishes that she and Miaka both get whisked back to their world and Miaka will never be able to enter the book world again. They get sucked back accordingly, but Tamahome catches hold of Miaka before she disappears and gets sucked back with her. Yui calls forth Suboshi (who has a crush on her) and Nakago from the book. However, Miaka (with a letter that her brother and his friend procured) finally convinces Yui that she never betrayed her, that she was really her friend the whole time and that Nakago had been making a lot of trouble between them. She also told Yui that once a miko had all three wishes granted by the god, the god would eat her. (That's what that letter was for) Yui at first didn't believe her, but when she discovered scales growing on her arms and legs, and also asked Nakago about it and found out that it was true, she used her last wish to allow Miaka to call forth Suzaku.
By this time there's like mass destruction in the world (or rather, Tokyo-- sometimes I wonder about that, how come everything's so centered around Tokyo. You know Fushigi is supposed to take place in ancient China???) and Suboshi has been killed, as well as Tamahome, Hotohori, Nuriko, Mitsukake, Chiriko. Nakago blasted Tamahome through a window or something like that. Anyway, Miaka's brother calls Chichiri and Tasuki out from the book, to save Miaka, who's about to be killed by Nakago. Well, Miaka calls forth Suzaku. Her first wish is to get Yui back. Her next wish is to seal Seiryuu forever inside a scroll. With that, Nakago lost his powers. At this time, the other seishi's ghosts come out to help the remaining seishi...and of course, Tamahome comes back to life. (The good, irrational guys who try to fight people they have noooo chance of winning over ALWAYS come back to life. Not that I have anything against Tamahome, I thought he was sorta cute in the beginning too. Dude, talk about a load of fiiiine guys...they're all here!) He ends up killing Nakago (punches through the stomach...), and finally Miaka makes her last wish-- that she and Tamahome will never be separated again. It sounds corny, but I felt like weeping...because the narration is a letter that Tamahome wrote to Miaka before the battle with Nakago, stating his belief that no matter how many thousands of years they have to wait, and no matter what kind of changes in appearance they undergo, no matter what, they _will_ meet again. =*[ The first series of Fushigi Yuugi ends after Miaka and Yui make it into the same high school. Miaka's brother speaks of a new student at his college-- a guy who says he has memories of a past life, that he was one of seven sworn to protect a girl and that, before he passed away and reincarnated, he had promised the girl that no matter what happened, they would meet again-- here, suddenly the crowd parts and Miaka cries as she sees what she's been waiting for-- a guy, smiling, holding up his hand which has Tamahome's ring on it. (Note: of course, the guy just *happens* to look almost exactly like Tamahome...)
Okay well....sorry to make this so unorganized and all, but I promise, I'll change it a lot and it'll eventually turn out great....I hope.....
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