OK, here we go: Katsuhiko Jinnai, the megalomaniac student body president at Shinonome High School, gained office through a scandalous secret deal with the president of the baseball club, who endorsed him in exchange for promises of a larger budget, which his younger sister in the press club now exposes, which she learned about from her beloved Makoto, who is a nice young man and the only student in school with higher exam scores than Jinnai as well as the student truly responsible for the recent discovery of buried artifacts of an ancient civilization beneath the school, a discovery for which Jinnai is now trying to take credit in order to deflect attention from his own scandalous failures, all of which drive him to seek Makoto's life. If all this sounds like an awful lot of plot to try to follow in literally the first three minutes of an episode, don't worry- it isn't relevant at all to the actual story.

Late one night someone disturbs a mysterious relic beneath the high school. A beautiful woman, dormant for ten thousand years, emerges from a cocoon and, in a flash, transports the only four people on campus that night to the land of El Hazard where the real story begins. Our hero Makoto and the drunken high school principal, Fujisawa Sensei, find themselves in an otherworldly forest where a squad of man-sized insects attack a radiant, half-clothed woman. How fortunate that at this point Sensei discovers for the first time that he has superhuman powers of kung fu, explained later as a perfectly natural side effect of dimensional jumping. What, you didn't know that? Immediately after saving what turns out to be the princess of the realm, Rune Venus, another crisis consumes Makoto and Sensei. More to come…

The Great Holy river of God splits the mystical land of El Hazard. The good kingdoms on one side, led by Princess Rune Venus of Roshtario, constantly endure attack by the Bugrom and their evil Queen Diva from the other side. Naturally Katsuhiko Jinnai lands on the side of the evil kingdom where he instantly rises to the position of commander in chief of the insects - while Makoto must dress in woman's clothing to pose as Venus' missing sister Princess Fatora for the duration of a summit meeting. (I could go into greater detail, but if after reading thus much you actually want to hear MORE about the plot, then I must not be making myself clear).

Nothing that happens in the episode provokes as much interest as it ending with a mysterious woman climbing under the sheets with Makoto, who is still posing as a princess, and kissing him...somewhere.

When a script simultaneously tries to incorporate excitement, suspense, comedy, drama, the fantastical and silliness, silliness will prevail. Parts of the aptly named "Battlefield of Confusion" are more than campy enough to amuse. However, amidst the schtick of Makoto spending a summit meeting trying not to wet himself, and Sensei's superhuman kung-fu only working when he's thirsting for liquor (is Jackie Chan getting royalties for this?), attempts to develop character and intrigue simply haven't got a chance.

Silliness itself is not as problematic as director Hiroki Hayashi's composition of scenes such as the lead-in to the summit meeting between Venus and her allies. A solemn processional scores the Princess and her retinue walking slowly to the head of the table. The assembled representatives murmur, the music gets heavier and, as the debate begins, the frame jumps to a number of close-ups of the Princess' eyes, the doubt on the faces of her allies, etc…and we hear her voice quavering. In short, Hayashi executes every possible cinematic signal to tell us that this is "dramatic." The lives of everyone in the world stand in the balance, our Princess cares so very deeply about her duty and oh my isn't this serious stuff here. But it isn't. It can't be. Makoto has to go potty. Why spend so much time and explain SO many trivial bits and pieces of the overflowing plot (no pun intended) to set up a single-joke scene about going potty.

Inconsistency and clumsiness plague "El Hazard's" visuals as well. The art team, led by animation director/character designer Kazuto Nakazawa, draws Jinnai, Fujisawa Sensei and all minor characters flat and simply, but illustrates primary female characters with embarrassingly greater detail. Also, Hayashi films most of the episode with simple foreground characters laid over a flat and static, albeit richly detailed, backdrop. During action scenes, characters strike poses while the backdrops move to simulate locomotion. Occasional close-ups evoke the expressiveness of early Hanna Barbara artwork.

More densely packed with silliness than a car full of clowns that has been through a trash compactor, Hayashi and screenwriter Ryde Tsukimura throw everything against a wall in the hopes that something will stick.