Juuni Kokki (Record of 12 Countries)
synopsis by Jareth David

New TV series from Studio Pierrot which began running on NHK on April 9, 2002.

OP: "Juuni Genmukyoku"
ED: "Getsumeifuuei" sung by Mika Arisaka

Story:
Yoko Nakajima is an ordinary high school girl who's parent s are a little worried about her non-traditional reddish hair color. Okay, so aside from the hair color she's like any other girl...who has a crazed long-haired man in strange clothing burst into their classroom on a not so ordinary day and claim to be her servant and protector. Guess it's time to get that required credit for the 'get transported to another world to be its savior' class again. Keiki claims to be her guardian and when she's reluctant to fight off the otherwordly attackers, Keiki gives Yoko a powerful sword and fuses a jyouyu with her which takes control of her body in times of danger to fight for her life since survival instincts is apparently the one thing she must've flunked.

They are transported to another world while fleeing an attack and they get split off from their guardians upon their arrival ...and the welcome wagon doesn't seem too friendly. This isn't the first time the locals have met up with kaikyaku (their term for Japanese people blown into their land by a wind called shoku) and in typical witch hunt fashion they are to be captured and sent to the capital to be imprisoned...if they're lucky, otherwise it's execution time.

The only thing on their side is that Yoko mysteriously speaks and hears the language as if it's Japanese (yet strangely all the foreign vocab words seem to conveniently fit into Japanese phoenetics).

The first 4 episodes show a lot of promise for this new series and a slight hint of some Fushigi Yuugi-esque concepts (minus the romance).

This series has not yet been licensed in the U.S.