ELLCIA is the story of how a young girl named Eira and her pirate crew are drawn into the quest for the ancient ship of the God, Ellcia. Crystel, daughter of a conquering king, is fascinated with the vessel and leads a fleet to find it on the sacred island of Eija. After a close brush with Crystel at sea, Eira and her crew follow the fleet to the island, where they discover the island's inhabitants are being slaughtered for possession of the ship. This is where episode two begins.
Maeyard, Eira's selkie friend, responds to a mysterious voice and protects her from Crystel's men. Ellcia, the God ship, is shaken lose from its hiding place, and Crystel immediately determines to use it herself. Crystel takes the ship to sea with Eira, not knowing of the stowaways below deck and the ancient powers that wait to be unleashed. What secrets does the God ship hide? What is Maeyard's special power? And why does Shiru look like a project A-ko refugee? The answers to most of these questions can be found in episode two.
ELLCIA is your traditional action/adventure OVA sprinkled with horror and comedy, a regular buffet of styles. This is also an accurate description of the character designs; where one pirate wears a traditional cloak and shirt, the next sports a red and pink striped bustier. I wonder if the animators ate some bad udon the night before they picked colors.
ELLCIA's animation is slightly better than what I'd expect from this kind of OVA. The blood sequences look as if they've been lifted from SILENT MÖBIUS; very pretty, kind of gory. Plot? Well, don't look for anything groundbreaking. ELLCIA seems to ring all the familiar bells of the genre, and is quite by-the-numbers with its treatment of story flow. The sight gags are sophomoric, the music is minimal, and the direction is ho-hum. I didn't dislike it, but then yawning is hardly critical endorsement.
Neither stimulating nor boring, ELLCIA is basic entertainment for those who have a spare hour handy to watch some anime. There is nothing here to really recommend it; then again, there's nothing that's really that awful about it either. It's just average. Perhaps some day I'll watch this show again. Perhaps not.

ELLCIA 2 : GHOST SHIP copyright 1993 JVC / JAM CREATION / J.C. STAFF English subtitled version copyright 1997 A.D.V. Films Subtitled VHSEL/002S $29.95 Dubbed VHSEL/002D $24.95 Released in North America April 29th, 1997 by A.D.V. Films 50 minutes