Spirit of Wonder is a full-featured fictional universe (set primarily in a town named Bristol) with some down-to-Earth elements, much like John Steinbeck's Pastures of Heaven or William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. This story doesn't have the ingrained mischief element that the Munroe and Snopes families brought upon those respective story worlds, though. The sentiment of this story is light-hearted and seeks to romanticize the 'miracles' of science, rather than making a moral statement. Each story in the Spirit of Wonder universe has its own quirks, but ties the stories before and after it together to form a cohesive and wonderfully engaging experience.

The OVA episodes focus primarily on two groups of characters: The Scientific Boys Club and Miss China's group. The latter group was the focus of the first Spirit of Wonder OVA to be released in America (by AnimEigo), titled "Miss China's Ring." Miss China is a Kung Fu master who runs a Chinese restaraunt by the name of Tenkai, and is landlord to a scientist named Mr. Breckenridge, who never seems to be able to pay his rent on time. The other member of the posse is a watchmaker's apprentice named Jim who Miss China is sweet on. "Miss China's Ring" is a story of Jim's crazy idea to use one of Breckenridge's inventions to make a present for Miss China.

Bandai's release of Spirit of Wonder contains four OVA episodes, two of which focus on Miss China. The first is about her accidentally getting wrapped up in one of Breckenridge's experiments - the testing of a shrinking machine. The unsuspecting lass just wanted her rent money and got more than she bargained for. Jim and Breckenridge slave away at a machine to make her larger as she keeps shrinking.... The second Miss China story also involves one of the old coot's inventions - this time a combination telescope and imaging device, designed to immerse the surrounding area in an image of the target world. They point the telescope at Mars, and wackiness promptly ensues.

Miss China finds herself having to do things differently as she gets smaller.	One of the few moments that Windy has her husband to herself.

The second pair of episodes in this release is a short arc about the Scientific Boys Club, formed by friends Gordon, Cooper, and Shepherd fifty years ago. They shared a dream of traveling to Mars, inspired by the writings of Percival Lowell*. Gordon's daughter Windy gets wrapped up in their activities when her husband Jack returns from a trip and isn't paying her any attention. The four boys end up requiring her skill at calculations in order to get the project off the ground. The rest of the arc deals with their voyage in their contraption.

The group shared the same mindset as Lowell, and daydreamed about what they would find on the red planet. However, the story doesn't focus so much on the boys' ambition or determination as on the people. Windy is a big part of this story, being at first a counterweight to the boys' lofty ambitions and later being suckered into their plot out of devotion to her husband (and a little bit of morbid curiosity). But she keeps a level head throughout the tale, while their heads are perpetually in the clouds. Her sensibility contrasting with their sentimental pursuits is what gives this story so much charm.

The visual style of these new Spirit of Wonder OVA episodes hails from a slightly older tradition, upgraded with today's digital effects and CG animation mixed in. The various contraptions and inventions that show up in the series are modeled and animated using CG, and the traditional animation is blended rather well (though not perfectly) with it. The other digital effects governing lighting, shadows, reflective surfaces and the like added a nice touch to the visuals without masking their antiquated attractiveness. The character designs are also in an older style, though slightly evolved from the previous OVA where Miss China's group is concerned. The characters are designed to look ordinary, with no awkward proportions or neon-glowing hair. And really, nothing else would do for this story. It's that once-removed, "another place and another time" feel of the story that gives it its potency.

The music for this set of OVAs is also unobtrusive and pleasant, making heavy use of piano, strings, and soft woodwind sounds to set the theme for the show. It carries the same sentiments of the show - romance, curiosity, contentment; and in doing that it becomes an integral part of the experience.

Bandai gave this release appropriate attention by providing a nice clean transfer and a pleasant cover image featuring Windy and the Scientific Boys' invention in the background. The case insert has a mini fold-out poster of Miss China, and a short description of each OVA episode, as well as credits for the show. The disc extras include a production art gallery, a set of very insightful liner notes covering some of the real scientific theories mentioned in the show, and a set of interviews. The interviews are with the creator of Spirit of Wonder (Kenji Tsuruta), the respective directors (Takashi Annou and Masaya Fujimori) of the Scientific Boys Club story and the Miss China stories, and the publisher at Kodansha who put out the original stories (Yasumitsu Tsutsumi). The extras menu also has an Easter egg titled "What Gordon Was Really Thinking on Mars," located in the center of the menu.

This latest Spirit of Wonder OVA collection comes highly recommended. It won't necessarily inspire you to take action in pursuing your goals, but it's wonderful soul food. It's nice to have a reminder every once in a while of where we came from and what we used to want, versus where we are now. It's also nice to see Miss China walloping on each poor schmuck who's dumb enough to try and sneak a peak at her underwear.

*Percival Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill (in Flagstaff, Arizona) in 1894, and studied Mars extensively. His research was aimed at proving that there was intelligent life on Mars, and that they had created canals to channel the water from the polar regions of the planet to the equatorial regions. In Spirit of Wonder, the Scientific Boys Club shares Lowell's dream of seeing the canals and Martian lifeforms.

Distributor: Bandai Entertainment
Creator: Kenji Tsuruta / AJIADO
Released: 2001

Plot: A
Character Design: A
Animation Quality: B+
Music: B
Overall: A