Nayuta
Entry updated 9 February 2026. Tagged: TV.
Japanese animated OVA (1986). Circus Production. Based on the Manga by Sasaki Junko. Directed by Masami Hata. Written by Akiyoshi Sakai. Voice cast includes Akira Kamiya, Minako Fujishiro, Rihoko Yoshida and Toshio Furukawa. 80 minutes. Colour.
Schoolgirl Nayuta (Minako) meets Afghan refugee Kiro (Akira), who is able to Teleport thanks to a tiara or "Jarun" he wears: this came from an Alien skeleton he found in a cave by the wreck of an old Spaceship. As Kiro sleeps Nayuta takes the tiara, hoping it will help her at school. It does not, but she finds green-skinned people are taking an interest in her. They are the badly disguised aliens, known as the Azadd; one attacks her, only to be killed by a young man, Ryoutaro (Toshio), who wears a Jarun and is armed with a Ray Gun. He introduces Nayuta to Soz (Rihoko), a giant blue-haired woman who has been protecting the region for 3,000 years, supported by humans wearing Jaruns that make them Espers. She explains that the Azadd hate humanity and wiped out her civilization; initially refusing to join Soz's group, she changes her mind; the Azadd kill her parents and abduct Kiro.
Nayuta is also kidnapped and taken to the Azadd mothership, to discovers Kiro artificially aged 12 years by the Azadds and working with them. Ryoutaro now arrives, and Kiro traps him in a maze of mirrors: he responds by teleporting into the mirror, which destroys the spaceship but renders him incorporeal. Nayuta tells Ryoutaro to teleport into her body, and the two become one. With help from Soz, Nayuta teleports to the Azadd base on Pluto (see Outer Planets) and after escaping an illusion in which her parents are alive she meets a being calling itself "The Builder", and they commune.
There follows a long and confusing Infodump on the nature of the Universe, mysticism and the rise and fall of an ancient human civilization; Nayuta is told the Solar System has been enclosed within a barrier, outside of which a second Big Bang is underway. If humanity reaches its full potential using the Jaruns then the barrier will disappear, causing the Solar System's destruction (thus Kiro's siding with the Azadd). When Nayuta insists on leaving the Solar System to see if the Big Bang is still underway, The Builder instructs Kiro to kill her; puzzled, he points out that if the Big Bang were indeed continuing she would die anyway. Realizing The Builder is hiding something, he uses himself as a shield from its attack, allowing Nayuta to escape. She asks him to teleport into her at the last moment, which gives her the power to leave the Solar System – outside of which Nayuta achieves Transcendence or similar; throwing her Jarun away she (who we also see as herself, Ryoutaro and Kiro) walks towards a city of spires nestled in a great cloud.
Nayuta starts off as a tale of a girl who reluctantly acquires magical powers and two suitors, one good, one apparently bad, confronting hostile aliens who have been monitoring humanity through the ages, before plunging headfirst into Cosmology and spirituality, with a little Space Opera thrown in. There is also a godlike being called Oon and his first creation, now evil, who seems to be The Builder. The consequences of having two men merge with Nayuta is not examined (see Gender; Identity). Nayuta suffers from often incoherent English subtitles, with the ambitions of the source material hamstrung by so much of the big picture being relegated to infodumps: this Anime is probably best viewed as an interesting failure. [SP]
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