Saint Tail is a manga and anime series. Originally a twenty-four part manga by Megumi Tachikawa, the story was adapted into an anime television series by producer Tokyo Movie Shinsha, with forty-three episodes and one short, broadcast by ABC. Tokyopop translated the manga series, and subtitled and partially dubbed the anime series. Video games were released for the Sega Saturn, Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear in Japan, and are considered collectors' items by Saint Tail fans. The Tokyopop book summary states that it is "Robin Hood meets Sailor Moon!" Kodansha is holding a contest through pixiv for fans of Megumi Tachikawa's Saint Tail to become the artist for the "next generation" version of the manga. The contest asks fans to create the story of a new phantom thief who appears in Seika City.
Plot
The story of Saint Tail follows a simple formula: middle school girl Meimi Haneoka transforms into the mysterious thief Saint Tail-, and steals back random belongings that were stolen or taken dishonestly using simple magic tricks. She's assisted by a classmate/best friend and sister-in-training, Seira Mimori, whose position in the church after school each day allows her to hear the troubles of those who have been wronged and have come to pray to God. While Saint Tail steals to right the wrongs done to innocent people, she's a thief to the police force. Her classmate Daiki Asuka Jr., called Asuka Jr., and son of Detective Asuka, is hot on her trail. Saint Tail delivers notices of her planned capers to Asuka Jr., to give him a fair chance to catch her.
Media
Anime dubbing
Only the first four volumes were dubbed to English. Volumes 5-8 were released on DVD with English subtitles only. The first two volumes of the English dub removed references to God in a possible anticipation of a TV broadcast. This is especially awkward, "considering Seira Mimori spends half of the time in a nun's habit, one wonders why they thought they could do Saint Tail without references to God". According to producer Kenneth Lee, who took over starting with Volume 3, the remaining episodes will not have this restriction. In the Italian dub, when Asuka Jr. reads a notice from Saint Tail, rather than display the notice written in Japanese, a short scene of Saint Tail running in the dark is shown while her voice reads out the notice's message. The notice scenes are cut from the Korean dub, presumably due to Japanese text. In Korea, several episodes were cut entirely and not broadcast. The 12th episode was broadcast after the 3rd episode to match with the real Christmas season.
Manga
licensed Saint Tail for an English-language translation in North America, and published it from April 23, 2001 to December 10, 2002; this translation has since gone out of print.
