Unveiling the Secrets Behind Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical

Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical is a book written by David A. Adler. The story revolves around Tenko, a young boy who discovers that he has the power to see magical creatures called Watchers. The Watchers are invisible to ordinary people, but Tenko has the ability to see them. **The main idea** of the book is that Tenko's power to see the Watchers comes with a great responsibility. He learns that the Watchers are guardians of the magical world and it is his duty to help them protect it from harm.

Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic was an ephemeral 1995 animated show by Saban Entertainment. The story is about a young teenage girl who was discovered by an old magician, Hikita, while she was performing at a circus. He told her she could do more magic than just magic tricks if she got the proper training and she agreed to come with him. She goes to the school to train with five (six if Shonti is counted) other students and soon becomes best in the class. Becoming the Tenko, she learns about the powerful Starfire Gems, each of which have their own magic power. However, another student, Jana, enraged that neither she nor her brother Jason was chosen as the new leader of the gems' guardians despite their grandfather being Hikita's predecessor, coerces Jason into stealing the gems. They get their hands on one apiece, but most of the rest is sent to the ends of the earth to keep them out of the twins' hands. Tenko and her friends are required to recover them all.

Egomaniac Hunter In one episode, Jana s able to bribe a hunter for the Starfire gem he found by giving him the chance to hunt Tenko s pet snow leopard. This was a toy line from Mattel, and when Greg was prototyping the Jewel Rider dolls, he used these bodies before the idea left Mattel and was picked up by Kenner.

He learns that the Watchers are guardians of the magical world and it is his duty to help them protect it from harm. Tenko embarks on a thrilling adventure as he teams up with the Watchers to battle a group of evil sorcerers who want to use the magic for their own selfish purposes. Throughout the story, Tenko learns valuable lessons about courage, friendship, and the importance of using one's abilities for the greater good.

Saban's Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic

Episodes 10 & 12 of this 13 episode animated series are no where to be found online, there were only a few episodes (Eps, 1~6) officially released on DVD by Boulevard Entertainment and the toys/merchandise that were produced are rare too. This Saban cartoon aired from 1995 to 1996 on features live action segments of real Japanese Magician Princess Tenko (Mariko Itakura) teaching how various magic tricks work. I remember seeing this show on Fox Kids when I was little and recently found a youtube playlist of episodes: [ www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQZuTNseLzdS-vuzmr3cRMQCnJs1vMArA ]. After watching through the available episodes I think this show had real potential but just didn’t reach an audience like other Saturday morning cartoons did. Cree Summer, the voice actress of Princess Tenko and the antagonist Jana does a great job, I didn’t realize that she plays both roles until I looked it up.

• Find missing episodes 10 & 12, upload all episodes onto archive.org
• Find information/scripts from the screenwriters about what Season 2 would have been like, and/or how the series would have ended.
• Find out who owns the rights to show now and if a high-quality release of all of the episodes is possible.

Post by furbyisland on Feb 1, 2021 1:08:19 GMT

it's very possible that disney still has the rights to this series but it, alongside most of the saban back catalogue (excluding anime dubs/power rangers and other toku series/the cinegroupe collabs since disney no longer has the rights to these) has been neglected over the years by disney and as of now they have no plans to add them to disney+/hulu 8(

Post by lammyvox on Feb 1, 2021 1:56:43 GMT

Disney has a terrible record of not caring about releasing obscure content like this. I guess our only hope for finding those episodes are from home recordings. I don’t recall ever recording any of the episodes that I saw on Fox Kids but it looks like some episodes were re-aired on Jetix Play. I’ll start downloading and uploading the episodes we do have from the youtube playlist onto archive.org.

Another aspect of lost/rare media related to Princess Tenko is Mariko Itakura A.k.a Mari Asakaze’s music. I found a video of her performing one of her songs along with some magic tricks (1978): www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wN9l4Fx0w8

Post by lammyvox on Feb 8, 2021 0:37:19 GMT

Update regarding episodes 10 & 12:
The Jewel Riders archive on youtube responded in the comments of one of their reuploads that: “Yes. We have one of the two missing episodes. It isn't good quality but it's something; will be shared soon The best shared episodes are available on this playlist. These episdoes are rips from the DVD. We have all the merchandise including some production artwork. Stay tuned to JRA for more content.”
The episode that JRA has hasn't been posted yet, but hopefully soon it will be and then we'll have only one more episode to find (although the quality might not be very good, it's better than nothing.)

Post by lammyvox on Feb 15, 2021 8:27:45 GMT

Somehow I missed this in my initial search but here’s a clip from one of the missing episodes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cEzh6D4Mnc

In the comments The Jewel Riders Archive wrote 2 days ago that they’re going to post episode 10 on their channel, although the only copy they could find is very, very low quality (perhaps as low quality as this clip.) As for episode 12, there’s not sign of it anywhere, no one seems to have even a clip from it.

Post by lammyvox on Feb 16, 2021 2:55:05 GMT

In my initial post I wrote that Cree Summer did the voice for Tenko but I was mistaken, Mary Kay Bergman was the voice actress. She’s most well known as also voicing Cartman’s Mom in South Park (unfortunately on November 11, 1997 she passed away.)
According to this article ( animeanime.jp/article/2005/03/16/181.html ) the first time Tenko & the Guardians of the Magic was shown in Japan was in 2005 at a special event at a cafe’ called Trinity in Shibuya. This article also claims that there were 26 episodes created but everywhere else on the internet there are only 13 episodes documented to exist. It’s possible that this article is incorrect about that, though it’s odd that they would get such a detail wrong. The 13th episode does end on a glaring cliff-hanger though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more than 13 episodes planned. It’d be interesting to find scripts or storyboards from those unaired episodes and see what the writers had planned for the show. There’s also no mention of if the show was shown in the cafe’ with a Japanese dub or subtitles.

Transcription of the text under this photo: “Amy Jo Johnson(left), best know as Kimberly, The Pink Ranger, hosts “Let The Magic Begin,” a special half-hour “sneak preview” on the making of the new nationally syndicated children’s series, “Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic,” schedules for broadcast the week of September 4. The new part live-action/part animated series from Saban Entertainment stars both the real-life international illusionist Princess Tenko (center), and her animated counterpart (right.)"
The half-hour TV special “Let the Magic Begin” hosted by Amy Jo Johnson is also no where to be found online. I don’t think it was ever released officially, so our best bet is to find a TV recording. The text under the above photo doesn’t mention what channel this special aired on, but I’m assuming it was on FOX, since the cartoon would also air on Fox Kids.

• “Let the Magic Begin” TV Special
• Episode 10: “Will the Real Tenko Please Stand Up?”
• Episode 12: “The Magic Skates”
• Mariko Itakura (Princess Tenko) A.k.a Mari Asakaze’s Idol music
  

• Existence Unconfirmed:
  
• Episodes 14 ~ 26
• Japanese Dub/Official Subtitles

Post by zangril on Feb 16, 2021 5:46:13 GMT

I know this doesn't really help anything, but there are people with these recorded. Including the TV Special. These are posts from back in 2006. There are 3 people talking about have tapes from the show. One person has a single episode, another one says they have a tape with almost every episode and another tape with the last episode, and the last person says they have the TV special recorded but it's lost in a collection of 175+ 8 hour tapes.

Here's another post this time from 2020 where someone says they have a recording of the TV Special.

Other than that I found various websites and newspapers that talked about the TV Special and listings for when it first aired on TV. Couldn't find a video or clip from the show though.

Post by lammyvox on Feb 17, 2021 11:31:55 GMT

Below the photo of the hand-painted cels and above the screenshot Tenko writes: “This is from the transformation scene.” I haven’t stumbled upon any animation cels from this show and merchandise is very scant (there are some party paper plates on ebay right now though, lol) It’s strange that there doesn’t seem to be a Japanese dub for this show considering that Mariko was well known in Japan as a magician. Searching “Golden L TV” via duckduckgo didn’t lead me to anything else but Tenko’s own blog.

led me to another post on Tenko’s official blog in which she shows more of the hand-painted cells she has and a few more screenshots from the show.

Here's an Interview with English subtitles (she also speaks a bit in English), promoting Tenko’s performances in Macau: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXZWCbLdDjg

This video about “10 Magic tricks that went Horribly wrong” mentions Tenko in the beginning (I guess there’s no actual footage of this incident): www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE5tW_eMvNo

Two short English articles from 2007 on the sword trick incident:
> www.japan-zone.com/news/2007/07/24/princess-tenko-takes-one-in-the-ribs
> www.japan-zone.com/news/2007/07/30/a-magical-return-by-princess-tenko/
A more in-depth English article about Tenko, her career and lesser known facts about her (Surprisingly Kim Jong Il was such a big fan of hers that he named a theater in Pyongyang after her.): famous-popular.tokyo/en/joyful/entertainment-en/1979/
An English interview with Tenko (Seems like Saban and Mattle had some really strict (illegal?) requirements in Tenko’s contract.): famous-popular.tokyo/en/joyful/entertainment-en/1981/

Post by lammyvox on Feb 21, 2021 19:19:16 GMT

Great news! The Jewel Riders Archive is going to post the 10th episode titled “Will the Real Tenko Please Stand Up?”on their youtube channel in 4 days.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gemTY9Xnykc

Their description of the episode is as follows: “A prince sends his advisors to hire Tenko to perform for him, and he promises to give her a Starfire Gem he owns. Hearing this, Jana pretends to be Tenko and the prince decides to have them compete against each other. When Jana destroys things and Tenko saves the spectators, the prince realizes she really deserves the gem and gives it to the real Tenko. *At this time, this is the best presentation of this episode known.” I’m hyped and would love to be at the premiere but it’s at 3 am for me. Either way I’m hyped to see this previously lost episode and archive it with the others.

So here’s what media is still missing:
• “Let the Magic Begin” TV Special
• Episode 12: “The Magic Skates”
• Mariko Itakura (Princess Tenko) A.k.a Mari Asakaze’s Idol music

◦ Existence Unconfirmed:
◦ Episodes 14 ~ 26
◦ Japanese Dub/Official Subtitles

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Deleted Member

Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2021 1:58:55 GMT

Hello Lammyvox and Zangril - I hope that both are doing well. By serendipity, I found this site for our common interest in lost and nostalgic media and this thread got my attention

I am the same person found by Zangirl from the wikipedia article and the 4chan post. More relevantly, signed up for an account to announce that not only have I found the said episode "Let The Magic Begin", it has finally converted to a digital file. The quality is marginal at best since the recording itself was in EP/SLP mode onto a tape that had been reused. Exacerbating the low quality was the worn condition of the transferring VCR, that while had not been regularly used since 2016, had been literally showing its age since back then. On more thing - it was also my first successful attempt using basic transferring software so the capture settings may not have been the best.

In the spirit of preservation, I am eager to share a copy to someone who can post it on youtube since I have no intent of creating an account in exchange for information regard proper conversion and anonymous cloud storage. While beyond the scope of this thread, I have tapes of over-the-air recordings that range from 1992 to 2016 and might be interest to members of the lostmedia wiki now that I have started a slow cataloging process that I expect will take months if not years.

If you think you can help me, please send me a personal message.

He also discovers the true power of magic and how it can be used to bring about positive change in the world. The book is filled with imaginative and vivid descriptions of the magical creatures and their world, capturing the reader's attention from start to finish. The author does a great job of creating a sense of wonder and enchantment, making the reader feel like they are a part of the magical world alongside Tenko and the Watchers. In summary, Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical is an exciting and captivating story about a young boy who discovers his unique ability to see magical creatures and becomes a hero in the magical world. The book emphasizes the importance of responsibility and using one's powers for good, while also delivering an entertaining and magical adventure..

Reviews for "The Impact of Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical on Pop Culture"

1. Jane - 2 stars - I found "Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical" to be quite disappointing. The plot was predictable, the characters lacked depth, and the writing was mediocre at best. I was expecting a captivating and action-packed fantasy story, but instead, I found myself bored and uninterested in the events unfolding. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone looking for an immersive fantasy read.

2. Mike - 1 star - "Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical" was a total letdown for me. The story felt like a generic, cookie-cutter fantasy adventure with no originality or creativity. The dialogue was cliché and cheesy, and the pacing was inconsistent, making it hard to stay engaged. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked any real development or growth. I was hoping for a captivating and enchanting read, but this book fell short on so many levels. I would suggest looking elsewhere for a more compelling fantasy novel.

3. Sarah - 2 stars - I was excited to dive into "Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical," but unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. The world-building was weak, leaving me with a lack of understanding and connection to the setting. The plot was slow-moving and poorly executed, with several unnecessary subplots that only detracted from the main story. The writing style was also lackluster, failing to capture my attention or evoke any emotion. Overall, I was left disappointed and would not recommend this book to fellow fantasy enthusiasts.

The Fascinating World of Tenko and the Watchers of the Magical