Coud Van Giruet is a rookie sky pirate. After a raid he is checking out the loot and he comes across a girl packed away in a box. The girl is Reveric Metherlence, Ren for short. Ren has a green gem on her forhead called an erementar gerad that indicates that she is an Edil Raid. Edil Raids make contracts with humans and are capable of reacting with a their human partner, called a preja and transforming into a weapon. But Ren isn't just any Edil Raid she is a part of the Metherlence family and is extremely powerful, she is called the Seventh Scintillating Treasure Tree and everyone is after her.

Soon after Coud discovers Ren, mysterious ninjas and members of Arcaile show up to try and take her. Arcaile calls itself the Edil Raid Perfect Protection Organization and they collect Edil Raids in a so called perfect town where they can live peacefully without human interferance. Unfortunately they take a heavy handed approach and dislike it when Edil Raids do not wish to come with them. They often resort to kidnapping and forcing Edil Raids to come with them. In order to avoid being taken away Ren is forced to create a contract with Coud.

The voice of a mysterious girl calls to Ren in her dreams, pleading for her to come to the Edil Garden. Coud promises to help Ren find the Edil Garden, and promises to protect her until then. Of course they slowly start to fall in love, but they are both very socially awkward and find it hard to express their feelings to each other. Because their mission was to retreive Ren, the three Arcaile members Cisqua, Kuea and Rowen decide to tag along. Kuea is also an Edil Raid and her preja is Rowen, Cisqua is a gun toting maniac character. On their way to the Edil Garden they encounter humans and edil raids in all sorts of relationships, edil raid hunters, illegal fighting arenas and many many people who treat edil raids as nothing more than items or weapons.

There are also man-made edil raids called steam raids. Through a dangerous life threatening procedure humans are implanted with an erementar gerad. There is also a society called Chaos Choir that wants to use Ren to rule the world. They are determined to kill Coud, because as Ren's preyja he stands in the way of their plans for her. An edil raid can only react with one preyja at a time, so killing Coud is the only possible way for a member of Chaos Choir to become her preyja. There are some very pretty songs in the series, in order to react with their preyjas each edil raid has a song they sing to transform. Also every special attack has a song that charges it up (or whatever). This series is full of funny, exciting and occasionally tragic adventures as they quest for Edil Garden. (Note: I've also seen it spelled Erementar Gelad, Eden Raids and the Garden of Eden. Apparently Fansubs aren't perfect, oh noes my world is falling apart)

This is a typical shoujo anime, the characters are archtypes, the storyline is predictable and the transformations scenes are stock footage, but Erementar Gerad does have some aspects that help it stand out. I liked this anime because neither Coud nor Ren is the goofy head over heels in love type, they are both more of a quiet blushing type and it's really cute to watch. The songs the edil raids and their preyja's sing are beautiful, even if some of them are sung in terrible english. Also Cisqua faces emotional turmoil throughout the series as her belief in the ideals that founded Arcaile conflict with the mercinary methods that Arcaile employs.











I had to include these two last pictures. The one on the left is a edil raid bounty hunter, Worx, and yes his edil raid transforms into a giant squeeky hammer looking thing. The only redeeming factor to this ridiculous weapon is that each of the six sections can break off and work as a missile or form up together to make a shield. The picture on the right really happened in the series, sort of. Ren fell asleep in the middle of nowhere and when Coud woke her up she made this hilarious face and said "I was thinking and I fell asleep." It is her only real airhead moment and it was great.

I've got everything down to a science, unfortunately I was never any good at science.