Episode 1: The Girl of Legend

"This is the story of a young girl who single-handedly gathered the Seven Stars of Suzaku and gained the power to make all her dreams come true. The story itself is an incantation and whomever reads it gains the main character's power to have their wishes granted. This is because once they turn the first page, the story will become real and begin ..."

And thus begins Fushigi Yugi...The story starts out by introducing fifteen-year-old Yuki Miaka, an exam candidate trying to get into the elite school Jonan Academy, who also has a great love for food. Miaka goes with her best friend Hongo Yui to the National Library. Waiting for Yui to return a book, Miaka heads over to a juice machine, but drops her coin as she tries to insert it. As she bends down to pick up it up, Miaka catches a glimpse of something that looks like a phoenix. Curious, Miaka slowly goes up the stairs and into a room lined with shelves of dusty old books. Yui appears behind her, and Miaka is telling her what she saw, when a book suddenly drops to the floor. Yui reads off the title, "The Universe of the Four Gods", and figures out it's an ancient Chinese novel. Miaka flips through the pages and stops, shouting excitedly that there is a picture of the bird she saw before. Yui slowly reads the incantation on the page and immediately after she finishes, a bright red light fills the room, and Miaka and Yui are transported inside the book. Miaka and Yui try to figure out where they are when they're suddenly attacked by slave traders. They watch, astonished, as a handsome young man with a Chinese character blazing on his forehead comes to their rescue. Bending down, he surprises them by asking if they have any money to pay him for saving them. Seeing their blank looks, he figures they don't have any and walks off. Miaka is fishing around in her pockets for money, and doesn't notice when Yui is engulfed by the same red light from earlier, and disappears back to the real world. In the library, Yui, confused, spots the book lying on the ground where they left it. Yui starts to read and is shocked to find a reference to the man who saved them. Slowly, Yui begins to realize that what happened wasn't just a dream and that as events take place in the other dimension, they are recorded in the book... Believing that the man who saved them might have kidnapped Yui, Miaka hitches a ride on the back of cart, all the while still wondering where she is, and comes to the realization that she's in the ancient China of the book. Miaka spots the young man in the midst of a crowd as she enters the capital city of Konan, and begins wandering around looking for him, amazed by all the new and incredible sights she encounters. Miaka's spirits start to sink as she feels she'll never find him, when she is approached by a stranger who claims he's a friend of the young man and offers to take Miaka to him. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city in a restaurant, two men are talking about the strange girl who is going around, asking people if they've seen a guy with the symbol for ogre on his forehead. Their talk catches the attention of the young man who is sitting nearby, and he wonders if they're talking about the same girl he rescued before. Miaka is following the stranger when he suddenly stops and announces that this is where they'll stop. As more men began to swarm around her, Miaka slowly backs away, realizing she's been tricked. The men stare in disbelief with big eyes as Miaka rolls up her sleeves, and tries to fend them off with "killer womens' pro wrestling moves I saw on the satellite broadcast!" They overpower Miaka, however, and she's about to be raped, when the young man comes to her rescue for the second time that day. The men run off and he turns to Miaka, their eyes locking in a gaze...