So, several years ago, I bought and received a job lot of early Mana & Amaya videos and the like from an eBay seller. The auction's description mentioned that several of the videos were actually given to him prior to the release of the series on VHS, implying that the seller originally worked on the show in some way. Some of the early tapes he sent me were in relatively good condition (Considering they're almost thirty years old) and some are a little worse for wear, with missing boxes, labels, etc.

Some of the tapes had the original labels missing and had crudely-written replacement labels stuck to them. Other tapes had earlier versions of certain episodes with extra (or missing) sound effects, as well as short bits of footage that did not make it to the final versions of the episodes.

The video that grabbed my interest the most, however, was a video simply called "Early Reel", which I believe was animated in the early 1990's, alongside the original pitch-episode "Amayanapped!".

Now, "Amayanapped!" was pitched to MTM before production on the series properly began. Once it was green-lighted, Season 1 of Mana & Amaya was produced, and "Amayanapped!" was re-animated to become the show's 25th episode, meaning that this video could not have been Katherine Russo's pitch to the MTM studio to get M&A green-lit.

The Video

Intrigued, I played the video before any of the others I received in the Job lot. The video started with a date displayed in the bottom right hand corner. It only appeared for a few seconds, and it said "10/12/1993" which would mean the 10th December, 1993. According to most sources, 1993 was the year Katherine Russo had the concept for the show.

After this, the title card appeared. As this was one of the earliest, if not the earliest "M&A" videos to be completed, it made sense that the familiar theme tune, narration, along with the famous scenes of the airbase and Mana and Amaya in the title logo, was absent. Instead, a relatively plain title card was used, simply displaying the prelaunch Mana & Amaya logo used in the pilot. After a few seconds, it faded to black.

Weird Al Yankovic was not present as the narrator. There was no speech, merely sound effects and music, making it all the more unnerving.

The episode started out with Barringham being completely mobbed, with a few characters populating in the streets. One character was present in a building, which was the building closest to the viewer. The camera zoomed in to look more closely inside the building, and we then saw Mana and Amaya in it.

Mana and Amaya's designs looked off in this "Early Reel". They were, presumably, the same designs as the ones used in the pilot pitch, which are visible in a single scene in the broadcast version. Their designs look more like Katherine Russo's original sketches combined with their unaired pilot designs. The thing I found creepy is that the sisters' eyes didn't move in this. They were just generic circles.

So the sisters, with their lifeless eyes, walked out of the building and went outside the town.

Outside, Mana and Amaya met Sammy and Marty. Again, their designs were noticeably different to their designs in the show itself. As the boys met the sisters, they waved and followed them from behind.

Immediately following this, a Bugmin shows up in front of them. We saw a shot of Mana & Amaya with a surprised look on their faces. They looked similar to the actual show, except they were more detailed and seemed to convey more horror, as if the sisters were severely loathing the thought of what is to come.

I saw the sisters run down a steep gradient, with the Bugmin chasing behind them. The shocked faces from the last scene were still present. A railroad crossing was ahead of Mana and Amaya, which they immediately ran into and tripped. To make matters worse, a train was on the railway at that point in time, which the sisters rammed into, sending it tumbling out of control.

A semi-mountainous scene similar to the one from the 2006 movie was seen with Mana and Amaya in the far distance. The difference was that there were more rocks, ridges and cliffs, and less grass. A pair of Bugmins were present on the route in front of Mana and Amaya. The sisters, unable to stop, collided into the Bugmins and flew up into the air.

The sisters continued to roll along the ground (the animation cel frames were visible in a few scenes) until they tumbled off a rocky ledge. They fell all the way down the mountain cliff with more unsettling faces. They were similar to their "Eyes shut" faces from the show, but conveyed intense fear and their teeth were gritted. While this was going on, a climatic orchestral piece was heard, which was likely to be a piece of stock music.

The sisters reached back to the town, but the Bugmin caught them. A terrible synth note could be heard, while Mana and Amaya started to get bugged themselves. A garbled glitchy static sound effect was added for a more dramatic effect. Even worse than this was a pair of female voices letting out blood curdling shrieks, which I assume were Mana and Amaya, either being killed or badly injured by the Bugmin.

As the Bugmin dissapeared, the camera panned and I saw the Music Main 4 lying on the ground, as an ominous strings piece (again, probably stock music) was played. Their eyes were shut and their bodies were injured and starting to turn to the Bugmin colours. You could faintly hear a male voice saying the Coptic sentence "kalos mpelaau lupei". Slowly, the scene faded to black.

On the black background, some text, in white, read "There's nothing quite like it", below the middle of the screen, in Rockwell. Following this was a copyright notice, "A Unicorn Sunshine Land production for MTM Enterprises, copyright Flextech USA Inc. 1993". While the copyright date was displayed, the faint sound of wind was audible.

The screen remained blank for about thirty seconds. Slowly, it faded to a night scene. The colour was very washed out at this point. Mana, Amaya, Sammy, and Marty are walking down an empty route. They no longer had their pupils and colour schemes, but they now look more like Bugmins.

Throughout these night scenes, very little sound was present. During close-ups of the "Bugged Music Main 4", some awful grinding, squealing and clanking noises were heard.

The route terminates at a small town. By this point, the cast was walking at a considerably slow pace, slower than usually seen on the early seasons of M&A. Oddly, most of the background characters were not the regular incidentals seen on the show. The incidentals consisted largely of simplistic stick figures and the like. After stopping, a Mimsie holding a cutter's torch appeared, standing in front of the bugged cast. The camera panned down slowly whilst fading to black. 

After about six seconds, the sound of birds chirping was audible. I was half-expecting the tape to take a more lighthearted approach.

I was wrong.

A black-on-white hand drawing faded into view. It was a dark and gloomy city with all the characters. Having several tapes and DVDs of some of the more depressing episodes, I am used to this sort of scenario.  However, the characters were coloured like Bugmins. Also, their eyes lack pupils like the main cast. As I am something of a Mana & Amaya superfan, I found this image to be a little upsetting, though I imagine that many people will be completely unfazed by it.

If you're a long-time follower of Mana & Amaya, or have children or younger siblings that are into the show, then you'll know that there are literally more than hundreds of characters in the series- even more if you count things such as the comics and the merchandise. This picture did not have hundreds of characters, but the choice of characters were interesting to say the least.

All of them were based on various characters only seen in the comics. Fairly little known until the dawn of fan wikis such as Manapedia and the M&A Wikia site.

Others shown were not recognizable as any character in the show. And in the middle of the picture was Mana and Amaya themselves, barely recognisable. Their entire bodies are now like a badly glitched up sprite, their eyes still lack pupils and their mouths drawn crudely.

As for sound, the chirping birds played throughout the showing of the drawing, about 30 seconds in total, along with the unmistakable sound of a low wind. The wind was long and drawn out, lasting for the whole showing of the image and trailing after the image had faded to black. It would seem that the recording was from an storm about to happen. This made the image all the more unsettling. Partway through, the wind almost seems to get louder and stronger.

I've always been somewhat unnerved by static captions or images, especially if they're not accompanied by any text or music. I've never liked static TV idents used to signify the death of a Pharaonic Family member, for example. This was no exception. The imagery and the soundtrack didn't help matters either.

After a while the wind began to get a bit static-y. The image showed again for a split second, but now with a black-on-red colour scheme. It was not blood-red or anything, but rather a "perfect" red you'd expect to see as the default red for old editions of Microsoft Paint. The red quickly faded to a more brownish-yellowish hue, before fading away completely.