I'm going to skip the story completely and 
briefly comment primarily on the animation and 
production.  Take my impressions with a grain of 
salt; it was a slightly poor VHS copy from my 
local Japanese video rental store.  And as for 
the story, you should watch the anime and decide 
for yourself what you think about it.

I believe the animation for this series is 
completely digital, and you can definitely tell 
that something was lost when you compare it to 
the traditional hand-painted method of the older 
series.  Hard to describe, but the animation just 
didn't "flow" as well as it had in the past.

Of course, this might be accounted for by the 
vast majority of scenes being still shots with 
hardly any movement happening except with the 
mouths.  This has nothing to do with the coloring 
being done digitally or hand-painted, of course.  
Suffice to say, though, expect a lot of dialogue 
in the first episode and not much else action.

Many character designs have been redone.  They 
definitely still resemble the styles of the OVA's 
and not the original TV series.

Many of the characters sound much different from 
what I remember (but then again it has been years 
since I last saw any Fushigi Yuugi animation).  I 
believe the seiyuu are attempting to sound older 
than they previously did, since all the known 
Fushigi Yuugi characters are now mature adults 
and not teens.  It's still disconcerting for me, 
though.

Getting back to the animation, it is my opinion 
(and only mine) that Studio Pierrot still hasn't 
quite mastered digital animation, even with 
successes like Gensomaden Saiyuki, compared to 
other digital anime titles.  And it is pretty 
apparent in this first episode of FY Eikou Den.

I certainly hope the quality of the production 
improves in the future releases.

[I hope I was as graceful as possible with this 
criticism and didn't give way anything that I 
shouldn't have.  Oh well, it's late and I'm tired 
and please forgive me for being brain-dead enough 
to even post this off-topic thread...]