Magic Knight Rayearth

Action. Adventure. Girls. Mecha. That should be enough for some of you, go watch it. For the others, well, I could shill this series all day. I'll talk a bit about both MKR I and II, because yeah the whole thing is cool, really cool. Possibly my favorite work of fiction. Magic Knight Rayearth looks cool. Everything about it, the aesthetic. The armor, the weapons, the robots, the setting, it all looks awesome. Big jewels set into bronze trim everywhere. Weapons and armor that get more powerful and transform as you use them, some hardcore RPG stuff. Red, green, and blue. Fire, wind, and water. Classicstuff, great stuff, tried and true color-coded magical girls just work. The aesthetic of the series alone is enough to make it worth watching, but it's got plenty more backing it up. I don't want to bore you with a long review so I'm just gonna list some of the stuff that makes it great: Varied, interesting monster fights. Deeply moving villains. Beautiful romantic tragedy. Enormous crystal palaces. Sexy scantily clad women. GIGANTIC MAGIC ROBOT SPACE COMBAT. Come MKRII, political intrigue. Fantastic anti-villains. A literal Iczer chick. Gorgeous hand-painted backgrounds. Spaceships. Shoulder fairies. Demiurgic responsibilities. Take everything that's awesome and put it into one series and you have Magic Knight Rayearth. Hikaru, Nova, Lantis, and Eagle are some of my favorite characters in fiction, they are simply without flaw. Mokona is my self-insert. If I could force everybody on the planet to watch one anime series, this would be the one. Is that enough? Really the first four words of this review should have been enough.

Try to mix Sailor Moon, Fushigi Yuugi and Aura Battler Dunbine and you get this animme but I say it appeals to outside the audiences of those animes as well. In comparison to Sailor Moon, the girls are in another world and have no need to conceal their identities. However, they don’t make highly dramatic speeches of why evil is wrong or anything like in a super hero shoujo like Sailor Moon. But like Sailor Moon (specifically in the Stars series), Hikaru does try to emotionally reason with enemies and plea with them that fighting is wrong. The anime in comparison to other magicalgirl animes is more masculine and physical, and the way the characters are presented and developed in being more dependent than just their magical powers, but their own natural fighting abilities and their big hearts. When I say relying on their own natural fighting abilities I mean things such as Hikaru with Kendo, Umi with fencing, and Fuu with archery. It’s not like Sailor Moon where she is managing to avoid a fight until she finds an opening to use her signature move of the season. With Fushigi Yuugi, its girls are transported to another world and they are seen as the savior. But these girls in MKR are chosen to be warriors and not celestial priestesses and have to fight their enemies themselves with minimal help from time to time. As for Aura Battler Dunbine, it’d be a spoiler if I explain it to you but if you see at the every end of the opening credits, you’ll get an idea of what I mean. In the end, with the way the story progresses, it’s as if you are watching an old school Japanese style RPG game. The art is of course by Clamp, so you’ll be able to recognize the way they draw the size of the eyes and the distinctive style to them. The eyes are the only thing that just looks alike but the characters have good variety to their design such as their uniforms, shapes of their faces and bodies. But in terms of other factors like hair styles and what not, it’s typical what you see in other animes like natural colored blue hair and what not so that’s always been a basic acceptable standard in anime. Because the majority of this anime takes place in another world, it is at liberty to allow more types of fictional creatures like Innova with his ears and have wicked costumes like Caladina’s skimpy gypsy outfit and Zagato’s heavy armor. The armor and the costume designs are very captivating and the environment of Cefiro is really breath taking and something out of Final Fantasy almost with floating continents and more in a world of middle ages but with monsters and magic. Of course like other magical girl animes a lot of recycled footage is used such as when they use their magical powers. Like every time Hikaru uses her flare arrow or something, it’s the same animation sequence with a red background and so on and so forth. But this was made in mid 1990s and a certain percentage of anime was like that and acceptable. But for those of you that more new into anime, this might annoy you more than it did with me because I got into this anime when it first came out. Then sometimes for humor’s sake, characters get miniaturized. I say this it to keep it appealing to the kids and to give it some humor. I can handle it, but for some people, they might find it annoying. Other than that, when they are not relying on magic to fight, the use of their natural fighting abilities plays out well and gives more exciting build up with the fights and makes it more enjoyable like that. The music is very excellent and beautiful. The opening theme Yuzurenai Negai meaning an Unyielding Wish is one of my favorite opening songs of all time. I like how it builds up very slow in the first few seconds and then bam, it becomes more like rock and pop. It has a good sense of tempo and pacing and the lyrics are a great way of telling the overall theme of having a strong will and always stick to your dreams. In other language versions like the English and Tagalog versions, they try to keep the song faithful. I know the Sega Saturn version in English has a different tune to the song from the anime version though. The ending theme Asu He No Yuuki or the Courage to Tomorrow is more pop-ish but shares the same things in a more light hearted context. The background music especially when the next episode recaps the previous is very intense because the situation of the show is presented that way. The music has a variety of ways of setting the atmosphere and tends to be more orchestral because of the setting in a more midevil world. The voice acting in the Japanese version is perfect. I really love the cast. I like Ryotaro Okiayu as Innova. Just perfect. Same with Juurouta Kusogi as Zagato perfectly matches his look. The English voices on the other hand, not too great and is why some anime fans hate dubs. Personally, I thought the Saturn game’s dub cast was much superior and more faithful to the characterizations. Such as Hikaru being tomboyish and rowdy, Umi being formal, and Fuu being intelligent. The regular anime dub just didn’t cut it for me. This anime is more universally appealing that other magical girl animes because of the action and story isn’t all that feminine in comparison to other predecessors. Before the anime and manga came out, there was the Saturn game that came out in late 1998. It was the last Saturn game to come to America. It comes with some great stickers and high quality box art. The game itself is like the old school Zelda games like Link to the past except you have control of 3 characters. The graphics are still excellent in terms of background but the game play style has the characters chibi-ized like in Zelda. It offers great challenges and the story itself still faithful to the original material, but offers an alternate story with more characters and development. It’s a high recommendation for Saturn owners. You’ll enjoy the anime for the characters, action, and unpredictable story.

Welcome back to magical girl month. Let's talk about Clamp again. Yes, the same studio behind xxxHolic and Cardcaptor Sakura. Now, I've already talked about their most famous magical girl series and, although I could look at one of its films, this month let's look at the other major one, Magic Knight Rayearth. One of the odd things about Clamp is that their anime adaptations all seem to be handled by different studios. Cardcaptor Sakura was a Madhouse production, Production IG did xxxHolic and this series was handled by TMS, a studio that's done a lot of famous stuff like Lupin, Detective Conan, Sonic X& Monster Rancher. None of which I've reviewed. So, let's take a look and see how they handle Clamp's work. Story: Our narrative opens at Tokyo Tower where three different schools have all come on a field trip at the same time. That seems a bit convenient, but I'll let it go because I honestly have no idea if that's actually a thing that happens for Tokyo Tower. It is a famous landmark, maybe it's a perfectly normal occurrence for multiple unrelated schools to visit at the same time. In a flash of light three girls, Fuu, Umi and Hikaru, appear in a strange world with floating stones. They meet a tiny man who calls himself Clef, the master mage. He tells the girls that to return to their world they have to revive the Rune Gods, become magic knights and save their land called Cephiro. Their princess and the pillar of their world, Emeraude, has been kidnapped by a villain called Zagato. But Clef's exposition dump is interrupted by the arrival of Alcyone, one of Zagato's minions. Clef buys time for them to escape, telling them to find Presea, a master blacksmith who will forge weapons for them. So, the girls set out on their quest to stop Zagato and save Cephiro. Let's start with the story issues. The biggest one involves a character death. I won't spoil who dies, but I will say that at this point it's been established that Fuu has healing magic and while this character is dying she doesn't do a thing. Later, they tell you that she tried her healing spell off-screen after the events you see, but there's still the problem of why she didn't do it sooner. Why wait until this other character stopped talking and moving to try and help them? Was she worried that she'd interrupt their speech by acting while they were still talking? It just makes the magic knights seem pitifully slow to react and incompetent. The worst part is that there are two easy ways to fix it. Method one, Fuu gets knocked out in the battle and doesn't wake up until it's already over. Method two, the character in question dies instantly. No time for a death speech or for healing magic. Honestly, the fact that they have the scene and only explain quite a bit later that Fuu did anything at all just makes it look like the writers forgot she had the healing spell or didn't think of having her use it at the actual critical moment, only realising they'd screwed up later on. There are some more minor issues too. For example, the magic knights spend way too long fighting the same few minions. Zagato is shown as having five major underlings and more than half the series is spent with two of them. Which results in the other three having really rushed conflicts with the knights and most of them not getting much screen time or room for development. The story is also pretty predictable since it relies heavily on cliches, but it's also intended for a pretty young audience so they'll probably find the events somewhat surprising, at least. So, what does the series do well narratively? Well, it is good at foreshadowing the events that are coming, which will give the intended audience a good head's up and some sources of tension. The heroes journey element is also done fairly well with a nice, steady progression. The romance elements, though not exactly good, are better than what you'd expect from Clamp's usual works. For one thing, only one of the girls gets a love interest, although the sequel might change that. For another thing, he is important to the plot and, in a rare move for Clamp, he's not far too old for her nor is he related to her. Granted, that's only a positive because Clamp is usually pretty pants at writing romance, but I'll give them credit for writing one that isn't gross or overly intrusive. I also do like that all three of our heroines do share the focus pretty evenly with all of them getting the spotlight at times, their own subplots and their own shining moments. Characters: The characters are pretty mixed. Hikaru, Fuu and Umi do get a respectable level of development and are somewhat fleshed out. However, the side characters are pretty weak. The vast majority of them follow a very basic and common character type with nothing to distinguish them from any other character who follows that type. They aren't terrible or offensively written but they also aren't good or interesting. Even the love interest is just your typical charming rogue character. They try to make the villains sympathetic, but most of that just involves using the lazy “they're doing it for love” excuse without putting any actual effort into making them the least bit compelling or three dimensional. Art: I won't lie, the series does not look good. Yeah, it was made back when everything was hand drawn so it's bound to be a bit dated by today's standards, but even when comparing it to other anime that came out around the same time, or earlier, it looks pretty bad. I will grant that there are some interesting designs, both in terms of characters and environments, but the animation is choppy and there are a lot of really noticeable art errors, usually having to do with drawing faces. Sound: Our main three are voiced by Shiina Hekiru (Hikaru), Yoshida Konami (Umi) and Kasahara Hiroko (Fuu). All of whom give competent performances, albeit not the best of their careers. You could say the same thing of the acting as a whole, it's competent but not anything special. The music is... there. It's not bad but it's not really good either. It's okay. Ho-yay: There's a bit. The series does have a lot of moments where Hikaru, Umi and Fuu strengthen their relationship and some of those seem to go beyond the realm of friendship. Still, it's obviously not deliberate and nothing comes of it. So, I'm calling the ho-yay factor a 3/10. Final Thoughts: Magic Knight Rayearth is a pretty standard series. It has some things that are pretty well done and others that are pretty badly done, but most of it is in between the two. All in all, it's average. If you're curious about it then it won't hurt you to check it out but you also won't be missing anything if you skip it. My final rating is a 5/10. Next week we'll continue the month with a look at Umi Monogatari: Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto.

Magic Knight Rayearth is something I feel like I have a special connection with, not because I saw it at a young age, but because it was the anime I always wanted but was always just out of reach. I was first exposed to it by way of the Sega Saturn game ads, which showed off classic CLAMP art that I did, and still do, consider among the best styling you'll see of its kind. I wanted to watch the anime, but it wasn't readily available at the time, and I never thought to check out the manga (which Tokyopop had recently put out), becauseI was never big into comics and the like. Years later I was able to watch the series in its full glory, and it was everything my 11 year old self could have hoped for: an SNES-era RPG in anime form, executed pretty flawlessly. The CLAMP style is animated better than pretty much anything I've seen (okay besides maybe X/1999?), and the music and overall atmosphere compliment it exceptionally well. You'd almost swear you've heard some of the music in a Square game of old. The characters and story aren't especially deep, but they don't need to be. Every character manages to be likable and/or interesting; so pretty much all of them are memorable in some way. The anime builds interest slowly but steadily, and doesn't feel like it drags on, despite being significantly longer than the manga. The payoff at the end feels that much better for it. The new Blu-Ray release looks and sounds fantastic. Just like I had hoped, the art not only holds up in HD, but looks much better for it. So if you have nostalgia for the mid-nineties as far as both anime and video games go, you'll probably find a lot to love here. It's the perfect anime that really has something for everyone.

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