Magic Knight Rayearth II

Little time has passed since the Magic Knights’ final confrontation with Princess Emeraude’s "Mashin." Still haunted by the princess’ death, Hikaru Shidou returns to Tokyo Tower. There, she meets her friends Umi Ryuuzaki and Fuu Hououji for the first time since their spontaneous quest to save Cephiro. Plagued by nightmares of the realm she had left behind, Hikaru is relieved to find that her companions too want to return and serve the kingdom they once so dutifully protected.

The Magic Knights’ wish is answered, for at the top of Tokyo Tower, the three are blinded by the same great light they had seen on the day they first met. Once more on the back of a flying fish, the group returns to Cephiro—a world now desolate and in ruins. With the collapse of the Pillar's power, monsters freely roam the land while three nations seek to annex Cephiro with hopes of seizing the Pillar for themselves. Complicating things further is the mysterious Lady Debonair, who proclaims herself to be the rightful heir of the fallen country.

Now confronting graver stakes and radically different enemies, the three Magic Knights set forth once more to save Cephiro and bring peace. With the bonds they have forged together, the trio stands united in the face of such a great challenge.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Shidou, Hikaru Main

Shiina, Hekiru Japanese

Ryuuzaki, Umi Main

Yoshida, Konami Japanese

Hououji, Fuu Main

Kasahara, Hiroko Japanese

Mokona Supporting

Shiratori, Yuri Japanese

Lantis Supporting

Kosugi, Juurouta Japanese

Vision, Eagle Supporting

Ogata, Megumi Japanese

Ferio Supporting

Yamazaki, Takumi Japanese

Nova Supporting

Itou, Miki Japanese

Zagato Supporting

Kosugi, Juurouta Japanese

Clef Supporting

Sasaki, Nozomu Japanese

Yoshioka, Masahito Producer

Hirano, Toshiki Director

Urakami, Yasuo Sound Director

Motonaga, Keitarou Episode Director

Reviews

Sep 17, 2021

banichan

Recommended

Overall: this was a really enjoyable show with a lot of flaws, that was not as strong as the the first season. It probably could have been sped up, have some things fleshed out with others cut out, and been a shorter season.


Good stuff:

- The production isn't bad. The music is decent and the art looks like it got a bigger budget than season 1, although there are definitely episodes with super inconsistent/lower quality art. Still pretty decent for the time period.

- There are a lot more story threads and interesting new worldbuilding! Overall just very enjoyable as a show.

- ... Eagle is basically the best thing about this show. In fact, he's so good, I think it actually does a disservice to the rest of the show. Eagle is far and away the strongest best-written character, due in large part to him and Autozam in general having really strong and meaningful motivations, whereas the rest of the characters have either selfish, silly, or wishy-washy motivations. I loved Eagle's storyline, although part of me feels like he should have been in a different show.


Issues:

- As is common with older anime, the pacing is super slow. I had trouble finishing it until I started watching it at 1.5x speed - and most of the time it didn't even feel sped up.

- The majority of the characters are not very consistent or well-written:
* The Magic Knights - Hikaru has a very limited character arc with Nova and her emotional problems, but there's just not enough there to sustain through 29 episodes. It also feels like the writers didn't know what to do with Umi and Fuu, so they don't get much real development.
* Fahren and Chizeta - these characters feel like they're just goofy comedic characters, which would be fine except that they're held up next to Autozam who have a serious meaningful storyline. I really feel like this show would have been fine as a cute funny fantasy adventure if they had removed the more serious aspects, and would have felt more consistent in tone.
* LaFarga, Caldina, Ascot, and Mokona - they were clearly added only as nostalgia from the last season, and never seemed to have anything to do.
* Sierra - I won't spoil too much but her small storyline didn't end up mattering. This probably didn't need to be in the story unless they were planning to properly expand this.
* Debonair and Nova - they felt kind of half-baked as villains. There was a half-decent idea here but it lacked the depth it needed to carry the season.
* Annoying Fairy - I forget her name but why was she even here? She had no purpose or character growth, and eventually effectively disappeared from the story without it really affecting anything.
* Lantis - I think he had a lot of potential, but the writers didn't seem to have a plan for him. He had some interesting things laid out early on, but we almost never circled back on any of it.

- The romance storylines are all kind of mediocre or bad. Fuu and Ferio barely get any additional time or development, Umi's romance options end up being pretty vague, and Hikaru's romance is very insta-love and doesn't get the development it should for how much it's propped up as a really important part of the story. There are also several (unnecessary imo) unrequited love threads that don't go anywhere, and a side romance that had no real basis and also isn't really needed. I may be biased, but Eagle/Lantis seemed like the most compelling relationship in the show, even if it wasn't really canon.

- The continued lack of even a basic soft magic system led to an abruptness and lack of tension in the battle scenes. Maybe I'm too used to shounen, but it felt like they needed at least a tiny amount of explanation around what magic the knights could use and when. I'm still confused by why they didn't combine rune gods and use their super attack pretty much every time.

- The storyline overall is somewhat inconsistent and not very well planned. By the end I was rooting for Autozam? I also don't love the ending of season 2, as it feels like it undermined the story of season 1.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 10, 2025

Caeruleus_CCXVI

Mixed Feelings

6/10 - A great sequel, but not a great show.

I rated the first part to be 4.5/10 and I would give the over all Show of both parts about a 5/10 to a 5.5/10 when looking at the whole show. Part 1 is really a slog to go through, clearly grabbing every popular idea from anime in the 90's it was surrounded by to make the cluster F that is Magic Knight Rayearth. Part 1 was pretty poorly written, from its charecters to the actual adventure and morals it was trying to tell. However Part 2 really took all those ideas and made it ... into something cohesive, that was easy to follow and knew exactly what it was and went with it. Despite this show being Saylor Moon Meets Gundam and lets just throw in as many IP's as possible, things in season 2 did not seem as much out of place.

Part 2 tries to convey some pretty powerful messages, and unlike part 1 that I feel like was made for girls between the age of 8-12, this felt closer to a demographic of 12-15. Some of the lessons they tried to teach and explore that we do not see enough of:
- Love yourself, not just other people
- Just because you love someone else doesnt mean they will love you
- Just because you go to war doesnt mean you are right and they are wrong
-- Both sides can fight for justice and be correct
---the side you fight for can actually be wrong, and to not have blind faith
(Ironically it does this last point pretty poorly by contradicting itself and saying that you should have blind faith in people that fight for you...)
These messages its trying to teach young girls or really anyone that has watched this can be some powerful stuff at a young age and I do commend them for attempting to due such a thing, even if it wasnt the best executed, the information was so ham fisted it was kinda hard to not get some of these messages.

Pros:
- Mokona was such a savage in Part 2 where it was the do all annoying mascot of Part 1... what a glow up
-Like part 1 the show was surprisingly violent when it needed to be, but never felt out of place
--death is not meaningless and when people die they actually stay dead
-they didnt throw away any of the cast from P1, and cast of part 2 didnt get too big
-actually explored romance a bit even if it was lacking
-they left the monster of the week type of approach for a more character driven story
-if you made it through part 1, I assume you enjoy Clamp art style
- as much as Nova was annoying, I think the whole dark side "im everything you arenot" wasnt terrible
-The ending was rewarding, unlike part 1... almost felt like part 2 was just to make up for how part 1 is
--I swore the creators of Gurren Lagann saw literally the final ep of this and went... yeah we could totally make mechs with faces like that lmfao

Cons:
-The romance they go through are pretty unexplained and people just love each other for no real reason... kinda like real life
-tho the show was better animated then part 1 by todays standards it was hardly animated and really showed its age
-music score was lacking just like part 1
-so many scenes like part 1 of, oh I got you all down and I could defeat you... time to retreat I guess and let you power up and heal
-English dub like part 1 was atrocious, im glad we have left this erra of trash dubs
-Writing was leagues higher then Part 1 which was just objectively bad, however part 2 is was not amazing by any regard
-power level system is still complete nonsense
-why didnt all the other nations leaders at the end just evacuate people...
-so many potholes but the story felt like it did end correctly... so im torn here
-not a single well written character, no not even Eagle between both seasons lol

All and all I dont think I would recommend this show to anyone over the age of 18 unless they crave CLAP, Shojo/Shonen fusion or need magical girls in robots. But I do think that if you Finished Part 1 you forsure should watch Part 2... Part 1 is just so hard to get through despite only being 20 ep. But those 20 ep were so, so long that I cant imagine doing that again.

This show will live on in the eyes of complete nostalgia for most and be in the bin of weird anime that kinda get good in later seasons like KINGDOM, but with such a bad start no one will get to this season.

Alas. Show your kids this one and move on.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 28, 2025

k-0da

Not Recommended

MKR's second season answered my wishes for a better, more expansive view at the world of Cephiro; and at this, it succeeded, but at the cost of everything else.

MKR's art is its best quality, hands down. Beautiful, fluid fight animation that in a shoujo anime would be unheard of today. Not to mention spectacular art direction and character design from CLAMP--the whole world just oozes charm. With the introduction of new kingdoms comes new cultures--some definitely more stereotypical than others!-- we see more variety in character dress and character designs, our personal favorite (the owner of this account and the person I watched this with) ... being Autozam.

Unfortunately for Rayearth, it cannot survive for 29 episodes off just visuals.

Everything besides some worldbuilding suffers in season 2. The entire supporting cast (including Feiro, who was The Boy last season) is sidelined, as well as Umi and Fuu, the literal other two protagonists. Instead of the supporting casts doing literally anything, they spend the series mostly watching the girls have cool mech fights in the sky, with Ascot intermittently remembering that he has cool friends who can fly and help the girls. The entire supporting cast is replaced with Lantis and Eagle, two newcomers who I’ll get to in a bit. As for Umi and Fuu, while Hikaru does a soul-searching/love triangle quest, they’re stuck dealing with the new, deeply underdeveloped antagonists, who exist pretty much only to give the other two girls something to do while Hikaru stakes half of her character development on a gay man. Clef is more there than he was last season, but its mostly in a mentor role. Sometimes, the show remembers Lafarga exists, and sometimes, they even remember Caldena is there too. Poor Feiro gets the worst treatment out of the bunch, completely stripped of his rowdy personality in favor of being in love with Fuu. Congrats on CLAMP for failing the male equivalent of the Bechdel test, somehow. Lantis takes center stage as The Dude, and boy I sure wish he didn’t. Lantis doesn’t have a personality outside of being nice to children and aurafarming. He is emo, he doesn’t talk, and he wants to make sure the tragedy of season 1 doesn’t happen again, somehow. He does not care for Hikaru, no matter how much the show tries to convince me he does. He is not more caring towards her, or really talks to her, or hangs out with her beyond their immediate duties of trying to prevent the continent from crumbling into dust. He just is not charming at all as a second male lead, beyond some of his moments with Eagle.

Cephiro is a deeply frictionless world, the bad guys turned good don’t have much conflict at all with the rest of the cast, and the girls still don’t have much of a dynamic between each other besides being best friends, they’re all extremely mature and supporting of Hikaru all the time, and that is just absurd for a group of teenage girls. Which leaves the most interesting dynamics in the show be the ones that DO have some conflict, and unfortunately, it’s between men.

Eagle Vision, a man with one of the dumbest names I’ve ever heard, is unfortunately one of the only characters in the entire show. Leader of Autozam, the only invading nation not depicted in an orientalist lense, Eagle is also one of the few characters with agency--someone who moves the plot forward, instead of reacting to the events happening around them. I feel completely terrible for preferring a man over the trio of female protagonists, but fuck man, those girls just aren’t very interesting. They feel grief over what happened with Emmeraude and they react to that grief mostly by being sad about it, save for Hikaru, who does react much more strongly but not in a way I think is very well executed. Being solely reactive to problems isn’t the real fault with our heroes--they’re stuck defending a nation that’s being invaded on three different fronts, and there’s not much to do in that situation except react. But when everyone’s all hunky dory with each other, when there’s no real friction within the palace despite the absolute dire straits--that reactive nature is infinitely less interesting. The only sources of conflict are two distractions, Eagle, and the actual bad guys who are pulling the strings and also there I guess. Eagle pursues actual goals. Eagle has motivations and flaws and relationships beyond his two sidekicks. One of those is with Lantis, but like at least it's something. The rest of Eagle’s deal enters spoiler territory, so I’ll leave it there for now--at the very least, Eagle has really good yaoibait.

Nova, who apparently is an anime original, steals the show a lot of the time. She has a striking design, very good VAs and actually poses something beyond a physical challenge for Hikaru, allowing her to ruminate on some more complex emotions. Unfortunately, Hikaru is a very simple person who keeps reacting to the shit Nova pulls in the exact same way, making their conflict feel dragged out during the 29 episode run.

Speaking on Nova and the overarching villains more, they are definitely there and that’s about it. They’re not very fleshed out, and while their existence technically makes sense, I feel like the citizens of Cephiro should know way more about this “mysterious threat” than they actually do considering some facts that are unfortunately spoilers. The final confrontation feels somehow rushed after everything felt super dragged out for the whole series. Cephiro is a land of the will but they could not have willed for better pacing in the end.

Rayearth is an iconic piece of CLAMP’s stories and unfortunately my favorite character is a man who isn’t even a main protagonist. I can’t in good faith recommend this to anyone who isn’t a CLAMP or shoujo superfan that wants to learn more about the genre. What kills Cephiro is its lack of narrative friction, bloated and sidelined supporting cast, and character arcs that lack spunk.

P.S. I hope that fucking fairy goes into a mosquito lamp and gets electrocuted to death

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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