Magic Knight Rayearth II

Magic Knight Rayearth 2 is the telling of the second arc of the manga. While it differs from the manga, it is still a good story. The tone of the series becomes much darker in this season, and it deals much with the past of the pillar. We see the sorrowful role the pillar really is.
This is emphasized by the three nations invading the crumbing Cephiro, each who have their own reasons for invading, but eventually, two of the three decide the better, and actually help to save Cephiro during the final battle.
Besides the invading nations, there is the mysterious Nova and her ... "mother" Debonaire. They are, in fact the only real bad guys in the story. The characters from other nations are all likable. It's neat how they play off of different civilizations too. Even the music matches, which is very good!

The series develops Hikaru more, from the naive hyper girl into a much more mature girl. She also has her first experience with love. What I dislike about this season, however, is that too much time is focused on Hikaru, leaving Umi and Fuu pretty much forgotten about.

It's also nice to see the bonds that have formed between the former villains of the series. Lantis is an interesting addition, but is far too emotionless. I find a lot of CLAMP's male characters, especially the tall skinny black haired ones, to be hard to tell apart, and somewhat emotionally dead. But it's great to see Ferio back, now fulfilling his position of royal blood. And the romance between he and Fuu is shown a little more.

The story is moving, i would say it is even more moving than the first season. While it is missing some of the beautiful scenery, it is made up for by the story.

Besides focusing too much on Hikaru, I also did not like the mecha theme that was there. The knights spend most of their fighting time in their mashins. But the battles where they do use magic and swordplay are good.

The music is amazing, especially the last opening theme. The first opening theme of the season is meant to link the two stories together, each showing scenes from the first season as well as the current. The song kind of sucks. But the last opening theme, Hikari to kage wo dakishimata, is beautiful.

The end of the series is also very emotionally involved, but on a happier note than the first season.

Overall, this season is very good, and if you liked the first season, you should definitely watch this one. (as long as you avoid the dub, then again, I have never seen a good english dub, I don't even bother anymore!)

I personally felt this didn't live up to the first season. I really felt the impact of the ending of the first series. Sure it left things open, but it still felt conclusive at the same time. I thought the ending was really touching and you really feel how the three magic knights bonded with one another and you really see that. To me, making a sequel just takes away the impact the ending had on me. Personally, I thought if they were going to do a sequel, they could have just made them stay in Cefiro instead to try solve the remaining problems it ... had and would eventually come and then end it the same way the first season did. The series doesn’t really have the same unpredictable plot twists the first series had impact wise. And I just really didn’t like the newer characters. The Chizeta twins and Lady Aska just came across as annoying and I didn’t like the rest of the cast. When you have your antagonists as your comic relief and not acting serious, it just goes down the toilet.

I thought the magic knights were developed enough already and they were able to use their maturity and experience, but they just simply couldn’t develop any further to some extent. To me, at that point, they just hit their peak. If they didn’t go back and have that ending where they are embracing each other and crying, then this story would have worked out better. It’s just my main beef will always be that the ending had an incredible impression on me filled with emotion and resolution But by going back, and then coming back, you truly do see their development of how much they cared about protecting Cefiro.

Along with the characters, we now have a lot of new elements to the series with design. Like the Autozam people represented industrial and robotic technology. Of course with the Magic Knights have those Mashins looking like mechs, the Autozam people have their own mechs like the FTO and the GTO. Their costume designs are pretty nifty as well. It has a descent balance of being fantasy and sci fi features to it. The FTO that Eagle pilots bares a very strong resemblance to the Dunbine from Aura Battler Dunbine which I thought was pretty cool, but had more of a First Appearance Iron Man twist to it. I also like how the other antagonists from Fahren and Chizeta were more cultural looking. Fahren was based on ancient China and Chizeta was more Arabic but they spoke in Osaka dialect. To combat the Mashin’s, Lady Aska brings a drawing that resembles her servant to a gigantic form and the Chizeta twins can use humongous genies.

Which leads me to the action. It is more reliant on the lets say “mech action” and we don’t see much sword play or magic. I guess that takes away from using excessive recycled footage. I really like the action, but I just really miss the approach and how it tried to distinguish itself from other magical girl anime. Now it tries to be more like a mech anime. Granted I do like the designs of the Mashins and the FTO, but giant genies and weird drawings once again comes into why I didn’t like the humor.

And the miniaturization of the characters isn’t really as prevalent as it was in the previous season.

Ferio now being revealed to have royal blood is now dressed up more formally, and lets say Caladina shedded some clothing.

Other than that, it’s the same old CLAMP school of how they draw eyes and faces. It’s a pity thanks to the circumstances of the story, we don’t get to see much of the scenery that the first season had which brought a great imagination element to it.


Well, I couldn’t get past an episode of watching the English dub in the first season, so I never really bothered watching the dub for the 2nd season. But anyway, the cast still remains the same that were initially introduced in the previous series. The original cast still do their roles very well and convincingly. I still love how passionate and emotional Hikaru always comes across. Juurouta Kosugi who played Zagato is also back and this time he is playing his brother Lantis. I don’t think the role really requires his charisma or his dark voice, but character wise, it was important.

Some additions to the cast are Inoue Yo and Hisakawa Aya as the Chizeta princess twins, Tatra and Tetra. Inoue Yo still has that calm voice you always hear in other roles as Belldandy from Ranma and Kasumi from Ranma. But she brings a more humorous tone with how she likes to joke around. Hisakawa Aya who has played Sailor Mercury as Chizeta is not really as recognizable as Inoue Yo. She is more darker toned and tends to sound more angry and serious.

Some of the background music is still the same from the first season. Like instrumental versions of Yuzurenai Negai are still sometimes used and still plays very orchestrated music. A lot of the new background music is well cultural appropriate to some of the characters. Especially that of Tetra and Tarta who represent more of an Arabian kind of background and that kind of music is played to represent them. So I think it’s really well appropriate to the mood as usual.

I can’t really get into the new opening theme, Hikari to Kage wo Dakishimete Mama. Sure it’s still sung by the same singer of the previous song, Naomi Tamura, but because I don’t like the themes of the story, the song also does a good job of telling it but doesn’t have the kind of pacing or the kind of emotion that was appealing that Yuzurenai Negai had. But on the other hand, the video clips does go pretty synch to the song.

Well, in terms of story, on a conceivable sense, it was a great idea. I thought it took a very original and distinctive approach. I really miss the Japanese style RPG like characteristics it had. And as a result, there are no video games based on this particular story arc in considering the fact I do happen to still enjoy the Sega Saturn and Super Nintendo games. And with the art and animation, since the 2nd season aired a week after the first season ended and didn’t have a year break like how other anime seasons do, they really couldn’t do much to have any significant improvement in the design. But the newer characters were fresh, but not really that exciting or distinctive. The music is still alright and didn’t really change too much.

Well, watching this season hard on the heels of the first season is a mistake. You should allow yourself a couple days between them simply to absorb the first season fully.

That said, however, this season is as good in some ways as the first one. Granted the land is missing and you have only one scene that isn't a spaceship or in space, but they manage to make do with what they do have.

The story is what I like to focus on, and there this season is a worthy successor. It took what could have been an awkward ending to ... the first season and continued it along logically and believably. I was not upset by the reuse of a plot device, and there was less of a video game feel to it, and more of a real emergent situation that needed to be dealt with now.

You get some more backstory in this, but in my opinion it focuses too much on one character, leaving the other two to languish in near obscurity. They do have their moments however. Additional characters are introduced, and the only complaint I have with that is that the three invading nations who are coming appear to only have two or three people on the entire huge capital ships until nearly three quarters of the way through the series, then you find out there are actually other people there. True, those others are cutouts and one dimensional, sometimes nearly literally, but they do exist.

The stories weave together in a tight whole though and I was very interested to watch it. The plot twist at the end is nearly anticlimactic as they have been hinting at this, and giving it away in the main opening sequence, since the series started. However, that said, the REAL plot twist really does surprise.

If you enjoyed the first season, you will enjoy this one more. I think it's a good sequel, and I would have liked it to continue on, with the heroines resting on their laurels in the place they helped create.

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.