Rayearth

Japan has an affection and an affinity for making movies and TV shows about giant things battling each other. The kaiju genre of film is one of Japan's most well known exports with Godzilla being a recognisable icon no matter where in the world you are. And not just kaiju films, but also things like Gundam or Power Rangers feature giant robots that fight to protect a city (which they usually end up trashing).
The Rayearth OVA is that kind of anime. It's basically what would happen if you took Power Rangers made the rangers cute anime girls and added a whole bunch random fantasy elements ... to it. It's an odd mix to say the least.

The best part of this OVA is definitely its presentation. The anime looks great with its character and monster designs and overall aesthetic. It knows how to use colour, portraying the world as bleak and dark yet maintaining splashes of colour for the characters you're supposed to follow so they pop out. There drawings are detailed and nowhere in the animation does it feel like they slacked with all of the explosions, buildings collapsing and monsters firing giant laser beams looking impressive.
There are faults here too however. The backgrounds are rather indistinct, the entire anime takes place in Tokyo, but most of the time you can't really tell where everything is happening. This could be attributed to the OVAs overall dark colour palette and to the fact that most of the city gets reduced to indistinct piles of rubble anyway.

Speaking of piles of rubble, let's talk story. Rayearth is about three girls Hikaru, Umi and Fuu who get chosen by deities to be the protectors of our world the eponymous Rayearth. When the world gets attacked by the forces of a parallel world called Cephiro it's up to these three girls to pass their deity's test and become giant mech/monster hybrids and destroy the city... I-I mean save the world.
There's a few problems with how Rayearth executes this premise, and I will preface my listing my grievances with the saying that I have not seen the TV show or read the manga so I went into this blind.

Firstly, there's no sense of weight to the plot. Events happen in the show and their strung along in a nice sequence, but it feels like most of the scenes are standalone. There's no impact and at times it feels like things are happening just because. This, I feel, can be mainly attributed to how none of the characters in the show get any development. There is some attempted arc for the three girls but it comes off as forced and artificial, it's less of an arc and more of a straight line. One moment they're unsure, scared and in despair and the next BOOM they're a giant fire-breathing lion vanquishing their enemy with ease!
Secondly, the show is just plain confusing. The total running time of the three episodes is somewhere around 120 minutes yet for most of that time I had no clue why things were happening as they were on screen. Sure, the anime tries to explain itself somehow, but in all of its attempts it just somehow becomes more confusing. The motivation of the main antagonist is foggy at best, and to top it all of it ends on a very weird note and quite abruptly at that. It feels like they had a story written for a much longer series, but had to cut a lot out to fit three episodes. Remember however, that this is a completely original story written specifically for these OVAs that has nothing to do with the TV show or manga so how and why is all of this so confusing?

And the confusion doesn't end there either. There's more! Besides having a plot that's reminiscent of a maze with no exit it also can't get it's main theme straight. An important and often mentioned point in the show is the friendship between the three main girls yet for most of the show the girls get separated and only towards the end do we see some semblance of teamwork from them. The rest of the time we only get periodic reminders on how they're best friends and how important that is. Not feeling that butchering a story about friendship is enough, on the Cephiro side of things they try to shoehorn in a forbidden love story wrapped in a tale about nature. Basically, the fairy queen that governs nature and a high priest love each other, but that's a no-no so the world becomes barren. What's the message they're trying to send here? Don't fuck with nature? I don't get it.

Rayearth the OVA is a somewhat pretty looking and utterly confusing OVA that was probably made for people who've already seen the TV show and have some sort of connection and pre-existing knowledge about the world and characters. Coming in as an outsider who has no idea about any of this it comes off as a very confusing and confused anime that will ultimately leave you scratching your head and wondering why you wasted your time on it.
I did not enjoy my time with his OVA at all and I wish I had spent it somewhere else instead and I suggest you do too unless you have some knowledge about the world or like seeing giant monsters battling it out and destroying a city in the process.

I'm sincerely surprised that the rating for this is above a 2 or a 3. It's horrendous. The art is terrible, they "sexed up" the teenage girls and stripped them nude in one scene, the plotline makes as little sense as I've ever witnessed in any film or series ever, and all the character interactions are unnecessarily different and confusing.

Whereas the Utena movie, while a very weird and surreal retelling of the original series, actually added something to the experience by being at least coherent, and having an ending that in an interesting way enhanced and explained the original ending...

This does the opposite. It's ... a complete bastardization of the original, wonderfully done series, no doubt as a cash grab with zero attention to care for the characters or the world they inhabit.

I want my couple hours and money back for having ever wasted my time on this.

There are some parts of this OVA that are serviceable, and other parts that are just really terrible. The art is nice (and more modern than the original series) and the sound is solid. The first of the three episodes is actually pretty good as a start. If you don't know much about the original series or are open to a new take, the premise (at least the beginning) is pretty interesting.

The show is definitely more grim and dark, in my opinion the result of it being made in a post-Evangelion world. It has the hallmarks of a lot ... of late 90s/early 00s shows (which...admittedly was a lot of my early exposure to anime, so I may be biased) where everything is super edgy and some of the writing is still questionable. It does feel different from the decidedly 80s/early 90s original series, which is more sparsely written but earnest and bright. Still, if you're willing to look at a darker alternate take, in some ways this reminds me of the Escaflowne movie, which I actually really liked.


However.

It becomes pretty clear by mid-way through episode 2 that there's not a very clear direction. The storyline seems to completely unravel and all attempts to round it out at the end of episode 3 feel hasty and illogical. The show goes to great lengths to not explain anything until the very end, at which point a bunch of seemingly random plot points are just tossed at the wall to see what sticks. The original's writing isn't amazing (particularly season 2), but at least there's a consistent storyline and a few characters have arcs, whereas in RayEarth none of that really happens.

Some of this is because the character development is pretty bad. Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu have similar personalities to the original, where the development also tends to be somewhat thin, but here their characters don't really get any progress, other than shouting some slogans toward the end. The Cephirans are somehow even less fleshed out than the original, and almost none of their actions really fit together in a logical way. Eagle, who was the best character of the previous show, is made into a generic (and badly developed) villain. Overall, no one seems to have strong motivations, and the show struggles to tie the main existing motivations (the main girls' desire to be/stay friends) with any of the fantasy elements or their views on their powers.

If I had to pick a representation of how this show felt to me, it would be "wut". I spent the latter two episodes confused, and every story choice past episode one just felt more and more random. They try to establish a slight magic system, but it falls apart quickly and fails to explain a lot of other things that happen later. I'm not sure why the girls were naked in the suits either - this seemingly had to do with common tropes in mecha anime at the time? Either way, there were definitely a couple uncomfortable and confusing scenes with the girls in weirdly porn-like poses. The final ending doesn't even really round things out - stuff just happens suddenly with no explanation.

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That being said, I'm willing to not rate it as complete trash, as the visuals and audio weren't bad for the time period, and I did have fun watching it with my wife in that "bad movie night" sort of way to round out our MKR experience. Would not recommend watching it seriously unless you deeply and unironically love grimdark millenial anime. Watch Escaflowne the movie instead for a decent dark AU version of a mecha fantasy.

I don't understand why this OVA was made. Magic Knight Rayearth was completely adapted with generally the same story beats even if some changes were made here and there. This was completely unnecessary.

I think the only change I liked in this "retelling" of Magic Knight Rayearth was Emeraude looking more adult for most of it but that's about the only praise I have. For all the changes it made, they didn't really do anything for my enjoyment and with how little runtime this OVA had clocking in at a little over 2 hours, I understand why since there simply wasn't enough time to meaningfully ... explore things.

The original manga and anime for Magic Knight Rayearth was a unique blend of isekai, magical girl, and mecha with interesting lore and a hopeful message of friendship and perseverance despite its dark moments. This OVA seemed to be dark just for the sake of it with the characters relationships being flimsy at best.
Despite Hikari, Umi, and Fuu having history as friends in this story, they seem like acquaintances at best with how there's little to no interesting moments between any of them. The lore for Cephiro was also changed and made much less interesting with how Emeraude and Zagato played into it. Eagle and Lantis, characters who only appeared in season 2 of the original anime, were either completely changed to become a generic villain or flattened. A similar case happened with the Rune Gods too where now seemingly everyone has a Rune God? Some of the designs were ok, but this was such an unnecessary decision. I was sad that the fun magic and sword battles in the anime were replaced by less interesting mecha battles that mainly involved magic beams thrown back and forth.
It is astounding how such lovely source material became a generic dark mecha OVA and I am happy that the title is simply "Rayearth" since there is no substance that makes this similar to my beloved Magic Knights.