Magic Knight Rayearth

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.

So, what happens when you cross Fushigi Yugi, Sailor Moon, and a Dungeons and Dragons vibe with way too many comedic jokes? Well, I guess this shows it. The characters are pretty much generic, the story is pretty generic and to top it all off, the main characters seem rather stupid, including Fuu who is supposed to be smart. In fact, the only real character that actually had the right thought in the head during the first episode was Umi who kept trying to get back home. Of course, she slowly gets into the swing of the other characters after the first one.

I’m not going ... to lie; the characters are dip-shits. They are completely stupid most of the time without any real reason to be stupid. It did surprise me though just how smart Hikaru was once in a while, only to have it crashing down moments later in her stupidity. She has almost no holds bar over going head first into a fight and so its no wonder she levels up faster then the other two. Every single character, not just the main characters but even the side characters seem to have this strange way of explaining far more then they really should at any given time. It pretty much becomes a large monolog as they explain a very small piece of the plot.

Umi is pretty much a loudmouth who will always speak her mind and sadly, that means be the annoying whinny brat all the time. She whines about everything, ‘I’m tired’ ‘My feet hurt’ ‘When will we be able to go back to Tokyo?’ stuff like that. She’s one of my least favorite characters even though all the characters do tend to become whinny throughout the show. Fuu is a rather sweet girl who always seems to care for anyone but even with that, she will not go head long into battle without some sort of plan. And then when you least expect it, she will do something stupid without thinking of the other people in her group. It’s like she has multi-personality disorder or something because she never does what she says.

Ferio is a rather odd character in that he always seems to be switching sides all the time. I get kind of surprised that anyone actually believes a word that the trickster says. And Clef isn’t any help because he’s a stone who when he talks to them from the heart, his lips don’t move at all so you have no clue if its really him or actually a trickster at times.

So, now this paragraph is about a big spoiler that I really have a problem with. The ending although a good twist, comes out of the blue and doesn’t really make much sense. The rune gods turn out to be mecha’s and they have to kill the person that summoned them. So much for saving the good princess from the ‘evil’ sorcerer. Turns out the sorcerer was misunderstood and was killed for no reason at all. I’m all for killing one to save a thousand but in this case, at least four lives were lost all because a princess went gaga over a guy, not to mention whoever else died by monsters and other catastrophes. This princess was a spoiled little brat in that aspect. Don’t take me wrong, I’m all for love, but this just kind of got ridicules.

The animation jumps all over the place and goes from normal, to chibi, to overly dramatic rather fast. I believe one of these scenes did this in about 3 minutes. Not only that but they place a lot of still shots or really little movement as though they were hurting for cash, what I consider cheep ass animation tactics. In fact, after Clef is turned to stone, every time he ends up talking, he doesn’t move his lips at all in the hologram that shows him. I mean come on, if you want to show him when he’s supposed to be speaking, move his mouth at least a little bit or just do his voice with no image of him. Every character looks generic, we have the generic looking bad guys, the generic looking heroines, the generic looking side-kick plush toy, and to top it all off, a generic looking princess to bring this whole world into perspective. All the characters have really wide eyes that pretty much take up most of their faces, which have really pointy… jaws and cheeks? Characters are also really long legged like in the Sailor Moon shows, sometimes going to an extremely elongated body like in xxxHolic. Characters do not have to look like they are thrown in a taffy machine one minute, then really chibi the next.

The English dubs are all about comedy it seems but I don’t blame it all on the dubbers. The animation also shows this but I already talked about that. Fact of the matter is, they seem to crack jokes this way and that, breaking any good drama the show could have had with a witty little joke. It throws me for a loop that they would do such a thing but I haven’t read the manga yet so not sure if Clamp actually did that as well. I do like that when they are getting a bit to obvious, they actually point it out. When going about picking voices, I believe they decided to pick the generic character voices. Julie Maddalena, who played Yumi from Chobits, Meiling in Cardcaptor, as Hikaru. Bridget Hoffman, who played Belldandy in Ah! My Goddess and Chitose from Chobits, as Fuu. Wendee Lee, who did Urd from Ah My Goddess and Ururu from Bleach, as Umi. Unsurprisingly, they do a good job though I get tired of these characters.

What makes a "Fantasy" anime so good? When someone says fantasy, the very first word that comes to my mind is "saving the world". Magic Knight Rayearth is one of those anime who stood up in this kind of platform. Yes, very common and very predictable. The anime aired in 1994, a lot of anime produced this time are fantasies. As a kid, I grew up watching a lot of old school anime and most of them are actually about a group of people saving the humanity, incredible powers and needless to say a very bad animation style..

[b]The Story -[/b]
The story itself is very common, ... nothing new about saving the universe, the world or other countries.. I've seen this anime before when I was a kid but I didn't have the chance to finish it actually until yesterday. The story is predictable except for the ending. CLAMP's works are known to have unpredictable and unbelievable endings. As you can notice from their other works like Chobits and Code Geass, they went crazy on their endings which makes the story so good and yet so bad (it depends on what kind of people are watching) but imo the ending of this series is not that good but I have to admit that it is very unbelievable. I was caught up watching the series because the pacing was fast but in every end of each episode you will be able to know what will happen to their next adventures.

[b]The Art -[/b]
The animation is bad but considering that the anime was produced in 1994 I would say there's really nothing I can do about it. One thing I like about the series is how CLAMP managed to create a very good and quite detailed robot designs for their rune-god characters. I think this where they got the idea for Code Geass' Knightmare designs.

[b]The Sound -[/b]
This is where the anime stands out. The opening and theme "Yuzurenai Negai" by Naomi Tamura brought life to the whole series. In my whole time watching anime, this is the second or probably the third time I got mesmerized by a good sound tracks like Clannad and Angel Beats. They made different variations of this song and inserted it in the series and guess what... it really added some good feelings and excitement while watching the series.

[b]The Character -[/b]
Three MCs got warped into a world known as "Cephiro" but surprisingly, they don't look like they are scared or anxious or they just lack emotions? The characters are like jobs in a very popular RPGs. Magus, Knights, High Priest, Summoner, Illusionist, Blacksmith and a princess. Each character develops very slowly but surely.

[b]The Enjoyment -[/b]
I can't say I really enjoy the series because of all the plot holes I found while watching it. Bad animation, the story is predictable and other noticeable holes made it hard to finish the series. I can sit for whole day and watch a 24 episode long series if it is very enjoyable but this time I wasn't.

[b]Overall - 5/10[/b]
Nevertheless, it's still a good thing that I finished watching a series that I started when I was a kid. The only thing I like about this anime are the OSTs. If you like fantasy anime then you might want to check this out..

In a 20-episodes season, I wasn't expecting 6 filler episodes, especially episode 9. All of the filler episodes can be skipped (7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17) and you won't miss anything, even because some of them don't make sense like how two antagonists interact on episode 9 and on episode 10 they seem to be interacting for the first with each other.

This series is also a bit weird because it feels too short by the amount of upgrades the Magic Knights get, but since most antagonists are boring and the fights are shallow if the show was longer it would have been a drag.

Funny ... thing is that I watched a couple of episodes in the 90's (I have a vivid memory of that waterfall Zagato's minions hide), but I was never interested in this show, even now as I was watching it, I took a long time to watch only 20 episodes of this show. It feels a bit a drag, all characters besides the protagonist trio are forgettable, Presea is good too, but being a side character she doesn't show up much.

Something worth praising is the opening, it has beautiful animation, the singing and the lyrics are great, probably one of the best I ever heard.

Honestly, I'm not writing this review about the whole show per se, but for people to skip the whole filler episodes, they are not worth your time, and don't have anything good to add, unless you are REALLY enjoying the anime.

Internet confession time - I have been digging into the anime & J media I experienced as a teenager. I remembered this e-game I played called Season of the Sakura. I found some commentary about it and discovered that the main characters were based on the characters from Magic Knight Rayearth. What a trip! Maybe I should check out the actual series.

So I did a little bit. I went through a few episodes of the beginning and a few at the end. Watching 1/2 of the series doesn't put me in good position to write a definitive review. So I'll write a little one. ... Take it with a grain of salt.

Story
Three high school girls get transported to a fantasy world to be its saviors. They meet friends, fight enemies, level up, and eventually discover the true nature of their mission.

The set up takes place in the first ten minutes. Our gals get whisked away to the fantasy land. We get the idea that the princess who transported them is in distress and needs their help to save the world. We meet the some allies, the bad guy, and bad minions. It's a decent start.

The end of the story, the twist, is actually pretty good. It turns out that Zagato and the princess have something more going on and the princess has a different interpretation of the Magic Knight's mission. No spoilers here.

Characters
There are the three main girls: the smart one, the fiery one, and the calm one. They are designed so you can tell which one is which by looking at them. I love it they do that. From what I can tell, the characters act true to their personalities throughout the entire story. They're cute too.

There is Princess Emeraude who summoned the girls to the world. She seems distressed and to need some princess saving. She is imprisoned (presumably) by Zagato, who is the main baddie. He has giant shoulder pads and a deep voice.

The mascot is Mokono, a rabbit thing, because animes need cutesy mascots.

Art
The characters have a distinct look: giant eyes, eye shadow & lashes that extend off the face, brightly colored hair, and a color scheme. I like that the personality of the characters can be inferred from their look.

This anime looks like it is from the 90s. Everything is hand drawn, frames are reused frequently, the colors are faded, and the motion is choppy. I don't mind it, to be honest.

The designs are interesting. The MCs color schemes are consistent with their elements. The backgrounds are average for the most part. Many modern animes have backgrounds that can probably pass as wall art. Not in this anime.

The normal animation breaks into cuter animation occasionally to play up humor and panic. It's anime.

Sounds
The voices are good. The characters sound the way they should. It's pro work.

The music is pretty good. The OP is distinctive, upbeat, and catchy. The ending theme is not quite as catchy. The songs sound very 90s with the light rock/pop feel. I like.

The sound effects are not good. The strikes sound like squeaks. The magic sounds are cheesy. Cartoony sound effects punctuate their moves.

Enjoyment/Overall
I had an okay time with MKR. It is like a less girly & more adventurous/ dramatic than Sailor Moon.

I think it's kind of funny how I came to watch MKR. It added to the enjoyment.

Overall, it was decent. I remember hearing that it was popular when it was released. I can see why. MKR is targeted toward girls, has a cute fantasy setting, and is adventurous.

I gave this anime a try after seeing it in my recommendations, and to be frank, it is the most cliché of cliché. There are too many things that must fly over your head for this to make any sense. A few examples: I have no clue what the main antagonist's goals are or why he decides to only send one of his minions at a time to kill the three protagonists, it's a very simple thing to add other major things that the minions have to attend to so that it doesn't seem like their just sitting there waiting for the previous one to ... fail. This is also my first true "Magic girl" style of anime, and from what I've heard about this genre this fits it to a tee, there is little explanation of the world, characters, or what the main conflict is other than bad guy is doing bad thing, stop bad guy from doing bad thing. It was not entertaining enough for me to suspend my disbelief for the glairing plot hole of asking the question why, why save good person, why do they suddenly have magic, why can't they use magic here, why not just kill them, why must the legend be fulfilled, none of this is answered in the first five episodes. I gave it a fair chance, but to others that just want to watch something in the "Magic girl" genre and don't want to think, might enjoy this one.
2/10
Couldn't hold my attention long enough before I asked the question why.

The typical story of a world that lives in a cycle of endless pain, in this case it is the pillar and in Final Fantasy X it is Sinh and where someone has to sacrifice themselves. themselves for the cycle to continue but unexpectedly a character from another world appears to break this cycle. In this case, the legendary fighter in Final Fantasy X is Tidus.

I found the anime overall entertaining and I liked the colorful and detailed animation but in my opinion the anime seems too long, I think half the episodes of each season would have been enough.

What I hated the most is ... that Aguila was killed in the anime, the ending in the manga is more satisfying and they give much more prominence to Mokona's character and not a simple comic element.