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. Classic stuff, 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.
