Magic Knight Rayearth (Mahou Kishi Reiaasu) is a shoujo fantasy action-adventure series created by CLAMP which consists of a six volume manga, a TV anime, and an alternate universe OAV. All have been adapted into English and many other languages.
Rayearth stars three likeable junior highschool heroes who are courageous and resourceful. The setup is simple: three girls from different private schools all visiting Tokyo Tower on a school trip are suddenly transported from the familiar landscape of Tokyo Tower and thrust into battle in a fantasy land. Finding themselves participants in a real life RPG, complete with upgrading armor, elemental magic powers, and quests, Hikaru, Umi and Fuu must take charge of a magical realm whose entire world system is crumbling. They are destined to profoundly change the utopian land of Cephiro through decisions fueled by their personal value system, which is often at conflict with the battle-centric world. The process of saving Cephiro from itself parallels the girls' growing maturity, as they are able to bring fresh viewpoints to the conflicted world. In the tradition of the best magical girls stories, Rayearth is a coming of age journey.
In My Heart is dedicated to all aspects of Magic Knight Rayearth and aims to be a comprehensive resource of series information, product guide, and multimedia downloads. Rayearth is a fun little series, with a healthy dose of angst that never overshadows its optimism that the strength of friendship and love can change the world. The art and music are especially good, and I'm quite fond of both the anime and manga versions. MRKE was the second anime series I watched, way back in 1997 :)
October 22, 2009
There's been a resurgence of interest in Magic Knight Rayearth recently. Yay!
In My Heart Site Refresh
I have refreshed this site's design and fixed lots of outdated information all over the site (even cleaned out the moldy links page). Lyrics for Original Song Book 1 have been added. But most notably, I have gone back and reripped all my MKRE CDS in FLAC and high bitrate MP3 for the Music Albums, replacing the Ogg files which were encoded at a lower bitrate (some tracks for the RUN/Yami no Yume single are still ogg because they were sent in to me in that format, but they are at a good bitrate for ogg). Some of the CDs are in MP3 only because that's all I have.
I am still planning on adding scans of the entire manga artbooks (as opposed to the current sampling), so watch for an update on that!
Other things I've been busy on recently: reviving Tangerine Dreams, my guide to USA licensed shoujo & josei manga!
iTunes Release of Naomi Tamura's Rayearth Theme Songs
Did you know the Magic Knight Rayearth Best Song Book album is available on the American iTunes? I didn't! (Sadly it's not available for the rest of us outside the USA.)
Also Naomi Tamura released three of her songs from MKRE in a Complete Best set on Apple's iTunes Store worldwide this summer. "Two of the songs, "Yuzurenai Negai" ("Unyielding Wish") and "Hikari to Kage wo Dakishimeta Mama" ("Still Embracing Light and Darkness"), are already available in the American version of iTunes along with the rest of the Magic Knight Rayearth Best Song Book album. However, her new Complete Best set will also include "All You Need is Love," her ending theme song for the Rayearth original video anime remake."
MKRE on Netflix
Yup! Available for rent in the USA: Anime Season 1, Anime Season 2, and the long out of print Rayearth OAV.
American Reissue of MKRE Manga and Anime
Following the end of Tokyopop's relationship with Kodansha, all of their Kodansha titles including Rayearth are effectively out of print as of August 31. Tokyopop just rereleased the Rayearth manga a few years ago in the right-to-left format and their books are still easy enough to find online. But once they run out, do not fear! Dark Horse has picked up the license of numerous CLAMP series (Magic Knight Rayearth, Clover, Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits) and will republish MKRE as two large omnibus editions, one for each of MKR and MKR II. No word yet on whether the Dark Horse editions will include the lovely colour bonus pages, which were only available from Tokyopop in the limited edition box sets.
The Magic Knight Rayearth anime is being reissued in a remastered format (more discussion here). Release date for the first season is January 26, 2010. The World of Magic Knight Rayearth DVD Box Set containing both seasons in two slim packs is still available. The remastered version is about the same price as that set but apparently will have a big boost in quality.