In My Heart: Rayearth

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MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH - ANIME

In the first season of Magic Knight Rayearth, Hikaru, Umi and Fuu must overcome many trials and defeat powerful opponents, continuously upgrading their magical weapons and improving their magic skills, in their quest to find the legendary Mashin ("spirits"). Only when they have awoken the Mashin will they become true Magic Knights with the power to win the ultimate battle for the fate of Cephiro. As if that weren't enough of a challenge, in the second season the Magic Knights are summoned back to Cephiro by an unknown force to protect it from the three invading kingdoms of Fahren, Autozam, and Chizeta. They thought the adventure was over, but Cephiro holds many secrets that are yet to be revealed.

The television series consists of two seasons, 49 episodes in total. While the first season of the anime followed the manga fairly closely, the two diverged in the second season, with the head of CLAMP helping script the alternate telling. The anime follows the artistic style of the manga fairly closely so the art is superb, although I prefer the character designs of the first season. The music produced for the series is absolutely wonderful, often very dark but always moving and exhilarating.

An interesting aspect of the story is that it is structured very much like a RPG, with constant power-ups and mystical objects to be found. The characters also frequently go super-deformed at comedic moments, an anime convention for depicting cuteness, confusion, or innocence.

RAYEARTH - OAV

A year after the anime concluded, a 3-episode Original Animated Video (OAV/OVA) series was produced. Called simply "RAYEARTH", this series is not based on either the manga or anime and is a completely different story loosely based on the characters from both seasons. The storyline is much darker and the battles more violent, and the characters from Cephiro appear in completely different contexts. Naturally the action takes place much more quickly since the story is spread across a much shorter timespan, really just a brief encounter between the Knights and the invading Cephirans. The character designs are very cool, and all of the previous "child-like" characters (e.g. Emeraude, Clef) are mature in appearance. Best of all, the OAV spawned a new image song CD with very cool character songs. Although the Rayearth OAV bears no resemblance to the original Magic Knight Rayearth and is not intended to compete with it, this alternate version provides an intriguing "what if" scenario for the characters we already know.

The OAV was also turned into a movie-length edition called "Special Version ~ Wings of Hope". This is like a "director's cut" version in which the three 45 minute volumes had some footage removed and some added to compose a new 2-hour movie. According to the EX review, the result is less than satisfying. The English release by Manga Entertainment is the original 3-episode version and has been reviewed by Anime News Network.

ANIME & OAV - ENGLISH VERSION

The entire anime and OAV series have been released domestically in English on DVD (English language dub and English subtitles with Japanese language). The TV series was imported by Media Blasters under their AnimeWorks line and the OAV series was released on one DVD by Manga Entertainment after a 3-volume VHS release. Opinions on the English dub cast vary: your enjoyment will really depend on whether you're used to the Japanese voices (as I am). The script itself was translated very accurately, and the dub script is almost identical to the subtitles. Viewers who don't understand the extreme politeness of Fuu's "Umi-san" and "Hikaru-san" might be disconcerted by the use of "Ms. Umi" and "Ms. Hikaru" in the dub and subtitles, but there really is no good way to express this in English. The Mashin are translated as Rune-Gods, which expresses their full nature more than just "Machine" would. The Japanese characters that are used for "Mashin" are the characters for "Magic" and "God", and of course "mashin" serves as a pun on the English word "machine", so there is a triple meaning inherent in the Japanese reading. The anime script was translated by fan favorite Rika Takahashi ("Fuu" of Cephiro) which explains why it's so good. I own both beautiful DVD box sets and recommend Media Blasters' release wholeheartedly. I found the video quality and richness of colors of the DVDs to be much better than my old VHS fansubs =) The English release of the OAV is also excellent, although it features a different voice cast.

VIDEO GAMES

There were quite a few console games created for Magic Knight Rayearth, including Game Boy, Game Gear, Saturn, Super Famicom (SNES) and Sega Pico. View covers and details at Cephiro. Two are of particular interest. The first is a RPG released for the defunct Sega Saturn and later released in English by the American company Working Designs (now out of print). This game had an actual soundtrack released for it, and you can download the music files on this site. It's a pretty basic RPG, nothing too spectacular accounts of people who've played it. Working Designs produced its own English version of the opening song (which is the same as the anime), prior to the official English release of the anime. It's actually quite nice.

The other game of interest is a RPG released for the SNES (Super Famicom in Japan). It was released in 1995 by Tomy and the story is based on the first season of the anime. Lucky for us, a fan group has translated the game for SNES emulator (ROM). You can download the game and learn more about it at Magic Knight Rayearth for SNES. It's an easy game in that the characters level up a lot and start out with high max HP, although there are apparently a couple tricky bits (see the author's "Tips & Strategy")

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