Magic Knight Rayearth (1994)
This anime review comes courtesy of RetroCrush, a free TV station that plays geriatric anime appealing to folks like myself who grew up on hand-drawn, seizure-inducing, poorly dubbed Japanese cartoons. I randomly stumbled across the channel on my new TV and wound up watching a lot of Magic Knight Rayearth, a 1994 series about a trio of Tokyo middle school girls being transported to a fantasy world. As I was catching random episodes here and there, I decided to head to Ebay to grab the DVDs for the series and watch it start to finish.
The first season of Magic Knight Rayearth comprises 20 episodes and is pretty straightforward, wasting no time getting right into the action. Three girls — a childish tomboy, a nerd, and a bratty rich girl — are transported to Cephiro, a fantasy world where an evil priest has enslaved the Princess who keeps the peace. Teaming up with a wizard and a handful of others, the girls must fulfill their destinies by becoming the mythical Magic Knight’s.
To do so they go on a bunch of quests in RPG style. First they need decent weapons, then they must awaken three Rune Gods, then they are finally ready to take on the arch-villain. Each episode has the girls taking on one of a handful of sub-villains.
It’s pretty standard fare; the fantasy world isn’t particularly interesting, the friends and foes aren’t fleshed out enough to be worth rooting or booing, and the quest itself is led by a convenient little mascot character who can do pretty much anything the plot deems necessary to move to the next bit.
That necessity for convenience actually does mean the story moves along pretty quick and that may be one of the reasons why I enjoyed this anime so much despite how middling the story can be.
The other reason I was engaged so heavily was the characters. Umi, Fuu and Hikaru are based on typical anime tropes but as a trio they are comfy to be around. Their insistence on friendship as magic is light-hearted and appealing to a certain age demographic but it remains endearing throughout, even if occasionally cringy.
What I dislike most about the plot is that the action isn’t based in logic or build-up. Magic in this fantasy world comes from emotion and feeling which means if someone dies in front of you, you might have the ability decimate an entire army. As such battles usually come down to a power-up or magic attack that comes from absolutely nowhere and usually proceeds to attempt to induce a seizure in the viewer.
Yeah, the animation is certainly dated. This is a cheap looking anime, even for the time, and the action is choppy, the characters often look goofy, and the insistence on effects to make the magic or emotions come across more strongly means you’ll have to look away from the screen on occasion.
The sound design is perfectly serviceable. The soundtrack isn’t anything to write home about, sound effects are standard fare, and the dub (yes, I watch dubs of old anime because I grew up on this stuff and love it) is not all bad. Fuu’s voice actress is bogged down by her lines being as obvious and nerdily wordy as possible while Umi is performed by Wendee Lee early in her career. Hikaru’s VA does fine as well though it’s hard to gauge when half the dialogue is yelling, screaming, or crying.
Magic Knight Rayearth is not a classic for a reason — it doesn’t really do anything new or well. It’s fun to watch and the twist at the end is pretty good, but you can certainly find more memorable anime elsewhere.
Hopefully season 2 offers up something more impactful; though I want to emphasize I still enjoyed this first set of episodes despite all my problems.
Grade: C+
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