Magic Knight Rayearth

Reviewed By:  Carla Land

DVD Publisher

Review based on disc 1 (first 4 episodes)

What it’s (basically) all about: Three girls (Shidou Hikaru, Ryuuzaki Umi, and Hououji Fuu) from very different junior high schools and backgrounds are magically transported from modern Japan to Cephiro, a fantasy world where they find they are the legendary Magic Knights who will save it from destruction. First, however, they have to learn to use their magic (a.k.a., their “willpower”), get the materials to build their ultimate weapons, and, most importantly, get along.

Nitty Gritty: This show is heavy on the fantasy violence- swords, magic and monsters abound. More prominent is some serious fan service. There is a lot of cleavage and not a lot of coverage. The heroines are mostly in their school uniforms which are, of course, notoriously short. All of this aside, the language isn’t bad, the violence isn’t gory and the story itself has a good message of teamwork. The girls work hard to get along and get their mission accomplished so that they can go home to Japan, and they end up becoming friends willing to sacrifice for one another. There’s stylized nudity in the opening credits, and at the beginning of each episode is a little recap in case you’ve missed something.

This series a little on the old side (the U.S. version is from 1999) and the animation style is less polished than we are used to getting these days. It also switches back and forth from “realistic” looking to “chibi" (cutesy)  for reasons I am unaware of. It doesn’t detract from the story, but when a character suddenly has cat ears you can’t help but wonder why.

As the girls work their way through Cephiro to save the Princess and the world in general, they meet lots of new characters, including Mokono, a little speck of a thing that is pretty much a bag of holding (for those who are Dungeons and Dragons fans) or a replicator from Star Trek- there’s nothing Mokono can’t come up with out of the blue.

The special features on the disk are where problems arise. The previews on this disk are wholly inappropriate for any audience under the age of 18, even though the show itself could be watched by children as young as 10. There is brief nudity and extreme gore (you see bullets coming through people’s heads, complete with blood splatter) in some of the previews. If you’re in a conservative area, the preview for the show with the homosexual relationship might get parents angry (though honestly it was one of the more tame previews.)

Survey says: For the show itself anyone 10+ is old enough to watch it. For the previews, I found myself squirming at the violence. Since there is no way to ensure that younger children won’t watch the previews, I’d put this in the adult section of the library.

Personal Ad: The previews completely caught me off guard. This show is Sailor Moon in nature, and yet the previews are totally age inappropriate for the show. I thought the show itself was pretty cool, but I won’t be pushing to get this in my own collection because of the previews. It may be because of the age of the show- for a long time anime wasn’t marketed to kids- but even then, the shows previewed aren’t anything like Magic Knight Rayearth. It was as if whoever put this disk together had no clue about marketing at all.