|
|
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, finally my Rayearth page. And this is nothing short of a memorable event. Why? Because Magic Knight Rayearth, along with a help from Dragon Ball (the first series) was what got me into anime as a hobby. What is it about? Well, before we get into that, here is a little bit of the story of the series.
During 1993, many comics that followed the line begun by Sailor Moon spawned into japanese Shojo (for girls) comics magazines. Let me remind you the way comics are published in japan. First, they come out with a few pages in big comic magazines wide as a phonebook. Then, when they reach the proper amount of pages, usually around 200, they are published again in Tankoubon, or Graphic Novels, which usually include some bonus from the authors, like the Tarot cards in X. Magic Knight Rayearth started as one more of this trend of magical girls chosen to save the world, but any comparison to Sailor Moon is proof of the usual misinformation about this series. Yes, it is Shojo and yes, it is aimed towards more or less the same public as the adventures of Usagi Tsukino and her gang, but it is far different. It is a mix of the heroic fantasy genre with the typical Shojo magical girls style. Add the futuristic look of Autozam, and CLAMP's graphic and scriptwriting quality and you have got a work that cannot let most people indifferent, once they have seen it all (because I have to admit that if you consider only the first parts, it seems unoriginal and lame).
Well, Rayearth saw the light of day from the hand of Nakayoshi magazine, the one that was publishing the Sailors at the time, and it was a great hit. The first series spanned three Tankoubon, and since the plot remained wide open, it was continued with the obvious title of Magic Knight Rayearth 2, in the same magazine and ended up with 3 Tankoubon too.
As I said before, it is quite strange how so many types of storytelling are mixed here, and yet they remain original and don't lose their spirit. There is comedy, with a lot of SD (Super-Deformed) characters, some Sci-Fi from the Autozam planet in Rayearth 2, fantasy, shojo and a new gendre started by series like Escaflowne, called Robot Fantasy, where the robots are used in medieval worlds.
The animation for the TV series was in charge of TMS, Tokyo Movie Shinsha, which animated many other famous series, like B't X, Detective Conan, Virtua Fighter, and others. While the second story arc is more interesting, my personal opinion is that the beauty and charm the characters posses in the first one is impossible to match. In the second part of the Anime, though, Nanase Ohkawa herself took the creative control, partly because she was annoyed at the result of the first series. In her eyes, many battle situations were prolonged for too long and many things were softened (except for Ascot's murdering of a certain main character, an event that occurs in the Anime to try and compensate for ignoring so many Manga guidelines). This is why after she tags along in the TV series from episode 21 to 49, the second story arc, the story becomes deeper and more complex, without self-contained episodes. Even though she wanted to remain faithful to the spirit of the Manga, the second story arc is developed differently in the TV version because of the appearance of two extra characters who were not present in the manga, Debonair and Nova (the only new character for the first series was Innova, but he was just created so that Zagato had someone other than his cronies to interact with, someone that knoew what was behind it all...). Although it may seem weird that just two characters could change a series' development so harshly, indeed they did, since they were, well, pure evil. Nova is Hikaru's evil clone, and Debonair is the incarnation of the nightmares of the people of Cefiro after ...well, what occurs at the end of the first series.
After the tremendous success of the TV series, CLAMP created the OVA series, a series of 3 Original Video Animation tapes which told again the story of the Magic Knights. With the simple title Rayearth, this series was not a continuation, but a remake that changed key points of the story. It is highly reccomended that you watch the TV series or read the manga first before watching these OVA, since many relationships may not be quite clear to the casual anime watcher. I will make a full feature on this once I get a chance to see them again and get some pictures. Getting time to make it will be hard, but I will do my best, although it is in the bottom of my list right now.
Well, now onto more technical stuff...the SECTIONS!
Character Profiles and Story Synopsis
Analysis of Rayearth