Manga Adaptation by E&H Production and TMS
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

Three middle-school girls, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu, are transported from modern Japan to the magical world of Cephiro. There they use their sick cheat skills to amass scads of bitches and…wait, what do you mean it’s NOT that???

Zigg’s verdict: A Kind of Magic

I’m sure that for many of you Rayearth will need no introduction, but for those of you who are a little less au fait with manga history, let’s do an introduction. Magic Knight Rayearth, in its original form, is a 1993 manga by industry titans CLAMP, the creators of X, Cardcaptor Sakura, xxxHolic and many other massive hit series. Despite its age I’d argue it remains one of their signature works, mashing up multiple genres including magical girl, isekai, and traditional high fantasy into an immensely enjoyable adventure, one which has persisted through the years as a classic that’s still be enjoyed into the present day.

Given that lineage, you’d think that Rayearth  was a shoe-in for an anime adaptation. And it was! A two season, 49 episode anime version aired over the course of 1994-5, and despite some changes to the story is generally well-loved and regarded as a classic in its own right. There was also a divisive 1997 OVA series which took some serious liberties with the narrative but remains an interesting curio. Point is, Rayearth  has already been successfully adapted to the small screen in multiple versions.

This new show then is another in an increasing recent trend of remakes of classic 80s and 90s shows for a new generation – see for example the remakes of Urusei Yatsura, Sailor Moon, Ranma 1/2, and many others that have debuted over the past few years. That therefore puts the new Rayearth in a tricky place – it not only has to contend with the original manga, but also an existing animated version of the story which has its own fanbase and that has already established an agreed upon interpretation of the text.

Putting cards on the table, I’m one of those fans – I love the 90s show and strongly associate the story with it. So sitting through the first episode of this remake was a weird and sometimes discombobulating experience. The two versions share a great deal of similarity, down to often precisely mirroring shots, but that’s to be expected given they’re both drawing from the same source material. This means that when differences do pop up, they’re interesting and worthy of examination.

The major issue with this first episode I think is pacing. Naturally a first episode is going to be fairly heavy on talky exposition, and CLAMP didn’t help in this regard by only giving us the barest of setups in the ‘real’ world before just whisking our main trio away to Cephiro before even five minutes have passed. Still, the vast majority of the runtime here is just the three girls talking to Clef, and while the infodump is important, it does make everything a little dry. The script does manage to punch in with regular jokes and fun chibi-style comedy moments, but it’s still bordering on the edge of tedium by the time we’re done. In contrast, the ’94 anime truncates Clef’s speech and includes an airborne battle against Alcyone that, while brief, does inject some much needed excitement into the whole affair.

Visually, Rayearth has the advantage of drawing from CLAMP’s unmatched visual panache, and this is a great looking show, full of the group’s trademark visuals – beautiful, noodly characters, lashings of costume porn, and an unmatched eye for rich, gorgeous art design. As with Sailor Moon Crystal it can be a little jarring to see characters who so obviously scream ‘the 90s’ rendered in widescreen HD, but E&H mostly make it work. The transition to a modern format really benefits the landscapes of Cephiro, making the floating islands and crystal peaks pop like never before. I don’t think the characters are quite so successful though – CLAMP’s  fey, flighty character designs benefit more than most from the warmth and analogue feel of traditional cell animation, and the ’94 show still has the edge here I think.

The one thing I want to emphasise in wrapping up this first look though is that Magic Knight Rayearth is a tremendous work and something every anime fan should watch in my opinion. If you’re new to the story then I see no signs here that this will be anything other than a great adaptation and absolutely one of the best shows of the season. For those of us who are longtime fans however the equation is a little more complicated, and it remains to be seen if the new Rayearth can really bring anything that the old version didn’t already have. As with so many of these remakes, the question is less if it’s worthy and more ‘why does this exist?’