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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautifully packaged, wonderful series, June 22, 2001
This box set contains 29 episodes on 7 DVDs, which comprise the second (and last) season of Magic Knight Rayearth. The packaging is beautiful: a heavy box which opens in the front with artwork of the magic knights on the front and sides. This is by far the best box put out by an American anime company, and it puts the season 1 box to shame. Absent some spelling errors on the individual DVDs, the packaging is simply top notch. As for the show, it is a fair bit different than the first season. An underlying current in the first season was that the show was something of a parody of Japanese RPGs (role-playing games). Here, the situation is more serious; somewhat unexpectedly, the show has more humor as well. The magic knights, three 14-year old girls from Tokyo, are summoned again to the world of Cephiro by an unknown force and find it crumbling. Cephiro is ruled by a pillar, one person whose will rules all; in the previous season, Cephiro lost its pillar, and it is now crumbling into nothingness. To make matters worse, three other worlds are invading it and a dark enemy has appeared from within. The show does start a little slow, and there are some saccharine moments--but those are to be expected if you saw the first season. On the other hand there's no concerns about nudity (although there is an innocent exchange reflecting a girl's anxiety about her chest) or language or graphic violence, so it's a fairly safe title for kids to see. Note that there is fighting, death, and occasional blood, so this is not a show for those who want to avoid all violence. If you've seen the first season and liked it, you'll like this: at once darker and funnier, with characters you came to like.
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53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice series..., July 10, 2000
This review is from: Magic Knight Rayearth - Memorial Collection 1 (DVD)
Okay, I went and bought this dvd series out of curiosity and a recommendation from a friend. He said the mechs do magic which piqued my interest. Anyways, first off, I'd say this series is best described as Sailormoon meets Escaflowne meets Fushigi Yugi. It's like Sailormoon in that the three girls in the anime wear mostly that sailor-type uniform and do magic. It's like Escaflowne in that they are taken into another world that blends a bit of machinery and primitive culture. It's like Fushigi Yugi in the fact that alot of humorous elements in the series use the "superdeformed" image of characters to show some cuteness and laughs. It's a pretty good light hearted series at first and turns a bit serious at the end. Not quite as emotionally involving as Evangelion or Escaflowne, but it still has some good emotional moments. The art style is similar to El-Hazard in my opinion so it might not be the cup of tea of some individuals. The same can be said of the super-deformed part. If you found this aspect annoying in Fushigi Yugi, you might definitely find Rayearth annoying. On another note, people say this dvd is the first season which it is, but the series does end. Meaning, you are not left with a cliffhanger and pulling you hair out at the end of the series such as in Fushigi. So, if you are worried that you'll have to wait to see the current story arc of the first season end, have no freats because the set stands on its own. My only reason for giving this series a 4 star rating is in the fac that there were quite a bit of glitches in the extras. I couldn't get the Omake endings or Alternate Endings to work properly. When choosing options, the cursor takes forever to switch to another selection. And when the show starts, I couldn't switch the default language, English, to the Japanese track straight from the start of the show. I had to go back out into the menu and do it manually from the set-up screen. However, there were no problems with the show itself except for one or two pixellated scences which I noticed. Still, its a good series to add to any anime collection.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable for any age, April 27, 2001
This review is from: Magic Knight Rayearth - Memorial Collection 1 (DVD)
Magic Knight Rayearth isn't a pure 'magical girls in sailor customes' anime, nor a 'parody on magical girls in sailor customes' anime either. Instead it finely balances between these two things, which not many anime try (or succeed in if they do try). What I mean is, the main characters (Hikaru, Fuu and Umi) aren't completely convinced the world they've been transported to (to save the world etc..) is real and yet the anime isn't reduced to a string of silly jokes about it, or a 'serious' anime about good vs evil. The animation is average, the story reasonable (well, if I want to be objective, I happen to _like_ heroic fantasy, good vs evil, heros triumph over bad-guys etc..). If you want to know more about the story, search the Web for 'rayearth' or 'cephiro' (Google is good for that), because I won't elaborate on it. The packaging is nice, a thin cardboard box with the 5 dvds in keepcases in it. The box is more of a wrapper itself, yet with nice print and raised golden areas/scrolls and such. A small thing, but better than a plain paper wrapping, I say :) I only had one problem with the dvd (could be my software dvd decoder) on my pc. The Japanese language + english subtitles somehow was displayed as Japanese with japanese subtitles (?), but as soon as I realized that that was actually japanese with english subtitles it wasn't a point. After that I actually skipped to the dvd menu (which I usually don't on my PC) and found it was correctly written there, must've been either my player or some internal name messup on the dvd. Anyway, if you use a normal player you won't have any problems. One thing I found annoying was that the chapters aren't organized logically (at least not very), which makes navigating outside hte menus (i.e. with a dvd player on a pc, I know I keep repeating myself) a bit nasty, which actually made me use the dvd's menus for once, which are nice and shiny, if a little slow on my setup. Concluding, if you can see past the sugary theme (it's girls anime after all) and like me, like Clamp's style this is good value for your money (8 and a half hours!). Else I recommend you either pick up a copy of the manga first (Mixx Manga has an edition, but rather badly translated) or rent/borrow a tape of one of the episodes. Enjoy,
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