When it comes to Magic Knight Rayearth I had a very Older Millennial Young American Anime-Obsessed Girl With Unrestricted Internet Access In The 1990s exposure to it, which is to say that I saw images and screenshots and knew about the Saturn game and once I started going to anime conventions in 2000 I watched a huge chunk of the series in a viewing room in what I want to say was 2001 or 2002 from fansubbed VHS. In cons at those days, the viewing rooms operated all throughout the day and night, and when you’re 14 and with the girl who would turn out to be your first kiss and it’s 3am and you stumble into a room to see this kind of art on display, you sit and watch until you can’t stay awake anymore (and then you get woken up by the attendants and go to your room to sleep for about 3 hours—such was the hashtag con life). Brief aside for any folks who weren't con goers or younger folks whose cons may be different now, but there were always volunteer staff positions to monitor the viewing rooms because the viewing rooms were key places for folks without rooms to be able to sleep, and you weren't allowed to sleep outside of one of the hotel rooms!

I will admit here and now that, until finishing reading the manga just now, 20+ years later, I hadn’t completed any Rayearth media of any kind except for the Saturn game. I never finished the show, have never seen the OVA and hadn’t read the manga. I’m glad that’s now changed!

I’m surprised, in hindsight, how short the manga is. I was able to blow through it—it goes by super super quick. Based on my memories of the show and certainly based on how stretched out the game makes it, I was expecting volume upon volume upon volume, but it’s actually really quick and tidy. Probably too quick I would reckon. I found myself really wanting more personal moments and more bonding; I wanted more time to breath. There were moments in the Saturn game that I'm not questioning if they were made just for the game, so I'm really fascinated to get into the anime to be able to see where a lot of the things in the game come from.

I still loved it though—the art speaks for itself. It’s absolutely stunning and flows-plus-angular in that CLAMP way and in that 1990s anime style I just absolutely adore (you dance with who brought ya’, after all). I love the melodrama, I love the fashion, I love the cute asides and the jokes, and I also love the mecha.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that after all of these years, I didn't know the sort of kinda-sorta "twist", and it would have been a surprise to me when I got to the end of the manga if I hadn't, days earlier, played a Super Robot Wars 30 scenario where the ending played out just as it does here. I thought it was some sort of AU or something! I was stunned!

On the whole, I just love how this brought me back to that viewing room all those years ago. I can’t wait to dig into Rayearth 2 and the OVA next!