Saving the World Magic Knight Style!

 In grade school and high school, we took a fair number of field trips. Some of them were awesome (a day in Toronto sight seeing), and some were lame (spiritual “retreats”), but all of them were disappointing for one simple reason: I never met two beautiful girls from rival schools and ended up transported to another world to become magic knights with them to sort-of save the world, just as I had seen once in a cute and magical anime series in the 90s.

This is what happens to Hikaru Shidou, Umi Ryuzaki, and Fuu Hououji in CLAMP's breakout hit Magic Knight Rayearth, where the three lovely school girls are transported from the Tokyo Tower to the magical land of Cephiro where the strength of one's heart is able to determine one's fate. But of course, saving the world is no easy thing for everyday Japanese school girls (at least in this case), so the journey of finding their powers and inner strength is half the battle for the magic knights, and the lessons they are left with in the end reach far beyond matters of saving the day and becoming heroes.

Believe it or not, heroine Hikaru Shidou is truly a school girl and not a Hindu goddess. She just had a wardrobe change with the cast of RG Veda.

Magic Knight Rayearth was initially rather low on my CLAMP to-read list, most likely due to the lack of gorgeous guys until Lantis, Eagle Vision, Geo Metro, and older Ascot show up in the second arc. My shallowness aside, the character Hikaru kept popping up in all of the CLAMP crossover series I was reading, so I decided it was high time for me to check out her native series and enjoy a good, long Magic Knight Rayearth anime viewing. The result was very much what I'm used to for CLAMP series: I liked both the anime and the manga, but as soon as the anime started veering too much from the manga canon, I started to get salty. CLAMP's word is law to me, and I hate having it changed, even for the sake of making an anime series possible. But we'll get to that later.

As I mentioned before, the premise of Magic Knight Rayearth centers on Japanese teens Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu being brought to alternate world Cephiro to save the day. Apparently, a legend exists in Cephiro that when the country's 'Pillar' (their spiritual leader, in a sense) is in trouble, she will summon magic knights from another world to lend a hand. No one really questions why they have to be from another world, but the legend makes it so the three girls have to save Cephiro, a country they have only just discovered, from certain doom, or else they will be unable to return to Japan. Fun.

Our trio of day savers in magic knight form. Color coordinated for your convenience.

Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu arrive to discover that alleged baddie Zagato is holding Cephiro's Pillar, Princess Emeraude, hostage, and Cephiro cannot survive without her acting in her role as leader. Since strength of will is what keeps Cephiro safe, the fear generated by the people are creating monsters and making the land steadily more uninhabitable. The girls assume that Zagato wants to take control of Cephiro for himself, but other than the fact that he wants the Magic Knights' paws away from his mysterious plans, nothing much is known about Zagato's intentions.

The kind of sexy bad guy Fei Wang "Ass Chin" Reed wishes he could be

Alas, the girls do not start out as ready made magic knights, and they have to journey to gain a few necessary things including evolving weaponry and awakened rune gods (which later serve as badass living mechas to the girls) before they can even hope to face Zagato. While the girls are out growing stronger, he sends his league of minions including magician Alcyone, summoner Ascot, illusionist Caldina, and tank-general Lafarga out to thwart them, although the magic knights use the power of friendship to convert all of their former enemies except for Alcyone to their side due to the fact that they have something genuine to fight for, and have a strong measure of faith in the justice of what they do. During this time, they also meet spunky ally Ferio (SPOILER: the brother of Cephiro's Pillar) who falls for Fuu and lends the magic knights a hand in their questing.

Still everyone's idol!

Magic Knight Rayearth also marks the first occasion where Mokona is a character, although he/she does not have a speaking role in the plot. He/She mostly serves as a guide and storage unit to the girls, although in the second arc the role greatly increases, much to the shock of our heroines. But we'll save that surprise for later.

Eventually the girls muster up enough equipment and strength to take Zagato down, but unfortunately for them, the situation in Cephiro is not exactly as it appears. SPOILER. It turns out that the Pillar is the person with the strongest heart and strength of will in the Cephirans' world, and their entire life consists of praying solely for the well-being of the country, disallowing thoughts and feelings toward anything else. Emeraude successfully served as the Pillar for a time, but could not help but eventually fall in love with her high priest Zagato (his extreme tall, dark, and handsome bishie-ness probably didn't help matters). Because she could not fully devote herself to Cephiro, the land began to slowly fall apart in reparation, and Emeraude began to hate herself for being unable to guide her country properly. Zagato, who returned her affections, kidnapped her to pull her away from her duties because he could not see the sense in her being punished for simply falling in love with someone (reasonably so) and decided he would let her live her life for herself, even if the cost of his actions was the destruction of Cephiro.

However, the magic knights are completely unaware of this tragic backstory, and kill Zagato when he tries to prevent the group from reaching Princess Emeraude. Thinking they have saved Cephiro and made everyone happy, the girls are stunned when Emeraude goes berserk and starts attacking them for the murder of her lover. As Emeraude goes back and forth between sanity and insanity, she confesses that she brought the magic knights to Cephiro so they could KILL HER. What the hell, Emeraude? You're dragging Japanese teenage girls away from their home world to a strange land with monsters and people trying to kill them so they can KILL YOU? I know she has her reasons, but does she really, truly comprehend what kind of emotional scar that could leave on someone?

In any case, the Pillar can't kill herself due to the sucky way-of-the-world in Cephiro, and Emeraude can't stand to live without being able to love Zagato AND take care of her country, so she gets the magic knights to do it for her. Poor Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are already crushed over killing Zagato before knowing what he was truly fighting for, and it gets even worse for them when they have to destroy Emeraude while fully aware of the fact that her greatest crime is falling in love with someone who loved her in return. However, if they don't kill her, her dark side will kill them and Cephiro, so there really isn't much they can do. They do the deed against their wishes and return to the Tokyo Tower in tears, wishing they could go back and do things in Cephiro the right way. SPOILER END.

Don't let the innocent eyes fool you. Princess Emeraude is the leading cause of angst in this series.

And that finishes up the first arc of the manga and the first season of the anime. Luckily, the anime stays fairly true to the manga, only adding generic filler that doesn't alter the plot too much, and mainly focuses on the girls building their powers, additional battles against Zagato's minions, and the relationship between Ferio and Fuu. The one major blot (and to me, this is major) is the death of Presea, which does not happen in the manga. It adds dramatic tension and makes it clear how much is at stake, however Presea remains a character in the second arc of Magic Knight Rayearth, which I don't believe was released at that time so the producers may not have known this. So for season two, Guru Clef claims Emeraude resurrects Presea and anyone who died during Cephiro's period of trouble, and the girls are thrilled. I know this ends up being a lie, but the fact that they used that particular lie and convinced the vast majority of characters to believe in it really grinded my gears. In CLAMP, the dead cannot come back to life; it is one of the major rules of ALL of their universes. The most that can happen is the dead can have their time frozen, but even then they must eventually die and have anything they did after the moment of their natural death erased from the universe. So you're not even supposed to joke about raising the dead in CLAMP, considering the gravity of what happens in Tsubasa and xxxHolic thanks to people who even think for a mere second about raising the dead. So don't go there, Clef. Don't even lie to people about it.

Season/arc two picks off where the story left off, so things are going to get spoilerific again. Also, since the anime and manga diverge greatly at this point, I'll be following the manga until I indicate otherwise.

SPOILER. Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are still heartbroken over the quite insensitive mission the people of Cephiro put them through, and want to go back and do the right thing for individuals who may be suffering like Emeraude. Also, poor Fuu's hot new boyfriend lives in another world, which I'm sure is quite hard on her since it is very unlikely that she'll find someone as gallant and charming as him on Earth. The girls meet up again at Tokyo Tower for a somber pity party and to shed some tears together, culminating with Hikaru declaring that she really, really wants to go back to Cephiro to try again. And lo and behold, the flash of light appears just like in the first arc, and they're back to the magical realm!

There have been a few changes since they left. For one, Cephiro is completely falling apart due to the lack of a Pillar (as I said, the Pillar is the person in their world with the strongest heart), and three nearby countries-- Chizeta, Autozam, and Fahren-- are invading in hopes of becoming Pillar and taking control of Cephiro. Also, Zagato's hot younger brother Lantis is back in Cephiro and is brooding up a storm over the fact that the Pillar system is even still in existence, considering what happened to Zagato and Emeraude. Lastly, following the events of arc one, Ascot uses his strength of will to grow even taller and hotter for his beloved Umi's sake. D'awww.

Lantis: beauty runs in the family.

The girls retake the mantle of their powers, and begin fighting off the invading countries in their rune gods/mechas. They discover that Chizeta (reflecting Indian culture) wants Cephiro so they have more land to rule over than their own dinky country, and Fahren (reflecting Chinese culture) wants to make Cephiro a happy place filled with imagination and candy. Because of these somewhat shallow reasons, the girls are able to convince the invading countries that being the Pillar sucks and will deny them the right to feel any emotion other than single-minded devotion to Cephiro. However, Autozam (reflecting American culture) will not be dissuaded due to the fact that their own country is an environmental death trap, and their bishie prince, Eagle Vision, is secretly on his death bed and wants to have an eternal sleep as the Pillar of Cephiro so no one else has to suffer the position. Honorable, but depressing when you consider that both Lantis and Hikaru really like/love him.

CLAMP sure loves their beautiful men and death seekers.

In the end, 'the Creator' of both the Cephiro/Chizeta/Autozam/Fahren dimension and the Japan/rest of the known world dimension selects both Eagle Vision and Hikaru to duke it out for the title of Pillar. And, believe it or not, the Creator is Mokona! Which is really funny when you imagine the Mokonas of xxxHolic and Tsubasa creating the world, especially our own universe! In any case, Mokona was heart broken that the Earth turned into a place with so much hatred, killing, and environmental destruction, that he created an alternate dimension with each country founded on different rules (such as Cephiro's rule that strength of will determines fate). Hikaru defeats Eagle for the title, but insists that Mokona spare his life (because the person who lost was fated to die) and make the world a place where everyone's heart can make Cephiro beautiful, not just the Pillar's. Mokona is resistant at first (the possibility that the universe will turn into another failure like Earth is likely), but the strong wills of Umi, Fuu, Ferio, Lantis, etc. change his mind. And he lets Eagle Vision out alive to be treated by Cephiro's healers, thank god!

After the heart break of the first arc, this section ends on a happy note. Cephiro is back in business, Eagle Vision's life is saved, and the girls have the ability to visit Cephiro whenever they want. Ferio and Fuu can now date each other properly, Ascot can start wooing Umi, and everybody can party together at their leisure. In a very cute conclusion, Lantis asks Hikaru how earthlings show affection, and she tells him they do so by getting married. When he asks her if she has anyone she wants to marry, she suggests that she would love to marry both him and Eagle Vision, and then goes on to express her devotion to the entire cast. Yup, Lantis/Hikaru/Eagle Vision is pretty much a semi-canon threesome, although I guess Hikaru's proclamation can be considered invalid since she did say she loved everyone, not just them. However, I like it better this way. All three of them love each other the most, and someone's heart would get broken if one of them was left out of the equation. Besides, this wouldn't be the first time CLAMP has done something like this with a pairing (with Kotori/Kamui/Fuuma being the other prime example).

Hikaru shows us the best way to solve a love triangle.

That aside, there are A LOT of differences between the manga and anime's second season, at least in my opinion. The Presea incident I already mentioned was one, and the other most noticeable alteration was the addition of Nova and Debonair, two villains born of the despair of Hikaru and the Cephirans after the deaths of Emeraude and Zagato. This change didn't bother me all that much (it's that damn dramatic tension needed to make the manga into a longer series, and Debonair went on to inspire Kishiim in Tsubasa, whom I thoroughly enjoyed), although I think it took too much emphasis away from the original plot and turned the normally strong Hikaru into a continually distressed damsel. Also, like in Angelic Layer, the couples were slightly messed around with. Hikaru/Lantis was strongly enforced without bringing Eagle Vision as much into the picture, and their feelings were much greater than the light flirting in the manga. Umi is also strongly implied to be in love with Clef (poor Ascot!), who also once had the attentions of dead!Presea as well as her replacement twin, Sierra, in the present day. Personally, I feel this is a little too much love geared towards a person with the body of a six year-old, and I love Ascot too much to enjoy seeing him passed over in this way, so these changes just ended up annoying me. Also (and this is perhaps the worst), they kill off Eagle Vision. Yeah, I know he was technically on his deathbed, but why????? What about that cute scene with Hikaru wanting to marry him, as well as Lantis? What was so wrong with that? And what's up with not letting the girls go back to Cephiro? Fuu's freaking boyfriend lives there, as do the potential love interests of Hikaru and Umi. Even though Cephiro is safe, they're still probably going to end up crying over their lost loves and the still lingering emotional scar of Emeraude, who could have made the exact same wish Hikaru did for the changed system of Cephiro without killing herself and Zagato off using innocent teenage girls. Ugh. SPOILER END.

Ascot for the win!

In the end, I enjoyed the manga, though not so much as the more convoluted CLAMP offerings such as Tsubasa and X. However, I really, really appreciated the fact that the magic knights didn't have a sunshine and rainbows time in Cephiro, especially after they found out the truth about the Pillar system. The twisted nature of the ruling system gave the story much needed darkness, and also worked effectively as social commentary regarding the imperfections and flaws of our own political systems around the world. The Creator's feelings about the worlds he has formed are especially meaningful, even more so when we consider a higher power's possible feelings over the current state of the world. The only really sore point with me was the changes made in the second season of the anime, which is undoubtedly rooted in my absolute loyalty to CLAMP canon, so if you don't care about those sort of things when making the leap back and forth between anime and manga, it won't be too big of a deal.

As I also mentioned in my Angelic Layer posting, Magic Knight Rayearth makes several additional appearances in the CLAMP multiverse, the big three being Hikaru's reappearance as Misaki's angel in Angelic Layer, Emeraude's major appearance in the Jade Arc of Tsubasa, and Hikaru's similar cameos in Tsubasa, the first being with Geo Metro, Eagle Vision and Lantis in Infinity as her Angelic Layer reincarnation, the second with Umi and Fuu in the past of one of the alternate Sakuras. Alternate versions of Caldina, Debonair, Primera, Sang Yang, and of course Mokona also make notable appearances in Tsubasa.

Next up will be Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Row, row fight the powa!