The great commercial success obtained by the series of the Sailor warriors, encouraged CLAMP to create something similar but that, at the same time, wasn't the usual, umpteenth heavy imitation. Thus on the pages of Nakayosi, famous shoujo heading, "Magic knight Rayearth" appears, a fantasy manga whit  warrior girls and many references to RPG and Magic. The success leads to a more commercial operation, and to the making of a 49 episode animated series and 3 OAV (original animation video), all of a very high standard.

THIS SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS ALL OVER, BE CAREFUL ^^

Rayearth 1st season

Hikaru, a lively kendoka, smaller for her age, Fuu, an extremely sweet, smart girl and Umi, a rich refined girl, are all, by coincidence, at Tokyo Tower at the same time when they are summoned to another dimension, the kingdom of Cephiro. Princess Emerode, the pillar of that world, who maintained the peace and unity of Cephiro through strong prayers and her inner strength, has been made prisoner by the evil priest Zagato...With the last of her powers, Princess Emerode evokes the three girls hoping to avoid the destruction. The girls' goal is to rescue her and save Cephiro from oblivion. Or at least that is what they thought....Cephiro is a magical world whose outer appearance is shaped by its inhabitants' strength of will. When Princess Emerode prayed for Cephiro her strongest will power turned it into a serene paradise. But when she was taken away and held captive, the inhabitants  became worried and afraid. As well as positive feelings created Good Spirits, this newborn fear, which now rules in Cephiro's inhabitants hearts, creates and unleashes Evil Forces upon this once idyllic world. The girls alone can't defeat the Evil: being Magic Knights they must get the Machines...With the help of Clef, an ancient wizard, Presea the sword smith, Ferio, a mysterious traveler and Mokona, a kind of fluffy rabbit, the three girls succeed in awaking the Machines: Windam of the air, Ceres of the seas and Rayearth of fire. Zagato sends against them a series of henchmen, but the girls always manage to defeat them. Each episode shows the knights growing up as they meet and overcome each new challenge. With each victory, their armor and magical powers gain strength enhancing their skills for the last battle. But while the series starts out with good and evil seemingly clearly defined, little by little something about the true roles of Zagato and Emerode begins to get unclear; in fact, defeating the evil, the girls discover the painful truth hidden beneath their mission itself: Emerode was in love with her Priest, and so she renounced to her role as pillar in her only conceivable way: summoning the Knights, a simple, terrible self-destruction spell. At the end, when they finally find out the real story of what's been going on and why they're there, the girls have no choice but to kill the princess in order to save the world and go back.
This is  an ending which throws out all the ideas they had.....and we had!

Rayearth 2nd season

The first part of the TV series is very faithful to the manga, the second one is quite different and the animation is much darker: due to the success of the previous season, Rayearth 2 had some additions on the original storyline, and other characters were also added in order to make the story longer. An important difference is represented by Nova, the materialization of Hikaru's evil part. In the background  there is also a mysterious entity, Debonair, who instead represents all Cephiro's inhabitants fears and who uses Nova to confuse Hikaru's mind, in order to achieve her final goal: the destruction of Cephiro. The season begins with the girls meeting at Tokyo Tower and being summoned again to a destroyed, darkened Cephiro. Then, as we can find in the manga, there are the leaders of the worlds nearby: Eagle Vision from Autozam, Asuka from Pharen and Tata and Tatra from Chizeta. They are attempting to invade Cephiro in its current state, and it's up to the girls to defend it once again. Except Eagle, the others don't know what becoming the new pillar could bring and what the cost could be.But who summoned the girls back to Cephiro? Who will succeed Emeraude as pillar? Both anime and manga give their own answers. In the end, the girls manage to forgive themselves for Emerode and Zagato's death, finding the strength (with the help of all Cephiro's people) to defeat their worst enemy. They also give Cephiro a new life, in harmony with the other populations....The pillar system and its inhuman rules is forever destroyed and Cephiro remains a world to which the girls return every now and then. The second series is, in many ways, a departure from the lightheartedness of the first. The girls are already practiced warriors and can call upon the awakened Mashin. There are plenty of robots-in-space battles, and much less comic relief.

Comment

For many fans of CLAMP, Rayearth is a work above all commercial and stirring to be truly valuable, but in reality it contains interesting and varying elements that make this work notable from lots of series with child warriors.....starting with the world of Cephiro and his inhabitants, all fascinating, then characters such as the strange Mokona, a typical kawaii animal, for long the most loved of the anime, then a not too obvious plot and more adult tones than other series. As an example, the end of the first season is an unexpected twist of plot (which until that point was linear and obvious). We can say that this story is not an ugly copy of Sailor Moon and company, but an original and entertaining story. This manga is less serious compared to CLAMP' s other works but this does not detract from the story itself, or from the spectacular little pieces of art displayed in every single page of the 6 manga volumes.

Contents

Here there are  some more complete summaries. I don't own them, but I've retouched something here and there.

Magic Knight Rayearth © 1994 CLAMP Kodansha Ltd. TMS