Magic Knight Rayearth (Mahou Kishi Rayearth) is a 1994 television anime series based on a manga series written and illustrated by CLAMP. The anime was adapted and published by studio TMS Entertainment (previously known as Tokyo Movie Shinsha). The series aired during the Autumn 1994 anime season in October.
Background:
“Hikaru Shidou, Umi Ryuuzaki, and Fuu Hououji are three regular high school girls. While on a field trip to the Tokyo Tower, the three girls’ minds are on anything but different worlds filled with magic and wonder. That is, until Princess Emeraude, the Pillar of Cephiro, cries out for the Magic Knights to save her world – and that just happens to be those three!
The girls must learn to control the magic they suddenly possess, drive back the monsters that plague the land, revive the Rune Gods that have been sealed away, and then fight against the High Priest Zagato, who has kidnapped Princess Emeraude. It’s the only way they can return home, for willpower influences Cephiro, and it is the Princess’s will that the three girls become the Magic Knights of legend, and save her world!”
Plot Synopsis via Anime Limited, July 2020.
Every now and then, you have Anime Limited acquire an out of nowhere classic series or film and in this case we have ourselves another CLAMP title! After acquiring Angelic Layer and Cardcaptor Sakura, Magic Knight Rayearth was the next one under their belt. Unlike the other two however (though the latter of which was previously released in edited form), Magic Knight Rayearth was never released in the UK before.. sort of.
After both seasons of Magic Knight Rayearth aired in Japan, an OVA series was released not long afterwards called Rayearth which did get released in the UK under Manga Entertainment back in the 90s. This was dubbed but never re-released since. Anime Limited managed to not only acquire the rights to the Magic Knight Rayearth anime series, but also the Rayearth OVA series, which is something that North American distributor Discotek Media were not able to achieve years back with their release. The OVA series will be included in Part 2 of the UK Blu-ray release.
Simply put, Anime Limited have the United Kingdom and Ireland rights for the Rayearth franchise. The more CLAMP titles rescued, the better.
Collector’s Edition Contents:
Anime Limited offers their traditional digipack packaging design for the Magic Knight Rayearth collector’s edition Blu-ray sets. A rigid box that houses a digipack which contains the discs and a booklet to accompany the set. The booklet is small, about 18 pages total, but showcases some neat artwork for the anime series.
Like the other Anime Limited sets, this release is 1000 units only and I received my copy early as part of pre-ordering the set during their early bird sale. The SRP is £59.99 and the early bird price was £34.99 (I paid £31.50 for being a premium member of Screen Anime).
Physical Contents:
- Rigid Box with digipack packaging and clean artwork
- Info sheet for specs and sticker on wrapping for BBFC logo
- 18-page booklet
On-Disc Contents:
Distributor: Anime Limited
Released: 27th July 2020
Magic Knight Rayearth Part 1 contains episodes 1-27 across three Blu-ray discs using the Discotek Media author. The audio options available include the main Japanese language with English subtitles and the Bang Zoom!/Media Blasters English dub.
As this is a Discotek authored title, we have yellow subtitles for the main dialogue and blue subtitles for the lyrics, both of which are unlockable during playback, and the regions are locked to B for Blu-ray.
This series is also presented in its original 4:3 aspect ratio layout so there’ll be black bars on both sides of the video. If you’re one of those people who wants the video to fill up the screen, just use your TV settings to adjust the ratio.
I should also note that this release covers all 20 episodes of Magic Knight Rayearth Season 1 and the first 7 episodes of Magic Knight Rayearth Season 2. All of the bonus on-disc extras are saved for Part 2.
Blu-ray Specs:
| Languages | English, Japanese |
| Audio | English Linear PCM 2.0 Japanese Linear PCM 2.0 |
| Video | 1080p High Definition Native format 4:3 (anamorphic 16:9) aspect ratio |
| Region | B |
| Subtitles | English |
| Locked Subtitles | No |
| Discs | 3 |
Blu-ray On-Disc Extra Features:
No extras across all discs
Unboxing Photos:
Final Notes:
Magic Knight Rayearth Part 1 is available to own as a collector’s edition Blu-ray over on Amazon UK. Part 2 is also available to order in the same fashion.
The Normanic Vault 
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