Introduction
Little time has passed since the Magic Knights’ final confrontation with Princess Emeraude’s "Mashin." Still haunted by the princess’ death, Hikaru Shidou returns to Tokyo Tower. There, she meets her friends Umi Ryuuzaki and Fuu Hououji for the first time since their spontaneous quest to save Cephiro. Plagued by nightmares of the realm she had left behind, Hikaru is relieved to find that her companions too want to return and serve the kingdom they once so dutifully protected.
The Magic Knights’ wish is answered, for at the top of Tokyo Tower, the three are blinded by the same great light they had seen on the day they first met. Once more on the back of a flying fish, the group returns to Cephiro—a world now desolate and in ruins. With the collapse of the Pillar's power, monsters freely roam the land while three nations seek to annex Cephiro with hopes of seizing the Pillar for themselves. Complicating things further is the mysterious Lady Debonair, who proclaims herself to be the rightful heir of the fallen country.
Now confronting graver stakes and radically different enemies, the three Magic Knights set forth once more to save Cephiro and bring peace. With the bonds they have forged together, the trio stands united in the face of such a great challenge.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Audience reviews
6 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
k-0da
MKR's second season answered my wishes for a better, more expansive view at the world of Cephiro; and at this, it succeeded, but at the cost of everything else.
MKR's art is its best quality, hands down. Beautiful, fluid fight animation that in a shoujo anime would be unheard of today. Not to mention spectacular art direction and character design from CLAMP--the whole world just oozes charm. With the introduction of new kingdoms comes new cultures--some definitely more stereotypical than others!-- we see more variety in character dress and character designs, our personal favorite (the owner of this account and the person I watched this with) being Autozam.
Unfortunately for Rayearth, it cannot survive for 29 episodes off just visuals.
Everything besides some worldbuilding suffers in s…
Read at the sourceCaeruleus_CCXVI
6/10 - A great sequel, but not a great show.
I rated the first part to be 4.5/10 and I would give the over all Show of both parts about a 5/10 to a 5.5/10 when looking at the whole show. Part 1 is really a slog to go through, clearly grabbing every popular idea from anime in the 90's it was surrounded by to make the cluster F that is Magic Knight Rayearth. Part 1 was pretty poorly written, from its charecters to the actual adventure and morals it was trying to tell. However Part 2 really took all those ideas and made it into something cohesive, that was easy to follow and knew exactly what it was and went with it. Despite this show being Saylor Moon Meets Gundam and lets just throw in as many IP's as possible, things in season 2 did not seem as much out of place.
Part 2 tries to convey…
Read at the sourcebanichan
Overall: this was a really enjoyable show with a lot of flaws, that was not as strong as the the first season. It probably could have been sped up, have some things fleshed out with others cut out, and been a shorter season.
Good stuff:
- The production isn't bad. The music is decent and the art looks like it got a bigger budget than season 1, although there are definitely episodes with super inconsistent/lower quality art. Still pretty decent for the time period.
- There are a lot more story threads and interesting new worldbuilding! Overall just very enjoyable as a show.
- Eagle is basically the best thing about this show. In fact, he's so good, I think it actually does a disservice to the rest of the show. Eagle is far and away the strongest best-written character, due in large pa…
Read at the sourcedavensjournal
Well, watching this season hard on the heels of the first season is a mistake. You should allow yourself a couple days between them simply to absorb the first season fully.
That said, however, this season is as good in some ways as the first one. Granted the land is missing and you have only one scene that isn't a spaceship or in space, but they manage to make do with what they do have.
The story is what I like to focus on, and there this season is a worthy successor. It took what could have been an awkward ending to the first season and continued it along logically and believably. I was not upset by the reuse of a plot device, and there was less of a video game feel to it, and more of a real emergent situation that needed to be dealt with now.
You get some more backstory in this, but…
Read at the sourceGalactic_Kitten
Magic Knight Rayearth 2 is the telling of the second arc of the manga. While it differs from the manga, it is still a good story. The tone of the series becomes much darker in this season, and it deals much with the past of the pillar. We see the sorrowful role the pillar really is.
This is emphasized by the three nations invading the crumbing Cephiro, each who have their own reasons for invading, but eventually, two of the three decide the better, and actually help to save Cephiro during the final battle.
Besides the invading nations, there is the mysterious Nova and her "mother" Debonaire. They are, in fact the only real bad guys in the story. The characters from other nations are all likable. It's neat how they play off of different civilizations too. Even the music matches, which is…
Read at the sourcejmoriarty84
I personally felt this didn't live up to the first season. I really felt the impact of the ending of the first series. Sure it left things open, but it still felt conclusive at the same time. I thought the ending was really touching and you really feel how the three magic knights bonded with one another and you really see that. To me, making a sequel just takes away the impact the ending had on me. Personally, I thought if they were going to do a sequel, they could have just made them stay in Cefiro instead to try solve the remaining problems it had and would eventually come and then end it the same way the first season did. The series doesn’t really have the same unpredictable plot twists the first series had impact wise. And I just really didn’t like the newer characters. The…
Read at the source