Reviews #3--Magic Knight Rayearth

Magic Knight Rayearth by CLAMP.







Oh, ha, the Mashin are the same as the guys' kudans in Tsubasa.

I'm now halfway through volume 3, and I have to say this is not one of my favorite CLAMP titles. I really don't like early CLAMP artwork in general because it's too confusing. Some of it is gorgeous to look at, but I have no idea what's going on. Overall, it's not that bad, but I'm an impatient manga reader--I want to be able to tell what's going on as soon as I look at the panel. No FLCL for me.
Besides the occasionally cluttered artwork, the story leaves something to be desired. Three girls are transported from Tokyo to another world, and discover they are the destined saviors of said world. All right. That has potential. But three girls constantly reaffirming that they have strong hearts and their new, amazingly strong friendship will overcome all odds--that gets tiring. That's coming from a girl who watched the entire Yugioh series--dubbed. That guy, I'm going to call him Fiyero because I don't remember his name, he was interesting. He added a bit of contrast to the high-school-girls-saving-the-world-with-super-special-awesome-friendship-powers. Not much contrast, since every high-school-girls-saving-the-world series has at least one of those guys (Tuxedo Mask; Aoyama, Ryou, and Keiichiro) but it's something.
Volume 1 was the girls landing in Cephiro and being trained by Clef. Volume 2 was mostly the quest to get that stuff to make them better warriors. Volume 3 so far has been reawakening the Mashin.
It seems straightforward so far. But, judging by CLAMP's reputation of not explaining things, and the summary I just read on wikipedia, it's not ending how you'd think. Maybe a little, since I've been suspecting something between Zagato and Emurade, but mostly not.

It's interesting, the designs are wonderful to look at, if a bit confusing, and the characters are developed. Whether or not you actually like those characters... (oh, please, bring back Fiyero! I can't stand Hikaru or Fuu preaching about friendship any more. Umi is slightly less annoying, but still...)
So far, a C. We'll see if the ending can bring that up.

EDIT: Well, I've finished volume 3 now, and I'd have to say at least a C+ or a B-. I really liked the ending, (and there was something about the second-to-last panel that really stuck with me) and I hope that the second half of the series is as good. I also hope that they'll tell us what's going on BEFORE the last 20 pages.