40 Fun Facts About Magic Knight Rayearth

On a school trip to which landmark are Magic Knight Rayearth's heroines swept into another world?

Tokyo Tower is where the three girls, each visiting with a different school, first meet. A year later they gather there again and are swept back to Cephiro.

Which Autozam officer in Magic Knight Rayearth shares his full name with a General Motors small car?

Geo Metro, a muscular officer with a weakness for sweets, follows the manga's habit of naming its cast after cars. Even his combat machine, the GTO, borrows from a Mitsubishi model.

In Magic Knight Rayearth, what has Princess Emeraude really summoned three girls from Earth to do?

Kill her is the true mission, because nobody born in Cephiro is able to harm its ruler. Until the final battle the girls believe they were called to rescue the princess.

Which rabbit-like guide in Magic Knight Rayearth is named after one of the manga's four creators?

Mokona borrows the pen name of the team's lead artist and speaks only in a single repeated syllable. The manga's ending reveals the fluffy mascot as the creator of both Cephiro and Earth.

Which magical girl manga's success let Magic Knight Rayearth's creators pitch a serial with giant robots?

Sailor Moon was running in the same girls' magazine, and writer Nanase Ohkawa credited its success with making a robot serial possible to pitch. Fantasy was added so the robots would not put readers off.

Clef, the master mage of Magic Knight Rayearth, looks like a ten-year-old boy but is actually how old?

745 is his real age, which is why he reacts so badly when Umi calls him a child. He is the chief of all sorcerers in Cephiro and once attended Princess Emeraude.

Which console's last North American release, in 1998, was a long-delayed Magic Knight Rayearth adventure?

Sega Saturn owners waited years for it, though it was among the first titles announced when the console was unveiled in 1994. The localizers blamed the sheer volume of text and voice work.

Zagato, the high priest of Magic Knight Rayearth, is named after a car design studio from which country?

Italy is home to Zagato, a coachbuilder founded in Milan in 1919 that made its name with lightweight Alfa Romeo race cars. Most of the cast are named after cars.

Which all-female manga team, later behind Cardcaptor Sakura, wrote and illustrated Magic Knight Rayearth?

Clamp began as a twelve-member fan-comic circle in the 1980s and had settled into its lasting four-woman line-up by the year the series launched. Leader Nanase Ohkawa writes and the other three are artists.

In Magic Knight Rayearth, what title is held by the person whose prayers keep Cephiro from collapsing?

The Pillar must think of nothing but Cephiro's welfare, which leaves no room for a private life or love. Princess Emeraude holds the post when the story begins.

In Magic Knight Rayearth, what force is said to shape reality itself in the otherworldly land of Cephiro?

Willpower rules everything in Cephiro, to the point that the villain builds his own giant fighting machine from sheer determination. Writer Nanase Ohkawa calls the place merely an exaggeration of Earth.

In Magic Knight Rayearth, the fencing champion Umi Ryuuzaki casts spells based on which element?

Water spells such as Azure Hurricane fit her blue theme color, while her fellow knights command fire and wind. She is the most reluctant of the three, fretting about a fencing contest back home.

In Magic Knight Rayearth, Hikaru's family, three older brothers included, runs a dojo for which martial art?

Kendo is the family trade, and the small, headstrong Hikaru is often teased for her boyishness. In the first arc her great wish is to get home to her dog, Hikari.

Autozam, the high-tech world in Magic Knight Rayearth, takes its name from a brand of which carmaker?

Mazda launched Autozam as a small-car brand in Japan, and the name is partly the parent's first three letters spelt backwards. The mage Clef is named after an Autozam sedan.

Which world in Magic Knight Rayearth, home of the child princess Aska, has a name that is the German verb for driving?

Fahren keeps up the series' motoring joke, and its bratty young princess is named after an Isuzu sedan. She invades Cephiro because she wants a world where her every whim comes true.

In Magic Knight Rayearth, Zagato is blamed for abducting the princess; who really imprisoned her?

Emeraude herself did it, hoping that isolation would stop her thinking about the man she had fallen in love with: Zagato. He let the world believe he was her kidnapper.

Chosen to sustain Cephiro by prayer at the end of the Magic Knight Rayearth manga, what does Hikaru do with that duty?

Hikaru abolishes it, decreeing that a planet's fate should never rest on one person again. Cephiro's creator accepts her decision and departs with the three guardian machines.

Besides giant robots and fantasy, which Japanese craze did the creators build Magic Knight Rayearth around?

Role-playing games were booming in Japan, and the plot borrows their shape: three heroes on a quest to rescue a princess, gaining elemental magic along the way. The robots came from the team's love of robot anime.

Fuu Hououji, the bespectacled archer of Magic Knight Rayearth, is identified by which theme color?

Green marks everything about her, from her healing wind spells to attacks named Emerald Typhoon and Emerald Cyclone. Her fellow knights are coded red and blue.

Selece, the guardian Umi pilots in Magic Knight Rayearth, first appears as what kind of blue creature?

A dragon is Selece's first form, but all three guardians are really giant robots for the girls to pilot. The second heroine's is a four-winged bird, and the third's a beast with a mane of fire.

Known in English as Rune-Gods, the three giant guardians of Magic Knight Rayearth go by what name in Japanese?

Mashin sounds like the English word machine, yet it is also a homonym for a Japanese term meaning demon god. The artists left out cockpits so that the pilots' faces could be shown instead.

From which legendary mineral does Presea forge the heroines' swords in Magic Knight Rayearth?

Escudo swords are the work of Cephiro's top blacksmith, known locally as a Pharle, or artisan. Presea is also a pupil of the mage Clef, with a mischievous streak aimed mostly at the heroines' mascot.

Which magic swordsman in the second arc of Magic Knight Rayearth is the younger brother of the slain Zagato?

Lantis returns from long travels abroad wanting to end the rule that cost his brother's life, and he forgives the heroines for their part in it. In the anime he and Hikaru fall in love.

Which swordsman of Magic Knight Rayearth, who falls for Fuu, is the younger brother of Princess Emeraude?

Ferio carries a sword taller than he is and first meets the heroines in the Forest of Silence. In the manga he gives Fuu a ring matching the one in his ear, a gift from his sister.

Which boy summoner in Magic Knight Rayearth abandons Zagato after Umi slaps him for making his monster friends fight?

Ascot was a lonely orphan, shunned for the monsters he calls friends, until Zagato offered them all a home. By the second arc he has grown into a tall young man and learned other spells.

Alcyone, who serves Zagato out of unrequited love in Magic Knight Rayearth, is a sorceress of which element?

Ice is her weapon, and Clef was once her teacher. She had been groomed to attend the princess before her one-sided love for the high priest made her his servant.

Which anime-only villain of Magic Knight Rayearth is a fragment of Hikaru's soul, split off by guilt?

Nova broke away because Hikaru could not cope with the princess's death, and she is obsessed with her other half while scorning everyone Hikaru cares for.

Which twin sister did the Magic Knight Rayearth anime invent to replace the smith Presea after her death?

Sierra exists because Presea dies only in the anime yet is still needed for the second arc's plot. The one way to tell the twins apart is a feather-shaped birthmark.

In the 1994 Magic Knight Rayearth anime, what does Zagato do to the mage Clef soon after the girls arrive?

Zagato turns him to stone, but Clef fights the spell and keeps advising the girls through their fluffy guide. The manga spares him this fate.

Caldina, the dancer and illusionist of Magic Knight Rayearth, speaks Japanese with the accent of which city?

Osaka speech became a deep Southern accent in the English dub. Caldina is a hired assassin with an endless passion for money, and she later proves to be a native of Chizeta.

Which singer's million-selling first opening theme for the Magic Knight Rayearth anime became her signature song?

Naomi Tamura had spent years in the band Pearl before going solo, and this fourth single was her first to sell a million copies. She also sang the anime's final opening and the theme of the later OVA.

Which Evangelion lead voiced both Princess Emeraude and Eagle Vision in the 1994 Magic Knight Rayearth anime?

Megumi Ogata, best known as Shinji Ikari, earned the nickname aniki for her many male and boyish parts. Here she voiced a princess in the first season and an invading commander in the second.

Which Kodansha magazine, later home to Cardcaptor Sakura, first serialized Magic Knight Rayearth?

Nakayoshi, whose name means good friend, has appeared monthly since 1954 and comes with small free gifts. The manga ran there in two parts, the sequel starting the month after the first ended.

In the 1997 OVA Rayearth, Hikaru's fiery guardian goes by which new name, shared with a Japanese luxury car brand?

Lexus is the guardian's name in the OVA, where the familiar title belongs to the three machines combined. The three-part release moves the fighting to Earth and makes the heroines schoolmates.

The three Rune-Gods of Magic Knight Rayearth return as guardian spirits in which later manga by the same team?

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle hands the three guardians to its travelling heroes as protective spirits, with the fiery one going to Syaoran. Several of the supporting cast make cameos there too.

At the start of Magic Knight Rayearth's second arc, what lone structure shelters Cephiro's survivors?

A castle on the one remaining piece of land holds everyone who is left, a year after the princess's death. Three rival worlds then arrive hoping to take over.

Which director, who debuted with the OVA Fight! Iczer One, went on to direct the 1994 Magic Knight Rayearth anime?

Toshihiro Hirano made his name on 1980s video releases aimed at enthusiasts before moving to television. He returned to the series in 1997 to direct its three-part OVA.

In several foreign-language versions of Magic Knight Rayearth, the blue-haired fencer Umi Ryuuzaki is renamed what?

Marina or Marine stood in for Umi in some dubs, while Hikaru became Lucy or Luce and Fuu became Anemone, Anais or Anne.

Autozam, the high-tech world invading Cephiro in Magic Knight Rayearth, hopes to cure which problem back home?

Polluted air troubles Autozam, a world that runs on the mental energy of its citizens. Its commander Eagle Vision has a private motive too: he is gravely ill and wants to spare a friend.

Which studio behind Lupin the Third and Detective Conan co-produced the 1994 Magic Knight Rayearth anime?

TMS Entertainment, then trading under an older company name, made it with the broadcaster Yomiuri TV. Three decades on, the same studio is also behind the 2026 remake.