Magic Knight Rayearth ‒ Episode 6
I've mentioned this before, but in previous weeks, I actually didn't mind how fast the pacing was—both in a vacuum, and in comparison to the original. After all, this is a series with a lot of set up. I can hardly blame this series for wanting to hurry up and get to the robots of it all. But this week was the first time I felt this quicker pacing working more to this series' disadvantage.
Again: Especially if it wants to hurry up and get to The Good Stuff, I can actually understand why you might want to rush through the introduction of MKR. But this episode is—or perhaps more accurately, should theoretically be—The Good Stuff in question. We've met our first Rune God, we have something adjacent to a battle with Ascot, and at six episodes in, we've finally seen one of the robots. What is the series trying to hurry up and get to, if not stuff like this? Are we not allowed our moment to bask in, and enjoy, what's going on? Apparently not.
And speaking of stuff like this, what a weird—I'm not even sure I can accurately describe this as being a battle. Right out the gate, nothing made the breakneck pacing more obvious to me than Umi repeating how Hikaru and Fuu are her best friends, and how precious they are to her. But we haven't really been given reason to believe that they've been in Cefiro for more than a few hours, at most. It's probably barely dinner time back home on earth—I get that their unusual circumstances are primed for making them closer friends faster, but calling them your best friends after only a few hours seems like a bit much, Umi. We can take it down a notch or two, or twelve. They don't have to be your best friends for you to want to protect them—you can just say that you don't want them to get hurt, or that you feel for them since you're all in the same wild circumstances. You're being a bit melodramatic about this.
Still, I guess it worked out for her. Turns out, the power of friendship was exactly Ascot's weakness. He's a summoner who's friends with all of his monsters, which candidly, all look like Yu-Gi-Oh! cards as far as I'm concerned. Still, it's an interesting way to go about a summoner character—especially for someone like me who's still fresh off of Hell Mode season two, which features a frankly insufferable summoner character. But before I start veering too off-topic, suffice to say, the Magic Knights maybe have found a potential ally in him, but then again, we also know that he has connections to Zagato, so we should still probably be looking at him with suspicion—even if Umi isn't by the time the episode's over with.
And speaking of the end of the episode, it took a moment, but we finally got a good shot of a robot. I've seen other people wonder about this online, but it's a good question: I wonder how many new fans have started this series, not realizing that it's also a mecha series? How are they going to respond when that starts taking center stage? Of course there's still some time before that happens—albeit less than I probably think if the series is going to continue moving as quickly as it's been—but still, this is the episode that starts planting the idea that there are robots in the audience's head. And cool looking robots, at that. The original MKR was a lot of anime fans' first encounter with a mecha anime, so it's cool to think that it could once again do that for a whole new generation of fans.
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Magic Knight Rayearth is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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