Magic Knight Rayearth begins when three junior high school girls hear a voice asking them to save a world called Cephiro. The voice belongs to Princess Emeraude, the Pillar whose will maintains the peace of this magical world where belief is power. But the peace in Cephiro is now threatened as Princess Emeraude is imprisoned and monsters begin to invade the land. With her last bit of strength, the princess summons forth the three girls destined to become the Magic Knights in the hopes of saving her world.
Categories
Action
Action anime usually involve a fairly straightforward story of good guys versus bad guys, where most disputes are resolved by using physical force. It often contains a lot of shooting, explosions and fighting.
Comedy
Anime whose central struggle causes hilarious results. These stories are built upon funny characters, situations and events. A comedy anime is laced with humour and sets out to provoke laughter from the audience.
Japanese humour can be a bit strange to westerners, so if you`re new to this type of humour, just bear with it; it`ll most likely grow on you if you`re a fan of other kinds of comedy.
Fantasy
Magic and other supernatural forms are primary elements of plot, theme and/or setting. Distinguished from science fiction and horror by not involving scientific or macabre themes respectively, though the three genres can often overlap each other to some extent.
Mahou Shoujo
Magical girls (known in Japan as majokko, and in the West as mahou shoujo) refers to young girls with superhuman abilities, usually involving magic and transformations.
Mecha
Mecha in Japanese basically means mechanical things; everything from an electric whisk or a car to a spaceship or a robot. Here however we limit it to the more exotic things usually referred to as mecha anime: robots, whether controlled by a human or not, and their ilk.
Original Work: Manga
Manga is the lifeblood that drives the anime industry. Everything and its mother is based on manga. However! There are exceptions where the manga was not the basis for the anime.
It`s common practice to make manga adaptations of many popular anime, there`s a manga based on Evangelion, and two (one shounen and one shoujo) based on each of Escaflowne and Mahou Tsukai Tai. Also it`s quite common to release manga and anime versions of a story in parallel, for instance Nadesico and Shoujo Kakumei Utena.
Shoujo
A style of anime and manga intended for girls which may have some crossover appeal to boys as well.
