Ask John: How Many Seasons Did Rayearth Have?

Question:
I just wanna know how many seasons of Magic Knight Rayearth there are.

Answer:
I personally believe that the determination of different “seasons” of the Rayearth TV series is very subjective. I remember watching it recorded straight from Japanese television back in 1995 and not noticing any significant break or delay between any of the episodes. There was, though, about a month long break between the broadcast of episode 20, commonly considered the end of “season one” and episode 21, the beginning of “season two.” The original CLAMP Rayearth manga was divided into two distinct stories, titled Rayearth and Rayearth 2. While the television animation didn’t distinguish between the shift in story from the Rayearth 1 adaptation to the Rayearth 2 manga adaptation with anything more than a new opening animation, American fans have traditionally distinguished the shift in story direction between the first 20 TV episodes and the following 29 episodes by calling episodes 21-49 “Rayearth 2” or “season 2.” For the sake of convenience, Media Blasters also used this common classification.

I’ve personally always thought of Rayearth as having two distinct stories, but only a single season, but my opinion is definitely not the majority opinion. The determination of what exactly determines the end of one and beginning of a new TV animation season in Japan seems to be a bit of a sticking point for determination. Sailormoon obviously had 5 seasons, each of them premiering with a new name, new opening animation and new story focus, but there was never any delay between episodes in Sailormoon. Each new season of Sailormoon began the week after the previous season ended. Shows including One Piece, Dragonball GT and Turn A Gundam have had two week or more delays between episodes, and all ran longer than 26 episodes, but each of them (well, One Piece is still running) is considered to have only one season. Therefore, neither total number of episodes nor delay time between episodes can be considered a constant, irrefutable classification for distinguishing “seasons” of anime series. That determination largely falls to the fans, and most fans classify Rayearth as having had two seasons.