Lucy, Anais & Marina will save Princess Emerald in Magic Knights, Las Guerreras Magicas Rayearth. Localizing is not just translating from one language to another, it’s adapting it so that it makes sense in a different culture. When Magic Knights Rayearth was going to be shown to the rest of the world an early attempt was to make it a much more localized version and well here are the leftovers from that adaptation. Let’s take a look at the different North America adaptations of Magic Knight Rayearth.
The first anime localization had a Pitch from TMS Entertainment with a bible to help sell it. It included westernized names Luce, Marine and Anemone for Hikaru, Umi and Fuu. Instead of rune gods you had Genies among other changes. The US Ocean dub pilot uses these names, the script had been altered with westernized dialogue, adding more of it to fill the silence and added jokes. While the pilot was uncensored, perhaps the rest of the show would not have been had it actually been picked up.
The LATAM Dub Las Guerreras Magicas, recieved the TMS bible and adpted those names, but since they weren’t bound by US Broadcasting standards, they did not care to air the uncut japanese video and audio, while including the name changes of Lucy, Marina and Anais. It did have some changes like renaming Mokona to Nikona and doing a Gender Swap on Eagle Vision and Zazu making them females in season 2, which actually worked well enough, but besides that it was uncensored.
When the US finally tried again reaching fans with a mostly faithful dub, including the oriignal names even if it did have that 90s anime dub feel. A little before that you had the Sega Saturn Magic Knight Rayearth Game which made its own localization with different voice actors, opening and changing the script to an unfaithful yet very memorable gag heavy adaptation of the first story arc’s story.
As far as Manga releases there have been a few, of the early ones. US releases by Mixx/Tokyopop with a clunky translation that almost had the names Blaze, Nautia and Windi used. Dark Horse later released an improved translation and Kadansha released a definitive edition in recent years. The Mexican releases are far more interesting, it used the dub names and colorized the manga artwork. Sadly due to sales only 4 issues were ever released. There’s a baseless rumor that Clamp stopped it because of colorizing their manga but there is no evidence of this. Later it got a new translation through M/XX ZZine and later graphic novels that was more faithful with a more definitive edition in recent years as well with a proper translation.
Now the more interesting thing to me is the Logo. We have the90s US Logo that has been used and is still mostly used today. We saw the LATAM dub adapt this logo in a few different ways, We also saw the early mangas try to do their own thing inspired by it. And more recently trying to imitate the japanese logo with the dub name. It’s intersting how the different manga over the years showed the Rayearth logo and how the different media releases have also done their own thing.
Las guerreras magicas did evolve into Las Guerreras Magicas Rayearth but the dub has been considered too iconic to change the name. It did get a different more faithful opening in the original anime with their remaster but has never abandoned the more iconic one. The manga was not allowed to use the dub names however and the newest remake also uses the original names so it seems Lucy, Marina and Anais’ days are over. But like with Sailor Moon, the localization names became too iconic.
Can you imagine a world where Luce, Marine and Anemone’s Ocean Pilot had been picked up. Magic Knight Rayearth would’ve had a far different direction. Especially had it had some more cuts and censorship like Sailor Moon and other early anime did back in the day.