Rayearth VS Strategy Guide

 

Well I wanted to do something with Magic Knight Rayearth, as I was super excited to watch the epic anime all over again and cover it in one of these, but alas, I could not get the time to do it, poor planning on my part alongside the massive delay with my 100th blog, but I DID have enough time to watch the 1997 OVA series of the same name. I’m an optimist and I think this actually works out for the better as this is connected to the franchise but by far the one people are least familiar with so will have its fair deal of surprises. Despite being called Rayearth, this series is Insanely different from the original manga or anime. If you thought the second season of the Anime diverged from the Manga then you haven’t seen anything yet. But hey, that's what I'm here for, so here's how to be OP in the Rayearth OVA.

Continental Tier:

Welcome to the land of, well, Earth actually as it was invaded by the evil alternate dimension of Cephiro, who sought to sacrifice our world as part of a ritual to restore their own ruined one. This series is populated mostly by powerful sorcerers who are granted magical abilities by the power of animals they bond with, known as Spirit Beasts. The magic used by these sorcerers is incredibly destructive, able to split the clouds apart, cause country-spanning earthquakes, and even create a life-wiping wave that covered the entire planet of Earth in less than 2 seconds. That last feat, performed by the magical priest Clef, was full of destructive power and would be worth hundreds of Pettatons of TNT at minimum, yet could still be matched and defended against by enemy mages like Alcyone and Ascot. Also, similar to the end of MMPR, all the characters present on Earth at the time were able to react and move at relevant speeds compared to this wave approaching them, signifying they naturally move at comparable Relativistic Speeds. So Continent Level and Relativistic will be the maximum allotted stats for counters in this tier.

Mages in this verse are both Invisible and Inaudible to those that do not possess magical abilities, and in Clamp Fashion, they are resistant to the magical abilities of other magic users who are not clearly stronger than them. They are also able to summon forth their Spirit Beasts on command, who both possess and allow them to use certain magical powers.

Common powers that pretty much every sorcerer in this series possesses include the ability to Levitate and Fly, Various kinds of Energy attacks, Advanced Teleportation that allows them to teleport themselves and others even to other dimensions, and Force Fields that are so strong that they can even persist against the attacks of the massively more powerful Deities for a short time. To get into specific characters, you ofcourse have the powerful Cryomancer, Alcyone, a cruel witch who can freeze groups of normal people solid and shatter them to pieces just by looking at them, as well as create and manipulate a wide variety of Ice projectile attacks. Another villain named Ascot has the ability to summon massive amounts of bubbles which are volatile enough to disintegrate anything they touch, including entire buildings all at once. But beyond him in power would be the villainous Ferio, who can summon and command an army of large flying insect creatures. These Insects can swarm around and obliterate structures and defenses danmaku style, and also have displayed the ability to physically hit intangible ghosts.

On the Hero side you ofcourse have the 3 main characters of Hikaru, Umi and Fuu. Unlike their canonical counterparts, these girls had absolutely No combat experience or training going into the series, nor did they become Magic Knights and actually have to physically fight anything. That being said, after attaining the Earth’s spirit beasts, they did gain a few magical powers that have enabled them to survive encounters with these villains. Hikaru, with her Spirit Beast, Lexis, has potent Pyrokinesis and Geokinesis, which she can use to attack, make defensive barriers and even teleport, but her most potent abilities would be the various mental plain powers that Lexis has displayed including telepathy, seeing visions of the present and future, and the power to trap foes in complex illusions. Umi and her Spirit Beast, Sirius, aren’t Quite as impressive as this, but they have displayed powerful Hydrokinesis and Electrokinesis, as well as the ability to make large force fields, and likely teleportation. Fuu and her Spirit Beast who actually has a canon accurate name, Windom, have much more potent abilities, including the power to psychically uncover the truth, which allowed Fuu to find out everything about the current situation they were in immediately, including what was happening to people in another part of spacetime. Beyond this, Windom grants powerful Telekinesis and Aerokinesis, and allows one to make tornados, fly, cast force fields, teleport and even Resist BEING teleported against her will by others.

Rounding out the hero side you have a couple more characters including Lantis, a magical Swordsman. Lantis has displayed potent psychic abilities including showing people visions, telekinetically controlling his sword, and the power to BFR someone into a giant mysterious labyrinth dimension with a glance. His sword is incredibly powerful and has the ability to fire purifying beams of light, turn itself into a Wolf creature he commands, as well as hit and kill intangible creatures with any of its attacks. There is also the priest Clef, who sports incredible Super Senses strong enough to inform him when he is being observed across spacetime or sense when others are teleporting into the dimension he occupies. He’s got one Incredibly powerful spell where he can make the entire population of a planet Phase out of Existence into a timewarp where they would all wither and die overtime.

All that being said, by Far the Most dangerous threat to worry about in this tier is the Main villain of this series, Eagle. Eagle is far and away the Most radically different character from his canon counterpart, and yes, I know that's saying something, but it's very true. In this series, Eagle is the older brother of the princess Emurade, both of which are actually the prince and princess of a race known as Fairy Spirits, who used to bring prosperity to Cephiro, but abandoned it after a forbidden love between his sister and Zagato. As a Fairy Spirit, Eagle has a crapton of OP magic abilities, able to Teleport himself and others, Open Dimensional Doorways, astral project himself, spy on people in other dimensions, talk to others telepathically, and has potent illusionary capabilities that let him trap his sister Emurade in an illusion where Zagato was still alive Indefinitely. Eagle can shapeshift his body into an eagle or even turn himself into a logia intangible water form, and sports attacks such as powerful Lightning Manipulation, as well as the ability to summon and control entire Armies of intangible Ghosts of the dead Cephiro Citizens who are strong enough to damage Lantis. The most devastating ability Eagle has in this setting is the fact that as a Spirit himself he has complete control over Deities, the far more powerful god forms that Mages can take. Eagle has used this to Empower Ascots Deity until it went from not being able to beat Umi, to requiring all 3 girls at once to take down. Eagle was able to casually summon and command the Deity of Zagato and use it for himself despite Zagato being dead since before the series started, and was even able to Strip Hikaru, Umi and Fuu of their Spirit Beasts and take them for himself with relative ease. Also, by teleporting his foes into his castle, it becomes impossible for them to summon their deities at all while they are in there, leaving them relatively helpless. Using any kind of summon in this tier would basically be useless.

So what would be some effective strategies for dealing with this tier? There is a somewhat catch 22 situation with the characters in this tier where one needs to have some degree of Magical abilities to even see or hear the combatants normally, but also they will find their magic limited in its effectiveness due to the characters being able to resist magical attacks from anyone not blatantly stronger, meaning you would likely need either a diverse character with both magic AND non magic abilities, or a straight non magical character with some other means of detecting them. Super Senses in general would be extremely helpful in this verse for a bunch of reasons in fact, due to multiple characters being able to use Illusionary attacks, or to flee and hide easily with their various spatial powers, both of which this would counter. To talk about weaknesses of this Tier, the biggest one is how unlike this series’ Canon counterpart, there are little to no fighters in this tier with any close range fighting experience, all of them relying on distance attacks and playing keep away with teleportation and force fields, Even Eagle was at the mercy of Lantis when he unexpectedly teleported next to him and put his sword to his throat. If a melee character could get up close and personal with them consistently, they would not have too much trouble taking them out, especially with their physical strength and durability not seeming to be very superhuman by comparison. Most of the mages attacks involve summoning elemental type attacks or swarming them with projectiles, which can be dodged, an ability like Attack Reflection would be quite strong as It would turn the majority of a characters assets into potential threats. Another strong ability that could be particularly effective in this tier would be the power to control Animals, as if you recall, mages in this tier get all of their powers from bonding with magical animals called Spirit Beasts and if one could simply sever this connection or take control of them, they would be pretty screwed. With this in mind, my first counter to this tier is:

Doctor Animo:

Yeah Doctor Animo from the Ben 10 series would be rather Overpowered to throw into this verse. In terms of physical stats, Doctor Animo isn’t as strong or fast as the mages here, that being said at the Peak of his power when Animo took on the persona of D’void and amped his own body with Null Energy he was able to Effortlessly overpower Humongasaur at his Maximum size, as well as speedblitz Helen, a member of XLR8’s species, which should put him in the Country Level and Sub Relativistic Range, making it plausible he could keep up. Doctor Animo’s main selling point is his primary power, Animal Control. Animo’s ability to control animals is Not something he does through the use of his technology but is instead an actual power that he possesses, as stated by Ben himself in alien force, and shown multiple times throughout the series to be the case. Such as the time he was locked up in prison without access to any of his tech, and escaped by controlling a normal, non-mutated Seagull to fly out and steal specific technological components for him until he could build a new DNA weapon to escape. Animo has been able to control entire armies of animals at once, including insects, prehistoric creatures and even several varieties of Alien animals from other dimensions. If any of the mages from Cephiro attempted to attack Animo, they would find their Spirit Beasts passively put under his influence even if he cannot see them, and thus they would not be able to attack Animo using any of their magical powers. Not even Lantis’ sword would work as an effective means of attacking Animo since his sword is technically also his Spirit Beast, meaning most characters' only option to attack Animo at all would be to attempt to take him in a fist fight. Which, while Animo is weaker than the Mages magical firepower, he is more than strong enough to tank their physical hits and eventually win. Even worse than this, considering the controlled Spirit Beasts would likely reveal themselves to Animo, the potential is real for him to just give himself a great deal of magical powers to use against the verse, or even use his own tech to mutate the beasts into far more powerful forms, or clone them exponentially. Animo also has invented technology that has enabled him to mutate every animal across the planet, or enable him to make portals into other dimensions like the Null Void, giving him the ability to escape from a Dimensional BFR if that were to occur, as well as the ability to one shot all the Cephiro combatants at once with a DNA Bomb if left unchecked. By far Animo’s biggest threat in this tier would be Eagle, who does not rely on a Spirit Beast for his magical abilities, and therefore could Kill Animo in tons of ways he cannot easily defend against with his own powers. If Eagle hangs back and studies Animo first, which he is likely to do in character, Animo gaining control over various Spirit beasts would quickly give him the powers needed to defend against and defeat Eagle. However in the event Eagle engages Animo before anyone else Animo would not be able to win. For an option less reliant on using the verses' own power against it.

The Ancient Dragon:

So while talking about Magical Girl OVA’s, let's bring up the Ancient Dragon from Little Witch Academia. The Ancient Dragon is powerful enough to harm and potentially kill various witches from Luna Nova as well as keep pace with them in speed. These same Witches are able to dish out and survive magic that can scar the surface of the moon and eclipse multiple continents in size, as well as keep pace with monsters that move relevant to an attack that reached the Moon from Earth in seconds, putting it exactly in this tier in stats. The Ancient Dragon is, true to the mythology of its species, completely impervious to all types of magic, which the LWA series can not only match the potency of, but also there's basically no spells in the MKR OVA that just Don’t Exist in LWA, so it's reasonable that there is no way for any character in this tier to harm The Ancient Dragon using Magic. Even worse for them, The Ancient Dragon also automatically absorbs any magical energy fired at it and uses it to grow even stronger. It was able to grow from a pretty harmless lizard to a super powerful threat to the world in less than 5 minutes of screentime. So Not only can the mages really not harm this thing, but they are only fueling its capacity to harm them. The Ancient Dragon also has the power to fly, shoot various elemental attacks, and can sense and actively seek out sources of magic power, which would enable it to track the mages down. The only reasonable way I could see The Ancient Dragon being stopped in this verse is if they created a plan to lure it into another dimension using magic power as bait and left it there, which to be fair  is possible in theory. For a perfect counter,

Keyes:

Keyes, The Black ArchBishop is a powerful Demon from the Fairy Tail series, able to battle post timeskip Lucy, Wendy and Juvia with relative ease, which at this point in the series would give him Large Island level power as well as Quad Mach speeds, which isn’t quite good enough to fight this tier directly but not that he needs that as you shall quickly see. As a Demon, Keyes uses a powersource known as Curses, in the Fairy Tail series, Curses are a malevolent counterpart to Magic that is explicitly Not Magic, able to effect Magic resistant things and survive against things that destroy magic. This means that despite being weaker, Keyes’ Curse Power should circumvent the mages’ traditional magic resistance and affect them normally. Keyes is also clairvoyant and has incredible senses that allow him to detect sources of magic power and see the flow of fate, allowing him to know characters intentions and history meaning he also should have no trouble sensing the Mages in this tier and on top of that seeing through illusions and surprise attacks. Keyes has a great deal of the same Mobility powers the Mages of this tier possess, including flight and teleportation in order to match the mages own, and more impressively, the fact that his body is a Logia Intangible mass of darkness that cannot be physically harmed. Any of the various elemental, physical or projectile attacks are just not going to be able to do anything to Keyes, especially given his ability to spread himself out as a Mass of darkness around the immediate environment, making him hard to even detect or target with attacks. Not even Lantis’ purifying light would work considering Keyes also uses this kind of attack so clearly is not weak to it. Worse off, Keyes’ body is composed of Bane Particles, the microscopic components of Curse Power. Bane Particles are an incredibly toxic substance that poisons any magic user that comes into contact with them be it skin contact or inhalation. The More powerful a Magic user's Magic is, the more devastating the Bane Particle poisoning is, resulting in effects including but not limited to, liquifying their internal organs. Touching Keyes is a potential death sentence to anyone in this tier. And that is especially not good as we haven’t even gotten to Keyes’ main power yet, that being the fact he is a Necromancer. Keyes has complete control over the dead, which would allow him to counter Eagle’s Ghost army, as well as raise his own army of undead to attack the verse with, even including raising any mages he kills to then come back and fight FOR him as his undead puppets since they retain their magic powers when reanimated. Basically Keyes is an invincible plague on this world that would rot it from the inside out.

Large Planet Tier:

In this tier we have the tier of the Deities. In order to fight amongst one another, the Sorcerers of this series, as well as the three chosen girls of Hikaru, Umi and Fuu, physically fuse themselves with their Spirit Beasts to become a far more powerful Kaiju creature known as a Deity. There is somewhat of a hierarchy of Deities in this Ova, with multiple Deities being able to basically one shot lesser ones, but as they would just be some unknowable level above the lower tier Deities that have the feats, they effectively still end up in the same tier. Deities are far stronger than any conventional mage, able to easily shatter the Earth to pieces in a dark future timeline where they weren’t stopped, putting them well into the Yottatons of TNT. They are also faster than Mages, and are shown moving relevant to the Light attacks that Lantis produces, which are portrayed as being actual beams of light. So this tier would be large planet level and around Lightspeed.

Deities allow Mages to fight each other largely by utilizing their potent physical power that cannot be conventionally blocked by the general magical resistances found here. The Mages pilot these Deities and it seems as though whenever physical harm befalls the Deity, similar damage happens to the body of the pilot as well, though that can be a little inconsistent, such as when Hikaru’s Deity got completely eviscerated by Eagle’s yet she survived and somehow it regenerated over time. Generally, Deities can use a lot of the same offensive powers that their Mages have, only more powerful and Kaiju sized, the Deity Alcyone has stronger Ice attacks, Hikaru’s has stronger fire, the works, in addition to having some unique powers, such as giant sharp claws and additional elemental attacks. The Fused Ferio has the ability to fly, as well as use its wings to generate Sonic Vibrations that slice through anything they come into contact with like blades. The Strongest Deity in existence is Rayearth, a Deity formed from the fusion of Hikaru, Umi and Fuu’s Deity which can oneshot practically any other deity with relative ease.

So what are some of the weaknesses of this tier? In general the Deities are far less versatile than the mages overall, they still cannot be seen by non magical entities, but they don’t seem to possess any particularly strong resistance to magic, and don’t seem to have access to a lot of other more tactical abilities the mages do that aren’t expressly combat related such as Illusions, Dimensional Manipulation and potent senses. This interestingly makes them much easier to harm and defend against, provided you have their stats. Also, as said in the last tier, The Pilots of these creatures are not particularly skilled Melee fighters who now ironically are getting into Kaiju brawls, and often fight in predictable ways with simple attacks that a seasoned fighter could handle rather casually. With this in mind, my first counter is,

Chase Young seems like He would be an incredibly dangerous threat to deal with in this tier. Chase is an incredibly powerful ancient warrior who was powerful enough to violently Split the planet in 2 in only the second season. He also more than can compete with Omi in terms of speed, who was able to somewhat compete with the Shen Gong Wu, Fancy Feet, which are faster than Anything including Light, so He is more than capable of fighting the Deities here. The Deities are far larger than Chase but that Is actually to his advantage, not only does he have a lot of experience fighting giant monsters but being such a small target makes him that much harder for a large combatant to target. Chase is a Master tier fighter, easily one of the most skilled characters in the entire series, being thousands of years old and a master of hundreds of fighting styles to the point he considers most magic powers like the Wu mere toys. Chase has super senses to be able to detect the invisible giants, and would have little trouble dodging around projectiles in this verse through the use of his Tiger Instincts to predict incoming attacks as well as the ability to teleport himself likely even behind their forcefields to deal damage. He can also match them at a distance with his own energy attacks and use his levitation to keep up with them if they take the fight to the skies. The real reason he is so cool to use here Is because anyone who he defeats in battle gets transmutated into one of his Jungle Cats and forced to serve and fight on his behalf, this is something that the Deities do not have resistance too and would circumvent the potential of them coming back through regeneration if they can do that. His only real weakness is the potential for him to get ganged up on by a large group of these Deities at once.

Lord Boros:

Might as well go with another world destroying invader. Lord Boros from the One Punch Man series is a being who is easily capable of shattering the Earth with his power and thus would enable him to compete directly with the various Deities here, in addition to that even his minions are stated to have attacks moving at the speed of light so he should have no trouble keeping up in speed either. While Boros does not have magical abilities, He does have potent extrasensory perception that enabled him to sense other beings powers from great distances, this manifests as a visible aura around said being which would allow him to see them. Boros is an extremely skilled fighter with various destructive powers including energy and elemental attacks which would allow him to quickly overwhelm the foes here with his raw fighting capabilities both at a distance and up close. The Best trait of Boros for this circumstances is his insane Regeneration which lets him instantly pull himself back together even when Blown to Pieces. This basically means that He will almost certainly win a war of attrition against the Deity fighters in this tier thanks to their inability to harm him to a point he can’t come back from, while he can very much do the same. His only real problem is with the force fields it may take him a notable amount of time to win, so for the most efficient option…

Cure Sunshine:

From the Pretty Cure series, Cure Sunshine would be able to scale to the villain Baron Salamander who was strong enough to Destroy the Planet, as well as scales to several lightspeed feats from both Marine and Blossom dodging things like the flash of a camera easily, putting her well into this Stat Range. Sunshine has 3 main powers that made me choose her as a target. Firstly, Itsuki is an incredibly skilled combatant, having been trained in martial arts from a very young age, and thats on top of how becoming a Pretty Cure instantly makes you a Master skill fighter even if you had no previous combat experience whatsoever, so when you already ARE skilled, that amp matters all the more. She's also accustomed to fighting giant monsters all the time meaning she should be able to effortlessly beat the crap out of the Deities in a melee. Another important power she has is Attack Reflection, this would allow her to turn all the various Projectiles that Deities can attack her with right back at them, basically forcing them to either take her own in Melee, which they can’t, or Flee and try to surprise her. And the third reason, she has a big projectile attack that literally puts her target in Stasis, locking their body in place and giving her the ability to freely kick their butt. It really is simple, but Sunshine really only has effective abilities to answer all the problems this tier poses in exactly perfect ways. She even has a Cape she can use to gain true flight to keep up with them in the air if need be. But hey, if anyone was going to stop some monsters from turning the world into a dead wasteland, I’d put my trust in her to do it.