After watching both the anime and the ova of Magic Knight Rayearth,
I really didn't like the way the ova was set-up. --It's probably because I watched the anime first before the ova, and that I watched Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, etc......---
I would like to know from other people's opinion about their preference over the anime or the ova.
After Reading some mangas from the CLAMP, i feel that the ova is more of the stile of the CLAMP girls, in this days i gonna read it for make a real opinion...
Rayearth OAV was a trailblazer. One of the early slickly-produced, confusing, unsatisfying reimaginings of a existing franchise that was perfectly fine beforehand. Ugh. X(
I can not stand this "reimagining". Its a chore to get through every episode because they are so boring. I loved the manga first, and then I loved the original series. But this was just plain terrible! Other then Clef's redesign, everything else in this show was garbage. And I dont say that lightly... I try to give every anime I see a real chance. But this is just too much!
Clearly I'm in the minority ... but I personally liked the OVA series. It's been awhile since I watched the TV series but I remembered things well enough to get the gist of this reimagining. I liked the mecha designs, and the animation was wonderful throughout most of it.
As for whether the series or the OVA is better? Obviously the show will tell a longer and deeper story, because it has 3-4x the running time to show it in. And the second series was getting really good by the time I stopped being able to find episodes. I'll probably go back and re-watch the second series, and if it lived up to how I remember it, then the series was better, yes. Doesn't mean the OVAs were pieces of shit either.