Magic Knight Rayearth Is Back on 7 October, and TMS Is Not Animating It

Magic Knight Rayearth returns on 7 October, Wednesdays at 23:45 on the TV Asahi network, in the IMAnimation W slot, as a 連続2クール — two consecutive cours, with no episode total announced.

Two things are being repeated about it that the official credits do not support.

TMS is not the animation studio

From the official staff page, the credit block reads:

• 企画プロデュース — UNLIMITED PRODUCE by TMS
• アニメーション制作 — E&H production
• 製作 — TMS Entertainment, Kodansha, TV Asahi

So the accurate sentence is not "TMS has nothing to do with it" — TMS is a production and rights party, and it is on the copyright line. The accurate sentence is that TMS is not animating it. E&H production is. TMS's creative credit is planning and production through its UNLIMITED PRODUCE label, which is a different job from the one it did in 1994, when Tokyo Movie Shinsha made the original series itself.

The last Rayearth anime was 1997

The "first in thirty years" framing measures from the 1994 television premiere and skips a release.

• 1994–95 TV series: 49 episodes, 17 October 1994 to 27 November 1995, Yomiuri TV on the Nippon TV network, Mondays at 19:30, produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha.
• 1997 OVA: three episodes, released on home video between 25 July and 10 December 1997. Not a broadcast, and a substantially different retelling — but it is Rayearth animation, and it is twenty-nine years old, not thirty-one.

"The first new Rayearth anime since the 1997 OVA" is the phrasing that survives checking.

Forty-nine episodes, split 20 and 29

The original run is often described as two broadcast series of 24 and 25 episodes. The production's own records split it elsewhere: the series composition credit reads まるおけいこ for episodes 1–20 and 大川七瀬 for episodes 21–49, and episode 21 opens with a new title sequence.

So: one continuous 49-episode run in two arcs of 20 and 29. Anyone printing 24 and 25 is splitting it down the middle rather than where the show splits.

The 2026 credits, as published

• 監督 — 三浦唯 (Yui Miura); 副監督 — 佐野誉幸
• シリーズ構成 — 村越繁 (Shigeru Murakoshi)
• キャラクターデザイン・総作画監督 — 渡部里美 (Satomi Watanabe) — note the credit is character design and chief animation director, not design alone
• 音楽 — 桜浦由記 (Yuki Kajiura), 尾澤拓実, 寺田志保. Three composers, in that order. Kajiura alone is the version in circulation.
• クリエイティブプロデューサー — 朴性厚

The leads: 佐倉綾音 (Ayane Sakura) as Hikaru, 大久保瑠美 (Rumi Okubo) as Umi, 高橋李依 (Rie Takahashi) as Fuu. Around them: Saori Hayami as Emeraude, Yuki Ono as Zagato, Mika Kikuchi as Mokona, Yuki Kaji as Clef, Emiri Kato as Presea, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Ferio, Mamiko Noto as Alcyone, Ayumu Murase as Ascot, Hitomi Ueda as Caldina, Hiroki Yasumoto as Lafarga.

Opening theme by 十明, 「乙女の剣」.

Not announced

• The episode count. Two cours is stated; a number is not.
• Whether it adapts both manga arcs, or only the first.
• Whether the 1997 OVA gets a reissue alongside it.

The manga is three years old and the anime outlived it by a decade

CLAMP serialised Magic Knight Rayearth in Kodansha's Nakayoshi from November 1993 to April 1996 — two parts, six volumes. The television series started thirteen months into that run and finished before the manga did.

Thirty-two years later the property comes back on a different network, from a different studio, with a chief animation director doing the character designs and three composers where there used to be one.

The only thing carried over intact is Kajiura, and even she is now first of three.