Books like Magic Knight Rayearth I, Boxed Set

More in my explorations of the cross-connected CLAMP multiverse. This is one of the earlier and thus foundational works in the whole teetering superstructure. I was interested to see how characters and themes recycled and refined in later works had their starts.Three 8th-grade girls on a field trip to Tokyo Tower (man, if you ever go to Tokyo, stay away from that tower) get whisked away to a magical world and set on a quest to Save It. They collect plot coupons adding up to armor and weapons upgrades resulting, inevitably, in giant fighting robots, because this was from the 90s. I got my lifetime fill of giant fighting robots very early on in my explorations of anime, so the story almost lost me there. However, about 90% of the way through the first omnibus (I read both volumes) the plot took a hard left turn into something more evocative of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", which I had been lulled, or bored, into not expecting, and which is why I just gave this 4 instead of 3 stars. Aha. Okay.Like Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, the anime has material not in the manga that confuses the through-line when you circle back; I am beginning to see the point of the manga purists.Someone once told me an anecdote about a couple of clever parents who, when they wanted some relief from their kids for a while, scattered pennies in the grass and told the kids they could come back inside when they'd found all 100 pennies -- and then scattered 99 pennies. I begin to suspect trying to make sense of CLAMP is a lot like trying to find the 100 pennies in the grass. But they do manage to bring off some memorable characters and psychological set-pieces, even if they are hung in air like the flying mountains.Ta, L.