Since the first release of MKR on the Nakayosi magazine (1993), there's been a lot of fan activity both on and off the net. And so many years later, perhaps it would be nice to have a look through what fans have made for other fans.
Mailing List
Mailing Lists (MLs) are like magazines. You can subscribe to one and they'll automatically send you messages. However, the difference is the members do the posting. When somebody sends a message to the ML address, the server will automatically send it to everybody who is subscribed. And when somebody replies to that message, the reply too would be sent to all members on the ML. Therefore, MLs are great places for people to discuss things. In the past, there has been numerous MLs that opened and closed. The two most famous ones are rayearth@lists.best.com and rayearth@yahoogroups.com.
rayearth@lists.best.com was the first (if not one of the first) MLs of MKR that opened up that was in English. It lived through the years and finally died sometime near the end of 2000. For an archive of the messages on the ML, please head to cephiro.anime.net.
As for rayearth@yahoogroups.com, this ML is still going strong and was opened because rayearth@lists.best.com died, so it still has most of the original members from the old ML. You can join this ML at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rayearth.
Fan Fics
Fan fiction has always been a hot topic for fans to do. It doesn't take too much talent, but does take a lot of time. There's tons of fiction based on MKR on the net, but most of them are based after what happened in the Anime (since not everybody has read the Manga yet). There are a few original ones, and those tend to be the ones that really shine. You can find a few at the fan fic section, for a more complete listing, please head to Rayearth section of FanFiction.net.
RPGs
RPG stands for Role Playing Game. However, unlike console or PC games, online RPGs are played via e-mail. Each player takes the role of one or more characters in the game while somebody (most of the time the game moderator) posts a first post to start the story. Players then proceed to move their characters in the story. RPGs can be a lot of fun and numerous MKR RPGs have been started. However, RPGs are living out their lives as players tend join in, post a lot for a while, then stay silent or leave. You can read a prose version of a yet unfinished (perhaps even dead) RPG here.
Fan Art/Doujinshi
Now, these take talent - at least if you want to make a good one. Fan Art is what the name means, fans drawing pictures of Anime. There are some really good ones, but there's only a hand full of these. You can find a few of them at the fan art section and lots of them at cephiro.anime.net (which is a CAFE site - see below). On the note of fan art, CLAMP has made a notice on their page to ask fans to not put their original work on the net. But not everybody can draw and they don't seem to be able to do much about it either. To support them, a group that calls themselves CAFE (CLAMP Art-Free Exhibit) which means no images that were drawn by the original authors (CLAMP) will show up other than the thumbnails for publication/goods information.
What is Doujinshi? Take it as "fan made Manga". It's more than fan art as there's a story to go with it. They were all done by Japanese, so none of them are in English. These are so good that they are sold in Japan. However, the problem with Doujinshi is they tend to be Yaoi (gay) or Hentai (porn)...
Translations
Fansubs are efforts made by fans to bring untranslated, unheard of Anime from Japan to the rest of the world. When MKR first started out, it was partly because of fansubs that everybody got to know it. In those days, fansubs were captured from Japanese tapes or LDs, translated with subtitles (hence fansubs), then copied onto tapes which were then distributed to individuals. The group that did the MKR fansubs was called Silverwynd (who were also famous for mistakenly subbing MKR as Magic Knights Rayearth), they got half way through the second season when Media Blasters liscensed the series. Since Media Blasters has released the series, all fansub distribution should now be halted to support the Media Blasters release. If you see any sites that are still hosting fansubs episodes, please drop the webmaster a line about this news so they'll remove the files from server.
Besides fansubs, there was other translations going on. One is the MKR Super Nintendo game. It was made sometime in 1995. However, an English version never came out, so somebody dumped the game into a ROM and extracted the scripts, translated it, and placed it on the net. You can find the ROM and required eumlator to run the game at the download section.
The Largest MKR Sites on the Net
Since MKR was released, thousands of sites popped up on the net. However, there's a few that were famous beyond others. Here's a few:
- The place where your Will determines everything - the second oldest English MKR site around. This site has nearly everything you can think of about MKR on it, definitely THE resource site on MKR if you don't know Japanese.
- Primera's Magic Knight Rayearth Page - the oldest English MKR site still in existence. Although currently under renovation, this is still one of the top sites around. It also hosts the famous Mark Neidengard's Image Gallery
- Voice of Reason - there's tons of Fuu shrines around, but this has got to be the biggest (if not best). It's even got it's own floor plan! It's just too much for words to describe, head there and you'll know what I mean.
- Rayearth & Seresu's Anime Dimension - yes, a shameless plug. With the update of Dimension 4, some people have said words like "I think it's time for me and a whole lot of other Rayearth site owners to wave the white flag and sound the surrender". I've always wanted to make something that could stand along side with these giant MKR pages, and it looks like I'm starting to nearer...
Music
No, fans don't make MKR music, but they do reproduce them. Ever heard midis of MKR songs when going to a page, that's fan made. Midis are basically your computer playing the notes of the song. However, somebody has to convert the notes on the book to files the computers understand, that's your musical MKR fan. There's a number of MKR midis floating around the net, but since midi files don't always contain an author field, you can't trace some of these musicians. You can find these midis at the download section.
Another thing is lyrics. Want to sing along with those MKR songs? Or want to know what they mean? That's what lyrics are for. The original lyrics come from Japanese CDs that contains the lyrics. Fans who know Japanese romanize them or translate them to English so we can understand. You can find a list of lyrics at the music section.
