>94 At pretty much this point in the original Magic Knight
>Rayearth series, the Knights abruptly find themselves back in
>Tokyo, bawling their eyes out, and... curtain. End of series. What
>the hell. (There was a second one made later, but at the time,
>that was The End.)

I never saw the anime, but I read the manga a long while ago. As I remember it, the first manga ended with a definite "to be continued" vibe. The girls were terribly sad, but I think also somewhat outraged and determined: "No way! It can't end like this! Just you wait; we're not finished with Cephiro!"

>1082 Utena's failure to complete her Investiture caused her to
>be thrown out of Cephiro and sealed the Rose Gate behind her, though
>calling it a result of "her own stupidity" is Akio putting his usual
>spin on things; she failed because he forced Anthy to betray her at
>the last moment, not because she screwed up.

Ah. I had thought that this was a reference to the fact that Utena had deliberately dampened her power with a Seal, out of fear of accidentally bringing Akio across, thereby also blocking her own way back.

>1189 Also a dreadfully powerful (and long-forbidden) spell in
>the Slayers universe. Some translations insist that it's
>"Laguna Blade", but that's just stupid. I mean, think about it for
>half a second.

Indeed. And in the anime, you can quite clearly hear that she isn't pronouncing it "Laguna".