Early the next morning, the protagonists set out once again to... save the world.
This time, however, they had a little white wolf with them.
There was no need to ask; these three girls were the protagonists of Magic Knight: Shido Hikari, Ryuzaki Kai, and Hoshiji Kaze.
Unlike the "warrior-mage-healer" iron triangle of Magical Girls in later generations, Magical Girls of this era were basically all-rounders. They could take hits, fight, and heal. In fact, the earliest Magical Girls had all been like this. Though each had her own strengths, it was not as if they could not fight without one another.
Sakura was like that. By herself, she was worth an entire future army of Magical Girls.
But Akemi Homura and the others from the Inner World were different. Each person only had one special ability, determined entirely at random when making a contract. Combat abilities were manageable, but getting a non-combat ability was truly enough to get someone killed.
Moreover, unlike many later Magical Girls who had been completely ordinary before transforming and only then received some overpowered protagonist aura, the early Magical Girls almost all possessed remarkable talents.
For example, Sakura had excellent athletic reflexes. When she captured the "Fly" Card in the first episode, she had dared to skate sideways up a concrete wall, flip, and leap while wearing rollerblades. Forget elementary school students—even many adults skilled at skating probably would not have had the guts to attempt such a difficult move.
The three before him were the same. Shido Hikari's family ran a dojo, Ryuzaki Kai belonged to her school's fencing club and had some skill with Western-style swordsmanship, while Hoshiji Kaze was a member of the archery club and excelled with a bow...
So what kind of useless trash were all those later people