 The Religiously Symbolized
ROSSMAN
RahXephon is
pretty hard to describe... Well, no, I guess it's pretty
easy to describe, but then after that it's hard.
See, RahXephon is
cloned directly from Shin Seiki
Evangelion.
Almost character for character
and scene for scene... That's
the easy description.
But after
the initial cloning procedures, RahXephon takes
on a lifeforce of its own. And it is good. Below you will
find the complicated
description of this series. I will try to keep spoilers
at a minimum since going in blind is the best way to experience
the whole damn thing. As a matter of fact, go out and
watch
it all right now, then come back and read the rest of
this review. I'm giving it a
Buddy Christ Thumbs Up rating,
just
so you know that I highly recommend it. Now be off with
you!
Okay,
are you done? What'd you think about that ending? Zany, huh?
Anyway, everything starts out in the late teens in the 21st
century. The Earth has been invaded by some kind of things
and Tokyo is the last city on the planet that's still standing.
It's here that we meet 17 year-old Ayato (aka Shinji's clone,
just a lot cooler and not whiney in the least) and his friends...
and Ayato's stalker, a hot girl with nice legs and some mad
kung-fu skillz. Then one day, the city is attacked by what
appears to be alien invaders. During the attack Ayato's
friends are hurt so he runs off to find help for them, but
instead runs into the girl that he's been dreaming about
(it's more of a "remembrance dream" than a "wet" one),
and the woman who's been stalking him. The dream girl, Mishima
(aka Ayanami Rei clone number 1) and the stalker girl, Haruka
(aka Misato's clone) then lead Shinji to the city's uber-giant-robot-secret-weapon,
the RahXephon (aka the EVA-01 clone).... If none of this
sounds familiar, then you must be either very new to anime
or you suffer from SIDS... that's the disease where your
attention span is smaller than a gnat on the crack rock,
right?
So Shinji
is forced to make a decision, either be a wuss or fight
for the lives of his friends and those he comes to care about...
Well, he's forced to make that decision after he joins up
with the secret global organization, TERRA (aka NERV's clone),
that's been set up to stop the invaders, the Mu (aka the
Shito clones), and their unknown plans. Wait, I forgot to
mention that Tokyo isn't really the last city on Earth, it's
really just the only one conquered by the Mu and held in
some kind of time and space field that, from the outside,
looks like the planet Jupiter. And some of the people inside
this Tokyo Jupiter have blue blood. And there are also other
giant robot-like things that seem to be made out of clay
and like to sing (that's their "twist" to the giant
robot genre... Instead of giving the giant robots extension
cords
and Reeboks like the EVAs, they give them wings on their
heads and make them sing). Soon Shinji is forced to live
with Misato and Asuka and their good natured
Uncle and a cat (aka the clone of Pen^2). The two clones
of Gendo (one who wears Gendo's glasses and one who simply
acts like him) who work in that giant pyramid that sits on
the
bay
of the TERRA island (the pyramid being a clone of Geofront),
start to set the rest of the confusing plot into motion while
the
second
clone
of
Rei
and her brother
(the
clone
of Kaji, who has the hots for the Misato clone and who's
toying with Ritsuko's clone) add more and more mystery as
things unfold. After a while the plot seems to make a bit
more sense, but that's when Keel Lorenz's clone makes an
appearance and we learn that he's the one who's really behind
everything... Or is he?!? But before we can think too much
about that, Kaworu's clone meets up with Shinji and then
there's some heavy betrayal action and then the cloned End
of Evangelion sequence occurs and giant deities
of light with the faces
of the beings
trapped inside of them do battle to see who or what gets
to reshape the world.
Did you
get all that? If not, who cares. Just sit right back and
enjoy the show, or get high while trying to figure out that
whole time dilation effect that occurs in Tokyo Jupiter (for
example, if time inside Tokyo Jupiter crawls by at only 1/6
the pace of real time, then that would mean that Shinji was
5 years-old when he first met his dream girl... But then
when the real time caught up with him and the singing of
the clay
robots made him a clone of that eye patch dude then everything
became a part of the lost continent of the Mu and Churchward
then didn't have anything to write about... no, wait. Ah,
just forget it).
 Now,
I hear you asking how a show that just rips off another great
show so completely could be any good in the least. First
of all,
fuck off, it just is. Secondly, I don't know. I just don't
know! I sincerely don't know how something like this could
happen. Up till now, Evangelion was the
greatest "teenage boy forced to pilot a giant robot in a
war he doesn't understand" story ever told (trust me,
there are at least 150 anime series and movies that fall
into that sub-genre). But then RahXephon came
along and said, "You know, EVA, you're
good and all, but just not
mysterious enough. And your main character is a
little bitch-boy that ya just want to beat the living fuck
out of everytime
he says 'I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away.' What you
need is more mystery, less religious and historical context,
more cloning, more cute girls, and robots that sing." Bingo.
What I
love most about RahXephon (and what ultimately
makes it better than shows like Evangelion and
clones like
Argentosoma) is
that while most series will have one or two massive revelations
that
will
make you shout "WHOA!" at your dog and make him
pee the floor while you watch the anime, the RahX had
one to two massive revelations per episode. And
these aren't run of the mill "Luke, I am your
father" type revelations. These are seriously bizarre
and Joker-smile inducing plot turns that will make you pee
your pants just like your dog did to the carpet. And if you
don't, I will be forced to come over there and pee them for
you...
and
maybe
crap your trousers for good measure too.
What I
love second most about RahXephon is the
emotions that are painted on the characters' faces. Each
and every character
in the show emotes differently to everything that happens
to them. Say, for example, that everyone is in Command Central
and another clay singing robot appears in the skies above
HQ, Misato will more than likely show worry and maybe start
to tear up as she thinks about Shinji going into battle again;
Gendo Number One will smile to himself and then frown
when he realizes that just by smiling he probably ruined
his own
secret agenda; Asuka will look a bit afraid about being the
newbie, but then set herself to do the job at hand; Rei will
slightly smile and close her eyes as she listens to the songs
in her head: etc etc... You might argue that the same could
be said about EVA, but you would be wrong.
Go watch one episode of RahXephon (any one,
doesn't matter), and then go back and watch
the matching episode of the fan favorite original
Evangelion. The difference in detail (to
expressions, to settings, to animation) will astound you,
and possibly make you pee and crap your pants yet again.
So just be careful.
So, like
I said at the top of this review, RahXephon is
the bomb. Go watch it. You don't have to sit there and take
notes
about
the
mind-numbing number
of similarities to EVA (I'm a professional,
that's just what I do), just watch and fall in love with
a cartoon again. Whoa, speaking
of "love", that's really what RahXephon is about. It's really
just a twisty turny love story in which you can actually
root for the two characters doing the love-falling. I mean,
none of the characters involved in the many love triangles/pentagons
really do anything that I wouldn't do if I were in their
unfortunate situations.
After
all is said and done, and I've watched this series twice
in a row, there's really only one question left in my head
as I ponder over everything that I just wasted 26 hours of
my life on: Would a global, highly trained military force
really make its women officers wear skirts that short as
part of their mandatory uniform if those were the only chairs
that the women folk were allowed to sit it?
UPDATE:
11/25/2003 -
Just a quick RahXephon Review Update concerning
the Rahxephon
Movie. As
you prolly know, it's basically 1 hour and 45 minutes of TV
show animation with 15 minutes of new footage. Most of this
new footage is in the very beginning of the feature (cool stuff,
but total spoiler material for those who haven't seen the
entire
show
beforehand
[and trust me, to appreciate the storyline better, you
really should see the TV first]). Then the only other notable
use of new animation is the scene where Shinji's clone
and Misato's clone physically get their freak on. Yes,
in RahXephon the Movie they fuck like bunnies.
Now, the closest
description I can think of as to what to expect with the
RX Movie is Macross Plus - the Movie.
It's just a re-edited version of what we already saw, with
just a few tweaks and
some heavy cuts. But with MP, they didn't
have to really cut much, since the whole series was just
a little over two
hours and the Movie was a little over two
hours. The RahXephon people,
however, went a little nuts with the scissors... But they
kind of had to in order to fit everything into a 120 minute
cinematic event. I can accept that. What I can't accept
is the fact that they changed the storyline. Not just the
perspective,
but the entire plot of the series. I expected that entire
characters and threads would have to be burned for the sake
of our bladders, but they changed relationships, motivations
and reasons. This is not just a different look at RahXephon,
this is an alternate universe. It's more along the lines
of Macross and DYRL. Or Escaflowne and Retarded
Girl in Gaieiaiaiei. Just with recycled material
instead of all brand new showy animation.
My final thoughts
on RahXephon the Movie: Rent it, and then only watch the
first 10-15 minutes of it. But only do this after you see
the whole show. The show blows it.... Away! Away, it blows
it away. I give the RahXephon Movie a thumbs dooooooown.
|
