released 31 dec 03 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of RAHXEPHON, an anime series consisting of 26 half-hour episodes on 7 DVDs, we meet Ayato Kamina, a high-school student in a near-future Tokyo. At the outset of the story, it seems that Earth was invaded by some alien power that destroyed all but a fraction of a percent of the planet's population, but Tokyo survived intact, and Ayato is pursuing his dream of becoming a painter, encouraged by his cool and aloof single mother, Maya Kamina.
Then Tokyo is attacked by "Invaders", and Ayato meets two women: a mysterious, elegant, cryptic girl of his age named Reika Mishima, and an older woman named Haruka Shitow, who defends him from sinister men in black and tells him: "Come with me if you want to know the truth."
Ayato does and he will learn the truth, though it won't be by any straightforward path. He will learn about the Earth Federation and its war with the Mu, humans with blue blood who operate powerful war engines known as "Dolem"; TERRA, a military research organization associated with the Earth Federation; and the secretive Bahbem Foundation, which seems to be playing both sides. He will unravel these mysteries as the pilot of an ultra-powerful Dolem, the "RahXephon", moving through a whirlwind of events to an apocalyptic finale.
* After working my way through RAHXEPHON, there are two general things that can be said about it. On one hand, RAHXEPHON travels in the path of earlier mecha-oriented anime series such as MACROSS, GUNDAM, and EVANGELION, with such familiar elements and characters as mysterious secret organizations, sneering villains, stone-faced military commanders, cute girls in unrealistically sexy military uniforms, cocky fighter pilots, and thunderous battles between mecha.
On the other hand, RAHXEPHON takes such series to a higher level of production quality. Its animation work is clean and stylish, its soundtrack work is outstanding, its characters are fascinating and engaging, and its scriptwork is particularly clever and well thought out. It presents layers on layers of puzzles for the viewer whose solutions are slowly revealed, with characters who are not always what they seem and may not even realize it themselves, with the true story not becoming apparent until the final episode.
I would not claim that everyone is going to like RAHXEPHON. As mentioned, it has major resemblances not merely to EVANGELION but to other mecha anime series, though I felt RAHXEPHON had its own story to tell. The artwork, though stylish, is still not in a league with cinema-quality animation. The plot is intriguing, but the scriptwriters do tend be more enthusiastic about creating intrigues than resolving them neatly. In addition, although trailers for the series show it as an action-adventure story, RAXEPHON seems more like a dark melodramatic romance, even including a classic cinematic "I'll always come back to you!" scene.
There will be viewers who will be put off by the passion, the melodrama, the mysticism, and who may find RAHXEPHON's atmospheric ambience and the idea of sorting through every bit of dialogue for clues as to what is going on tiresome or frustrating.
I say all this because I do not want to overpraise RAHXEPHON. I'm just strongly inclined to. It's been a long time since I've had so much fun trying to puzzle out a story line. As far the melodrama went, once I realized where RAHXEPHON was going I shrugged and bought it, in just the same way I buy that action stories usually have a high body count (though, incidentally, RAHXEPHON is by no means nonviolent). I particularly liked the soundwork, which featured a melodically sophisticated cyber-music intro theme, an atmospheric end theme, and much pleasant incidental music in between. Even the Japanese dialogue and sound effects had a musical feel to them.
I would comment that a nice little pamphlet with production pictures, some clues, and comments by staff is included with each DVD, but I would strongly recommend NOT reading the pamphlets until you've gone through the series. Particularly in the later DVDs, they give away too much of the story.