Ok, I really started getting hooked about the middle of the series, and blew through the last four disks in one night; staying up until ridiculous in the morning doing so.
Anyone who read the complaint about Haruna, and the speculation behind the spoiler tag in my last comment must be laughing their butts off about now.
Schoolgirl crush, indeed. Chicks dig the artsy types, don’t they?
It finally got angsty, right about the time I got interested.
Maybe I’ll do a full write-up on this one. The back-story’s a mess, and it might need a bit of ret-conning. It’s not told in straightforward manner; a lot is merely shown, but not explained, and a lot that’s explained is couched in allegorical terms.
My take: A decent rip-off of Evangelion, less depressing, with music and painting as central themes. (The more I look, the more parallels there are in characters: The Shinji, The Asuna, The Misato, the Rei, The Gendou. Even the Angels are there.)
One nice point: everyone I thought should get their just rewards in the end, got theirs in the last two episodes. Everybody was busy shooting everyone else, but it worked out.
The whole point was to do Evangelion again, but this time without Anno’s mental problems and with something that could be mistaken for a real ending. ;p At worst, “homage” would be appropriate – they even quote it here and there.
RahXephon was a show where we constructed a couple of really elaborate theories that explained everything, wrote off to Japan with a “so which one is it, we need to know for the translation”, and got back “huh? We did all those things because they looked cool.” Well, there you go.
Yep, I was right, then. Some retconning needed. Well, it may be interesting to see if I can get close to either of the theories you guys came up with.
And since it’s you, I’m going to throw in another observation. Even when I’m watching an older show on a thinpack, I’ll go through all the previews. I may find something interesting; an old show that deserves a look. In the process of doing that with each of the discs for RahXephon, I noticed something about ADV’s previews: I didn’t care for anything. Not even mildly curious about any except maybe Eden’s Bowey; most of the shows actively dis-interested me. The only real exception was FMP, which I already had.
Which, I think Steven and I both speculated about the load of crap that they licensed before. This may explain much about ADV’s eventual collapse.
I suspected there might have been some ‘throw cool stuff at the wall and see what sticks’ to RaXephon. But I enjoyed it anyway. I have to admit kind of liking the closing theme, too.
Two notes: Eden’s Bowy: So worth watching.
Second: I love RahXephon…like as in my favorite anime ever. Yeah, there are obvious problems with the story, but personally, I think the show has some of the best realized characters ever in anime. I love the the the love story and the emotion. I can’t think of many love stories in any medium that are better handled than RahXephon’s.
Of course, since I’ve already said it is my favorite anime, perhaps I have no integrity.