ohtoriakio

As I have just reviewed the X movie, I thought I would keep going with the "movie retelling" theme and review the Rahxephon movie. Like the X movie, this Rahxephon outing has a few troubles with pacing. The execution gives the movie a collage effect as a whole and this does not really work when one compares it with the breathtaking pace of the series.

I have to admit, I do not understand the purpose of this movie at all. It is even more incoherent than the X Movie (which is saying something) and pointless as a whole. It is impossible for a Rahxephon "newbie" to enjoy this as it relies on your knowledge of the story for it to make sense (the strange pace and editing job certainly won't help). Ones familiar with the story are doomed to see it as a disappointment as it does not bring anything forward that was not explored in the series.

I must say I was disappointed with the animation here. It is not because of the looks of it at all, Rahxephon has NEVER looked bad. My gripe is with the excessive reused footage here. I would say about 75% of the visuals come directly from the series. They have merely extended some scenes and added a few to (attemptively) help the movie's flow.

As it is, the movie looks good but more original footage would have not gone astray with fans of the show. I was especially disappointed with the way things were pieced together. The editing put scenes from the series out of order and in this new context it was either inappropriate or did not work. Scenes from the end finding their way at the start were okay at first; but the pacing made it so they would then jump to random scenes from anywhere in the series to try to get into Ayato's head. This played out like the last two eps of Evangelion when they were "piecing" Shinji together. I was not a big fan of it then and I am still not impressed now.

The sound was another aspect that was okay overall. More unheard symphonies were on offer and they worked out quite well but most of the time the same sounds from the series were just used again.

The voice acting was very good at capturing the characters with Ayato's angst very believable because of the delivery. The pacing made the overall effect strange though as you would have the characters going from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum within 30 seconds.

The story is the aspect I had my biggest gripe with. What they did here ended up affecting all the other categories' in a bad way. Had they handled/edited the plot a little more coherently, the characters would not have come out so incoherent and the animation would have felt a lot more fluid.

I will start with the good when it comes to the story though. First off, it revealed the series' biggest twist within the first five minutes and that allowed me to feel that they were actually trying to break away from the series and thus sucked me in. I was wrong however as what it does is retell the audience what happened in the series just with a different approach. I think that is pointless because when you get right down to it, Rahxephon fans are gonna be the ones who will watch this and they would have seen all this already.

The second thing I appreciated with the story is that the excrutiable pacing and editing of the plot made me realise how good the TV series was in comparison.

The bad is also inclusive of the characters so forgive me if I delve into them as I refer to it. First off we have Ayato and he is given centre stage. Within the movie's timeframe you get to see all the important things he went through in the series in a condensed format. This creates a lot of trouble as his journey of self-discovery is quite important.

The way the movie was pieced together though made it so the side characters/love interests were barely present or would randomly disappear and reappear when need be. I am a strong believer of not using something at all if it drags down the effect you want to create AND having these side characters (ones that were ACTUALLY used) there just for show was one thing I would have done away with. Their inclusion here creates expectations for them that are just not met.

The relationship between Ayato and the Rahxephon was not given enough time to develop either and as a result their connection felt forced. This can be said for a lot of the relationships here. Another good example would be of Mishima and Ayato. Although she is the one Ayato was looking for and was actually in love with the whole time (you can see it in the way they put references of her everywhere), the director included footage that had Mishima's sister and Quon as possible love interests.

This would be fine if they went somewhere and when it seems to, we are teleported to a different story about Ayato and his relationship with a childhood friend who also has more than platonic feelings for him...

All these things I mentioned that did not work here because of the time issue, are developed very successfully in the TV series. So I am a firm believer that you should definitely watch the series to get all the aspects of it.

I think another thing that affected my enjoyment of it was that I could not stop comparing it with the series because of the parallels that it creates. I don't know if I was intended to see it on its own merits but I just could not detach it from the series because it was too much like it (it plays more like an Evangelion movie than the Utena movie).

I don't think I can recommend this movie to anyone. I know fans of the show will want to see it and although you get to see this interesting cast again, there is not much beyond that. So watch at your own risks but Rahxephon newbies avoid this like the plague and watch the series instead.