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Is it just me or are all Japanese manga cartoons just that
little too deep. I’ve always found that the less you have to think about a
movie the more you will enjoy it. Unfortunately for Rah Xephon it seems that
the story gets away from the plot purely to confuse you. Maybe it’s just
stupid me but when the story just starts to make some sense, all of a sudden
the city gets turned upside down only to find another world with different
rules and alliances just outside the gates. I just can’t see the enjoyment of
confusing the hell out of your audience.
The story follows a young boy who only knows the city of
Tokyo, as far as the residents of the large city are convinced the rest of the
word has been destroyed by a horrible disaster that only the superior
intelligence and defenses’ of Tokyo could withstand. So with the destruction
of the world and only one city remaining they must endure and e mans only
hope. What they don’t know is that the world is alive and well but at some
point Tokyo was invaded by a great evil that has taken control of the city and
put up a tremendous force field that has also created a huge creator around
the shield to make the city walls almost unreachable, the residents don’t know
that They are the enemy.
Inside the great force field resides a normal working city
with many humans going about their usual lives, but on one faithful day
several air craft break through the barrier and wage war on the city of
innocents. But the cities defenses aren’t as defenseless as the inhabitants
believe there are two huge warriors that can take down the air craft in a
matter of minutes, and to the surprise of the commanders of Tokyo the greatest
weapon that they have been waiting to awake gets stolen by the very boy that
they were grooming to control it for them.
When our young hero becomes entrapped in the hands of the
allies he is suspected of being the enemy, but when the battle cruiser comes
under brutal attack by one of the enemies super subs he mysteriously finds a
way out of his impenetrable cell and pilots the most powerful machine,
creature thingy known to Earth. He takes control of the Rah Xephon (machine
thingy) and decimates the sub with untold power, precision and ease, only
proving that the Rah Xephon is now on the side of good, they have just gained
a very powerful ally.
I found that the episode lacked chapters, with a chapter
for the start, a chapter for the middle, and a chapter for the end credits it
seems a little disappointing. If I had to do something then the ability for
me to find where I was up to would be very hard. If you hadn’t reached that
half way point you would have no idea how close you were to it. The quality
of the drawing and animation is absolutely fantastic, keep an eye out for the
scene when our hero first pilots Rah Xephon, the animation around the eyes of
the creature when the pilot is looking around is fantastic I’ve never seen
such great clarity, my commendations to the animators.
Extras include the opening and closing scenes without all
the writing, special Japanese trailer for Rah Xephon, production sketches and
also ADV previews. The music for the action scenes rock it really gets you
excited it really creates a great mood, the quality if the sound is also
harmoniously clear. It would really be great if I could get my hands on the
sound track, it could actually stand up by itself. The content would get a
ten if the story wasn’t so hard to follow, the animation was triple A.
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