Forum - View topicI'm almost convinced to watch Rahxephon now.
|
|
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
|
|||
|
Zac's review has me wanting to watch it, if only so that I can provide the minority opinion on this one. As I've mentioned before, I watched the pilot episode and saw a standard mecha show struggling to look mysterious via the inclusion of funky designs and not one but two "mysterious women."
The characters were cyphers, while the Eva characters are nuanced and multileveled. Still, I now want to check to see if Rahxephon actually develops from the unpromising beginning. I can't help hearing all the praise as the sort of desperate fanboy huffing and puffing that once surrounded every angsty superhero comic; the desperation to find the "New Watchmen" is revisited every time an artsy mecha show comes out. "Cerebral mecha genre." How corny is that? It's peculiar that two of the most acclaimed mecha shows-Gundam and Eva-turned out as they did precisely because the auteurs didn't really want to be working on a giant robot show. Eva's foremost accomplishment was the wholesale downloading of New Wave filmmaking techniques and concerns into anime. It must be said that it did so in a frequently muddled and softheaded fashion. Eva is what critic Pauline Kael would call a lamebrainstorm, "aht" for impressionable college kids, but if it was a less than sure-footed pioneer, it was still a pioneer. it pointed the way to fresh developments in anime; Lain, His&Her, FLCL would have been unlikely without it. Eva also paved the way for a bunch of overheated "Mecha Think Pieces," and I'll believe Rahxephon is something more when I see it. But I suppose I'd better see it before I pontificate further. |
||||
|
||||
Vigilante024
 Posts: 578 Location: back. but not really. |
|
|||
|
mmm...yeah, I wasn't too thrilled with the first ep. I saw, and almost didn't even give it a shot, though when I found the first dvd for really cheap I decided to pick it up and give it a whirl...and honestly, I wasn't that impressed...at first...it actually was around the 3 dvd that I really got into in, both the art style and the story, because for the most part I had thought it was another Eva mech show...so far it has developed on its own very nicely and I am looking forward to seeing how it ends...
|
||||
|
||||
Legato 2057
 Posts: 437 Location: Soon to be Japan |
|
|||
|
I started watching Rahxephon and Argento Soma at the same time. While Argento Soma started out stronger, Rahxephon defintely builds a stronger plot with multi-layered characters while Argento Soma, well...doesn't
 I don't know if I would go so far to say it's is an all time classic like Eva, Beebop or Trigun; it is definitely worth the time.
|
||||
|
||||
Mou Kaoru
 Posts: 298 Location: Simple minds are easily amused. |
|
|||
|
I can honestly say that I enjoyed this series. It gets more interesting (if not somewhat confusing) during the latter half of the show. I need to rewatch the ending one more time because I did not understand what happened (a la Eva). When I first started watching it, Eva didn't even cross my mind. Now that I've watched it, I can see how some people would cross reference Rahxephon and Eva. But I wouldn't say it's a complete rip-off because IMO it's simply categorized in the same genre. You should definately give it a shot.
Last edited by Mou Kaoru on Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
|
Vigilante024
Posts: 578 Location: back. but not really. |
|
|||
yeah...I actually started them the same time too...and well...I'm pretty sure I'll never finish Argento Soma... |
||||
|
||||
Samurai CDZ
 Posts: 776 Location: Manhattan, KS |
|
|||
|
A perfect score...from Zac?
Is that right? Did I see that? Wow, it must be good. I guess I'll have to bump it up on the list. |
||||
|
||||
|
Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
|
|||
|
Aaron, watch the show. The first episode had me falling asleep. I had to pretty much force myself through the first four.
It became this thing that wound up being one of the best dramatic storylines I've ever seen. There's only one mysterious woman and she winds up being an spoiler[ artificial mental construct designed to help Ayato 'tune' himself with the RahXephon ]. Also, spoiler[ the girl in yellow and the other 'mysterious woman' are the same person at different stages of her life. ] I'm as jaded, cyncial and nasty as you can get for an anime viewer and it blew me away. Made Evangelion look like unfinished, lame-ass kid's stuff. So there. If anyone has seen the ending and needs an explanation, I'll be happy to post a huge list of spoilers. -Z |
||||
|
||||
|
Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
|
|||
|
This is one of the few times where I'm inclined to agree with Zac 100%. More often than not, I find some measure of disagreement with him in something. He and I have different stances and differing opinions on the things we enjoy. I've seen a lot of crap as well, but the perceptions we have are different. I'm also harder on dubs than most. This is one of the finest, if not the best dub acted to date.
I felt a greater attachment to this series as a whole. It was as if the psycological issues of Eva (unfair that it will always be compared to this, true) but the characters have to learn to get over themselves and deal with the real world as well. I found it to be better written than Eva, and enjoyed this far more than I had expected to. There is more depth to enjoy here and I must say that it is highly reccomended. |
||||
|
||||
gnollman
 Posts: 535 Location: Richmond, KY |
|
|||
|
I'll just have to disagree with Zac on this one... I found RahXephon to be a good show, but not a great one. Worth watching, sure. Worth owning... not on my dime.
I'd be curious to see what Aaron has to say about it.... |
||||
|
||||
v1cious
 Posts: 6229 Location: Houston, TX |
|
|||
|
i'm sorry but Rahxephon is way overrated.
i mean it's good, but it really aint all that. they're right about it not being an EVA rip off because at least EVA could keep your attention span, there were so many episodes of Rahxephon that were just boring, and confusing as hell. i will admit it got good towards the final episodes though. |
||||
|
||||
Craeyst Raygal
 Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
|
|||
|
Strange, because Rahxephon had me spellbound from episode one while Evangelion was the one I had to force my way through.
Honestly, Evangelion seemed to be changing gears too often. Very little consistency in trying to make its point. It's like the line from the councilor in Matrix Reloaded. "The point? There is no point. Old men have little use for points." However, to me, Rahxephon was beautiful and on target from the first moment. This wasn't a case of "Trying to out Eva, Eva." like Brain Powerd. This was a new series with a beautifully written and wonderfully displayed story. |
||||
|
||||
|
Incisivis
Posts: 3 Location: Somewhere. |
|
|||
To each their own, and all that. I thought EVA was a wonderful series myself, and it's my most favorite to date. So this may knock down my credibility, but I've also seen the first twelve episodes of RahXephon and would like to see more.
When I watched RahXephon, I thought the similiarities to EVA were superficial, scratch-the-surface things like visuals and recurring images. The tone, the feel, the "essence" of RahXephon was far different from EVA, which is why I can't understand why EVA is brought up. With series so different, one of the two will come up short in a comparison, because it would be almost the opposite of the other. Personally, I wouldn't like to see EVA done up elegantly and clean like RahXephon. The feel of fragmentation, of wrenching twists and turns that EVA has, is part of its "essence", just like refinement and poetic views are part of RahXephon's, and I'd hate to see it go. I also disagree with the perceptions of the characters. I felt EVA had a great cast of people that were sympathetic and easy to empathize with, and what sounded like psychobabble to some felt naturalistic to me.
Ack, I kind of lost my point, which was to ask why RahXephon should be compared to EVA when the smiliarities are only skin-deep. |
||||
|
||||
|
Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
|
|||
|
Update: I've watched the first 8 episodes, and while I'm not willing to grant it masterpiece status yet, it's fun and I'll keep watching. I'll post a more complete evaluation at some later date. Thanks to Zac for convincing me to give it another try.
P.S. On the disk Two that I rented the dub actor interview had no sound! Has anyone else had this problem? |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group