Left with “Obsidian Butterfly find a last song in deep blue forest” a cryptic phrase from the climactic episodes of the TV series, it’s with that in mind that I venture into the world of RahXephon once again, for the, dare I say “digest” version…
Packaging
A young Ayato and Haruka grace the cover in a tentative embrace, a majestic looking RahXephon behind them look into the brilliant orange and yellow hues of the background sky. The back is fairly minimal with a short piece on what it’s about, only three screenshots and deceptively done in widescreen too, which the movie isn’t.
While the UK release lacks the book that came with the R1 Limited Edition; we do have the abbreviated insert booklet, all in full colour with numerous character, mecha and place info, a very handy “relationship chart” and much more in the way of insights into the movie as well as full page artwork.
Menus
Menus follow in a very similar vein to the series and complement their layout with only subtle difference in the artwork used.
Soundtrack
Japanese 5.1 and English 5.1 mixes are your options for the movie.
Video
Most of the movie’s animation is made up of bits from the TV series so with that in mind the movie is 4/3 ratio, though there are a few scenes where it converts to widescreen, the new scenes that there are match the quality of the TV series which was of a high quality anyway, though being “newer” one scene in particular haruka’s design to me looked a little different.
Extras
- Printed Booklet
- ADV Previews
Very poor turn out for extras; which is a real shame, the trailers are also pretty generic for a “giant robot” title.
Episode Contents (This part may contain
Spoliers)
I was never stuck for anything to say when reviewing the RahXephon TV series, now I find myself a little lost for words, I’d like to think of this movie as a simple love story all-be-it set against an epic SF backdrop. But it’s RahXephon we’re talking about so it’s much more complicated than that. Most of the TV series left me glazed over, so with the “important” bits left in for this Motion Picture, I’ll try and nutshell it.
Ayato, Asahina and Torigai, three classmates in middle school while on a train find themselves in the midst of an aerial battle, when the train crashes Ayato still able goes to seek help but is met by sinister black suited men who demand he go with them, but he’s rescued by a strange yet friendly woman. Posing the question to Ayato that why is the blood of the black-suited men she’s just clobbered, blue? And offers to tell-all if Ayato accompany her.
That is just the start however, as Ayato learns that the world is not as it seems, Tokyo has been enveloped in a field called “Tokyo Jupiter” by the Mulian race to “protect” something until the time is right. Time moving slower inside this pocket of reality, the rest of the world has left Tokyo and its inhabitants behind.
In the real world, the Bahbem foundation headed by a seemingly immortal man have in their possession half of “the Xephon system”, a system currently spread across the two realities - the other half being held by the Mulian within Tokyo Jupiter, but if they are united and operated by the dominant of two “instrumentalists” the system can “tune” the world anew, creating a complete new reality. And there in lies the problem; if the dominant instrumentalist is Mulian – a person of blue blood, tunes the world, mankind will be forever erased.
That sort of massive backdrop and the TV series’ some 11hour runtime being condensed into this 2 hour time frame surprisingly does go, with the movie remaining very coherent throughout, despite all the omissions it’s probably more comprehensible than the series was. Most of the secondary cast and many of the primary cast from the series are reduced to bit parts – that is if they even appear at all, negating almost all the emotion baggage that plagued the series and characters who just served to complicate matters. Quon; for all her TV series musings; for duration of the movie remains as a mysterious “sleeping Beauty” held within the labs of Terra. Until she is needed to challenge Ayato as the second instrumentalist, Ayato is the other one by the way…
Does it answer many of the questions left unanswered by the TV series? Well my question of “what the…?” is a little too broad ranging for the movie to satisfactory answer but for the most part I’d have to say yes. I enjoyed the movie on a level different to that of the TV series, as RahXephon: The Motion picture effectively condenses into what I regarded as the best bits of the series.
The death of Asahina, my most poignant memory of the TV series, though abbreviated and a little out of context given the speed of the narrative is still a powerful scene that this time serves to first push Ayato over the edge but them to bring him and Haruka that much closer together. And that brings me to what is at the heart of this movie, and for me what turns it from being a complicated mess into a heartwarming if tragic tale.
The extra scenes that bookmark the motion Picture at the beginning middle and end, help bring the love-story aspect above the SF backdrop, the opening scenes set before the Tokyo Jupiter barrier went up have Haruka and Ayato tentatively wanting to cement their relationship with a first kiss. Haruka though has to go visit family out of the city and it’s while they are apart that the Tokyo Jupiter barrier separates them forever.
Yes! RahXephon: The Motion Picture is really the bitter-sweet love story of two childhood sweethearts torn from each other by events way beyond their control, trying to re-find each other and their still yearning love.
Haruka even as the older “secret agent” woman carries that same innocence of that young girl from the opening scenes and an inherent sadness in her eyes as she longs for her lost love Ayato; who is so close to her yet still so far apart. I found a lot of the scenes between Ayato and Haruka very touching like this in a bittersweet way, the scene where they have just arrived outside of Tokyo Jupiter and Haruka is explaining what’s been going on for the past few years – very romantic for all its subtleties.
I’m now getting into the “mood” of the piece where it becomes subjectively harder to define yet at the same time the single aspect of a story that can lift it so much for me, so I’ll end by simply saying if you liked the series, this is more than worth it, and due to my lack of understanding of the series anyways would go as far to say, give it a shot if you haven’t seen the series – this is way better anyway and the insert helps explain a lot too.
Signed
Damian
Ai Says
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Brought to the surface here after being hidden under 11 hours worth of complicated convoluted emotionally drenched plot, RahXephon; The Motion Picture at its heart is basically a bitter-sweet love story set across time space death and inter-dimensional reality, and who can resist that? I know I can’t. "
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Sometimes the truth can be brutal. Do you want to hear it? "
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Haruka Shitow
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Reverberate unto the heavens, oh song of joy "
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Quon
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I’m loosing all of my connection to my past, all of my memories, and these are things that I don’t want to loose, like my memories with you, things I don’t want to forget, like how I still love you "
