RahXephon

The ordinary life of high school student Ayato Kamina is turned upside down when Tokyo is suddenly invaded by futuristic fighter jets. Amidst the chaos, he encounters a woman called Haruka Shitow who claims to be from a government organization called TERRA. She reveals that he has been living in a time bubble named "Tokyo Jupiter" that was put in place by the Mulians—humanoids from another dimension—in an attempt to isolate and take over Tokyo. TERRA has been trying to break through the barrier surrounding the city ever since.

Unable to process the revelation, Ayato panics and flees. He runs into his classmate Reika Mishima who leads him to a place called "The Shrine of Xephon" where a large egg slumbers. She starts to sing and an unknown power awakens within Ayato, connecting him to a being called RahXephon that breaks out of the egg. Shortly after, Haruka finds him again and tries to make him join her cause of fighting against the Mulians.

Caught between the crosshairs of the Mulians and TERRA, Ayato begins to question his purpose, navigating altered memories and ultimately his very identity in this chaotic new world.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	RahXephon, RahXephon
Side story:	RahXephon: Kansoukyoku/Kanojo to Kanojo Jishin to - Thatness and Thereness
Alternative version:	RahXephon: Tagen Hensoukyoku
Summary:	RahXephon Specials

Miyamoto, Mitsuru
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Minami, Masahiko

Producer

Greenfield, Matt

Producer, Script, ADR Director

Sasaki, Shirou

Producer

Kawakami, Daisuke

Producer

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Opening Theme

	1: "Hemisphere" by Maaya Sakamoto (eps 2-3,5-25)
	2: "Hemisphere (Instrumental)" by Maaya Sakamoto (eps 4)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Yume no Tamago" ("Fledgling Dream" English version) by Ichiko and Mayumi Hashimoto (ep 1, 5, 15-16, 19, 25)
	2: "Yume no Tamago" by Ichiko Hashimoto and Mayumi Hashimoto (eps 2-4,6-14,17-18,20-24)
	3: "Before You Know" by Ichiko Hashimoto (eps 26)

Reviews

Jan 16, 2023

Timordecai

Recommended

I don’t really know what to say, seems I’m still digesting everything I saw, ultimately very good. I would like to “sing” this show praises (pun intended), as there are many moments that have stood out to me as the most shocking and interesting twists and revelations I’ve seen in any series.

The score. Wow, I mean the soundtrack alone, such beautiful compositions as well as perfect tones and spot on creative sound design. The editing of this show, as well as the animation for being a 2002 animated tv series (done by Bones no less) has some stand out episodes. Though I ...

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Aug 9, 2016

vittumainen

Mixed Feelings

RahXepon was.. something different. Wildly experimental and strikingly abstract, RahXepon shows a great potential in its early episodes. Does it live up to the expectations? Well, not quite.

The show draws a lot of strong influences from other works of art, namely Neon Genesis Evangelion and The Lost Continent of Mu. You can draw many parallels between NGE and RahXepon, that is not to say that RahXepon isn't innovative or original, it is, but with that being said ..

Opening episode starts great. The story kicks off with Tokyo being invaded and our main character Ayato Kamina finding himself in the middle of all of this. While ... looking for help he encounters his former classmate Mishima Reika, stringing him along a number of puzzling events. He is attacked by government officials and then saved by mysterious woman, Haruka Shitow. The curtain of the "real world" Ayato so firmly believed in starts cracking. Why did those government officials have blue blood? What is this strange woman babbling about, how could Tokyo be isolated from the rest of the world by time dilating barrier!? After Ayato is led to a shrine by his classmate Mishima where he awakens the cryptic Xephon, him and Haruka escape through the barrier in to the real world. Like I said, first episode is great, pacing and dynamic are very well done and anime succeeds in grabbing your attention.

After the initial episode, we get episode 2 and anime just kinda.. falls flat on it's face from here on. Honestly, it's full of bad writing and plot holes. The show never really FULLY explains it's mysteries to you. It gives you vague explanations of certain aspects of story and you're supposed to fill in the blanks yourself, I suppose? Big part of anime is the music, but the show never once mentions why is it so important to the Mu (the main antagonist race in the anime). The Mu use Dolems aka weird mecha things as weapons and their main way of dealing with enemies is singing. I get it, they like singing, but after a while it gets kinda boring. It just felt very disappointing that they never explained intentions of Mu, their culture, history, mindset, NOTHING. We learn NOTHING about them. They invaded the Earth, created Tokyo Jupiter and just kinda let go. After killing a billion people or so of course, because aliens are evil and it's only natural for them to be evil.
Later on in the show we learn about some old guy who apparently created the System of RahXepon and that the world is supposed to be tuned by instrumentalists, our protagonist and Quon, (again) myterious girl who is same age as Ayato and has the same mark as him on her belly. I'm not going to get too much into this aspect of the story because of the spoilers, but I'll let you know that when you see the ending you'll probably be as disappointed and empty as I did. Once again, the show suffers from major writing issues and felt rushed and forced.

Another major concern I have with the show are the characters. Yeah, some get an alright progression and you can feel attached to them but the cast is just way too big and most of the characters straight up feel unnecessary (I liked the commander though, and his friend with a goatie, they're cool). Midway through the show I honestly felt like I was watching a harem anime. There are like dozen love interests for our lovely protagonist and most of them feel so forced and unnecessary, it's like it's there just to give meaning to the characters, and I straight up hate characters whose only purpose of existing is having a romantic feelings for protagonist, it shows some very lazy writing. Characters could have been a strong point of this anime, but I just can't forgive it for almost turning this into a harem anime, disgusting.

Art is okayish, scenes from Tokyo had a very Serial experiments Lain feeling of aesthetic to them with the vague images and purplish shadows. It strengthens the feeling of mysteriousness which is further amplified by the soundtrack. Oh boy did I love the soundtrack of this anime. Both opening and ending themes are beautiful, and the soundtrack is very pleasant and soothing, it's almost like a serious of lullabies. The ending theme put me to sleep countless time since I have tendencies to watch anime late at night.

Overall, I can't say it was a terrible show because it wasn't. It was a decent show ruined by my own expectations of it, but I just can't shake off the feeling of disappointment when I think about it. It had 26 episodes of airtime and it could have accomplished so much more with the time it had. Would I recommend it? I don't think so. It falls into this niche line of deconstruction shows but it doesn't do a very good job at deconstructing, but that's just my take on the show.

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Sep 10, 2016

CrimsnBullet

Not Recommended

Ah... RahXephon...

Where do I even begin?

First off, if you're walking into this with expectations, you'll be disappointed. If you have almost no expectations at all (Like I did), you'll still be disappointed.

Story:
I find it funny how people can praise this as being, “Well written,” or say it has a, “Complex story,” seriously...
If you thought either of those things after watching this the whole way through, then you need to see a doctor. Yes, I know there's different ways of telling a story, but then there's just throwing a bunch of random bull!@#$ at the viewers with no context or meaning. Yet, people seem ... to have a big enough of an imagination that they force themselves (And others) to believe that, if it doesn't make sense you just have to, “Think harder,” because every little thing is symbolic somehow right? People LOVE using symbolism to convince people that the piece of crap they're trying to sell you is actually a diamond. “Well, if you look at it this way.” they say...
Don't listen to them, or that little voice in your head saying that you might have, “Missed something,” or that maybe, “It's just to complicated for you.” Because it's not. Some other shows? Maybe... but this one? No, just no.
You'd have to be delusional to say this is a, “Great anime.” After watching RahXephon, just reading through the reviews here will make you lose your faith in humanity (If you have any left). I can't help but think that everyone's being raised as idiots, or maybe it's genetic.

“Characters:”
Other people say that the story was fair, but the characters were, “Second to sound,” don't make me laugh. So, as for the characters...
Can they really even be called that?
When they come and go with almost non-existent back story and personalities?
(I mean, COME ON... just because they say to themselves, “I like person X, but they don't like me back. Life is hard :'( “ doesn't mean they actually have personalities, ok?)
Or when they die and then reappear again with absolutely no explanation like nothing ever happened?
Or how about when the main one is having an identity crisis every other episode, even after he's already come to the conclusion that he knows who he is TWICE already! And that's on top of the fact that he keeps forgetting who he likes every time there's a girl who throws herself at him.

This isn't even supposed to be a romance drama is it? Because if it is, it failed horribly at that too. It seems to me that the writer (If they should even be called one) were just making this up as they went along. Their thought process going something like:
“We need don't have enough story for 26 episodes, lets come up with something so we can keep airing... I GOT IT! Lets throw a girl at the MC in this episode, add a random mecha to fight here, make this girl disappear so we can throw another one, another random mecha to fight there... Oh wait! We don't have that many episodes left after all that, “Story,” time to make the MC remember who he really likes before it ends!”
...

You get the idea. (I hope)
I could go on and on explaining how bad it turned out to be by the end of it, but if you didn't get my point by now, then there's really nothing else I can do to persuade you out of wasting your time, so that's all I have to say about it. (It's 1 am crazy rant over)

Well, now that I'm finished writing this review, I'm going to try and erase this show from my memory. Maybe Ayato can hook me up with something, he's gotta be on some sort of drug to be forgetting everything as much as he is. (Plus, if hallucinations are a side effect, that would certainly explain a lot.)

Keep it real, peace.

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Is the MC a crybaby ? Anowser - Jan 2, 2019	6 replies	by thischeetobussin »» Apr 6, 5:06 PM
Poll: RahXephon Episode 1 Discussion Ston3_FreeN7 - Oct 20, 2009	32 replies	by walla »» Feb 2, 9:17 AM
Poll: RahXephon Episode 21 Discussion Stark700 - Apr 4, 2013	12 replies	by Dawizz »» Oct 8, 2023 12:09 AM
Poll: RahXephon Episode 6 Discussion Ston3_FreeN7 - Oct 21, 2009	12 replies	by OneMoreFinal »» Oct 1, 2023 10:51 PM
Poll: RahXephon Episode 12 Discussion wesley96 - Apr 21, 2009	16 replies	by Dawizz »» Sep 29, 2023 2:53 AM

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RahXephon

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Kamina, Ayato

Shitow, Haruka

Kisaragi, Quon

Mishima, Reika

Shitow, Megumi

Hadhiyat, Elvy

Isshiki, Makoto

Asahina, Hiroko

Nanamori, Sayoko

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RahXephon

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Synopsis

Background

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