current sel…oh wait, winamps not on….
ok coo…
current selection | they might be giants – birdhouse in your soul
woo! i luv this song. u kno…there will always be a place in my heart for they might be giants. so this week has been booty left and right. we have an upcoming trade show, so theres alot of material to prep. me being the only graphic designer, i get to shoulder a company’s worth of work. woo. and it gets better. they like to leave things to the last second. doesnt that rock? so this week all this work has been crawling onto my desk from all corners of the company. super. anyway, so im now safe at home, where i can continue with my ways….of…doing stuff…and stuff.
rahxephon
anyhoo…ive had this series for a while now, and ive been meaning to write a review for it. so since i have nothing else interesting to write abt, ill write this instead. this is jus from my initial viewing of the series btw…since marisol currently has it, i cant go back and check stuff. anyway, here it goes.
id been tracking this series for a while now…prolly since it first started airing in japan. the first american dvd of the series was jus released…but im impatient like that. i went ahead and grabbed the full japanese collection. who wants to wait 6+ months for the set to come out anyway?
the quick run-down is that ayato, a teenager from tokyo, is unwittingly thrown into a war between tokyo (the last surviving city on earth) and alien invaders. he eventually comes to be linked with a powerful mech (dolem) called the rahxephon, and it seems the rahx is capable of alot more than jus tearing aliens in half. the two themes that are prevalent throughout the series are music and time. when ayato pilots his rahx, he is referred to as the musician playing the instrument. all the dolems use sound for both offense and defense. time also plays a crucial role, since ayato eventually learns that outside of tokyo, time travels faster. many characters he encounters are also representations of time, in a sense. u’d have to see it to understand…im trying to avoid spoilers here. everything unfolds around ayato slowly, revealing to him the nature of his existense, and what part he can play to ultimately shape his future.
i read alot of reviews incessantly comparing it to eva, saying it ripped off this and that…so ill start there. upon my initial viewing, alot of similarities did strike me. but even tho eva is fresh in the minds of american otakus, it is nearly a decade old. so lets quickly run thru the comparisons. boy discovers self…sure its in eva, but its also in a hundred other animes. robots are actually the enemy’s being used against them….another similarity, but its been done too….its jus a really coo plot device, k? hmmm…this third one i was abt to point out was a spoiler…so lemme jus skip that. anyhoo…overall, yea, there are similarities. some overt. but if theres jus one similarity that one should point out, its that both series set out to subvert the normal conventions of the robot genre….so thats the way ill see it. rahxephon is unique in its own way…with its play on time, sound, and real cool looking mechs. the characters that inhabit this world are nicely fleshed out…each playing their own small crucial role in the overall anime. alot of care is taken to fully realize jus about each and every character. so when the shit hits the fan, you’ll kno why. one negative tho that i have to point out. the anime is confusing as hell. especially towards the end when everybody’s shit is hitting the fan. what the hells up with the ending?? (i kno, btw…but even knowing doesnt help when u actually watch it) every small detail counts, and if u missed one sentence that was uttered 4 episodes ago, u risk losing track of things later on. its that minute. i backtracked a few times jus to refresh what someone had said, when what they said resurfaced in a later episode. ick. but density such as this should be appreciated…it shows the great lengths the producers put into the anime. watch rahx and judge it on its own merits…not on another animes. ull prolly like it more.
