Forum - View topicRahXephon (in response to ANN's podcast).
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13227 |
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Yeah, there is that way to look at it. I mean, I never looked at the ending as a bad thing. I'd rather everyone live happily ever after.
The movie's ending was also about how even if your life is a lie, it's still real to you and you can be happy because of it. Though with Quon being his mother in the sense that he was cloned from her... Why did they keep hinting that Watari was his father? They even looked similar. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Because spoiler[Shirou Watari was the father, though it wasn't a normal pregnancy and his family name wasn't Watari at the time. The show does strongly allude to the two men who found the girls (Quon and Maya) when they came through the portal (the same one which Ayato and Quon enter at one point) were Professor Rikudo and Shirou Watari (who was his assistant at the time and was then still called Kamina).]
I'll let Wikipedia explain some of it, since I'm lazy: spoiler[Watari was the assistant of Professor Rikudo, and they found Quon and Maya together. Shirou Kamina eventually married Maya, but he changed his family name to Watari after Maya had gone over to the Mu. Watari is the biological father of Ayato and Itsuki. Although hesitant to meet Ayato, during his first meeting he subtly alludes to their relationship but is completely ignored. Rikudo raised Maya, who fell in love with Kamina. Quon was placed into stasis by Bahbem. Shirou Kamina became Shirou Watari after Maya left him to join (or rejoin) the Mu, but Maya kept the Kamina surname and raised Ayato (who is her nephew) as her own son. Why was Kamina chosen to be the father of Ayato, even though he was in love with Maya? I don't actually know, though he would have had to have been genetically acceptable to Bahbem. Maybe it was because of Maya and his relationship with her that he was chosen. Like, she volunteered him or something.] Next time I rewatch the show I'll pay closer attention to Kamina/Watari, and the information given about the girls' early life. [EDIT: Tags added. Really, you know better than this. - Key] |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13227 |
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spoiler[Ayato and Itsuki are specifically stated as being clones of Quon. So I guess they must have mixed her DNA with Watari's for some reason? Guess they needed his Y chromosome.]
Well, it has been awhile since I reviewed the series. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I tried to watch this one back when Hope/JesuOtaku first made her 25 Favourite Anime list, because it had been a title I wanted to check out for years and I have decently similar tastes to her. I think I got about 10 episodes in or so before finally deciding to stop because watching the show seemed more like a chore than entertainment. There was just nothing in it that really grabbed me.
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MadShadow42
 Posts: 56 |
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While I'm at it, let me clarify one thing: I neither like nor dislike Evangelion, and on a critical level I regard it as admirable and important but a bit of a failure. I do think RahXephon is "better" than Evangelion (some may disagree), but I never thought of it as "Eva done right" and I don't think it was trying to be, its core conflict and themes are incredibly different. It's true that it borrowed some superficial elements from Eva, but they're only skin-deep, two different beasts.
As for the characters, I'll admit there were a few superficial ones here and there but they didn't get in the way of the core cast's characterization, I'll second the notion that all of the important characters were sufficiently developed. And RahXephon does indeed stand on its own, doing side research can enrich the experience but that's just an optional bonus. On a whole, I do maintain that the story is solid and well-crafted. As for the word "overrated", Blood-, you yourself admit that you're not sure if it's as lacking as you remember it being and that you might have missed something (spoiler[you did  ]). It's a word I think is frequently abused, especially since RahXephon's following, in my experience, is fairly niche, even if it is generally well-received.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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They're not spoiler[clones of Quon, otherwise they'd be female and look just like her]. While Kamina spoiler[is their father, it's not like Ayato and Itsuki were conceived naturally. Their genomes were tinkered and essentially constructed. While their Mulian abilities would have come from Quon, Kamina's DNA would have been used to provide additional genetic information to complete the boys; the Y-chromosome is just one example. The hair colour is another.] |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13227 |
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Try telling that to some people. 
In the first place, RahXephon takes far more elements from Yuusha Raideen, which is what it's a direct homage to. Funnily enough I was introduced to RahXephon by a friend who went on about how terrible the show was. But looking up the webpage, I really starting liking the RahXephon's design and gave the show a shot.
I recall Itsuki is the one who explained to Haruka that the boys were clones, though I suppose he might not have been aware of the whole process. |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3652 |
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I did watch the show, and have no idea who most of the characters people are referring to are. As you might guess, it didn't make much of an impression on me.
My question is, if I did do all the work to try to "figure it out," would I actually get anything out of that? Does understanding all of it actually improve the show any? |
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MadShadow42
Posts: 56 |
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It doesn't make the show better, because the show is already fantastic whether you "get it" or not
On a serious note, the effort is not only beneficial, but practically essential to the experience. It's a show that demands a lot of its audience, which is what puts some viewers off (but attracts people like me). |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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I see dtm42 is up to his old tricks about revealing key plot details of a show without using spoiler tags.
 I know he's too ignorant to go back and put them in, so I've reported his post so that hopefully a mod/admin will do it.
Anyway, dtm42 and Vaisaga's exchange simply underscores what I said earlier: chunks of this show are intelligible ONLY if you consult outside sources like the RahXephon Wikipedia page. There is key information that you cannot get directly from the show itself. I'm not talking about allusions you can research to help deepen your appreciation of the show, I'm talking actual plot details that you cannot glean just from watching the show. Oh and I love how spoiler[Ayano and Haruka's cosmic connection is so deep that he doesn't even have a flicker of recognition from her 29-year-old self.] Sure, I "get" the anime rule that characters who knew each other in years past are not allowed to recognize each other when they are older (especially if the forgetter is a male so that the female can have a reason to be angry with him), but how can spoiler[they have this amazing bond when there isn't a single thing about her adult self that harkens back to the girl he supposedly loved?] Absurd. And MadShadow42, I completely disagree with your opinion that their relationship was well-handled. As a lover of anime, I am no stranger to dubious conceptional premises. As long as they are well-executed, I'm prepared to go along with it. There was nothing in the way their relationship was handled that in any way explained to me their bond. spoiler[I was told they dated for six months when they were 13 years old, but once they were reunited I never was given any reason to understand why the adult Haruka continued to be fixated on the 17-year-old Ayano.] |
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Westlo
 Posts: 1684 |
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To this day it's still the best show Studio Bones has produced... and sadly it's becoming more and more clear that nothing they do will get anywhere near it.
Still my fav tv series of all time though I do need to eventually put it to the rewatch test one day, prefer this to Eva, which I also really like. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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I thought it was a pretty good show, but nothing exceptional. The characters didn't leave all that much impression to me, Ayato especially felt quite bland and like with Blood- the main romance strained my suspension of disbelief, which consequently left me quite cold for the ending. I liked it more for its aesthetics - cinematography, use of music.
Did it improve Evangelion for you? All the stuff about Instrumentality, Lilith clones, Eva souls and the First Ancestral Race. In their essences neither Eva or Rahxephon are particularly complicated stories, but it provides you with more context. Might be superficial to you, might not. |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13227 |
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You do realise there's a statute of limitations on these things, right? The show is over 10 years old. And what elements, exactly, can you only get with outside sources? Because everything in the show is perfectly clear from just watching the show and paying attention. The only piece of information I ever had to look up was the names of all the Dolems, that's it. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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No, there is no statue of limitations on spoilers at ANN. Considerate posters use spoiler tags for important plot points even for very famous shows out of deference to posters who may not have yet seen them. If I was discussing Death Note, Code Geass or Cowboy Bebop I wouldn't blithely reveal certain important events from those shows even though people who have seen them know exactly what I'm talking about.
And it's hilarious that you ask me what isn't clear from the show itself when you and dtm42 can't even agree what information was presented.
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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No matter how old a show is there will always be people who have not seen it, or even heard of it. I think that fact that it is that old makes it more likely that people who have been anime fans for only a few years might not be familiar with it. Before this thread the last post in a RahXephon discussion thread was about a year ago**. Ironically that was by dtm42 and he did use spoiler tags. There were only four posts at that time. Other than those the last post about RahXephon was nearly six years ago. I believe that it is not unreasonable to think that there might be people who saw the thread title and are reading it just to find out what RahXephon is about. Whether or not that is a reason for using spoiler tags is up to you. **EDIT: It was actually two years ago. Note to self: This is the year 2013. Duh |
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