RahXephon is the culmination of the Eva storm, a result of a mass attempt to try and make a full fledged consistent story that used all the tropes that made it a classic, while avoiding the mistakes that pulled it down. A hard task, certainly - the mistakes are inherent to those tropes, and you need a lot of skill to overcome those problems. RahXephon was Studio BONES’s attempt, and it almost succeeded too.



Almost.



At first glance, RahXephon certainly does improve on the mistakes Eva made. The plot points are sufficiently mysterious enough to be hard to guess, but they do explain it all. The protagonist isn’t perfect, but he is more likable. The show does use sexuality in a very warped way, but it never feels diseased and disgusting. Where, then, did the show stumble?



I’ll take this moment to clarify that as opposed to the majority opinion, I very much like the first few episodes. They’re tightly plotted, the suspense is intriguing, and the imagery is striking and memorable. That being said, they do betray one huge weakness of the show - an awareness of the shadow of its predecessor.



The callbacks to Evangelion are numerous, extremely obvious and horrendous, and they keep on coming throughout.



Take, for example, Kim Hotal. An orphaned Australian soldier with an axe to grind, her flashbacks are clear ripoffs from the flashbacks Asuka experienced. While that wouldn’t be a problem in itself, the horror-styled flashback format is hilariously unsuited to Kim, her memories and experiences, and the whole thing just gets uncomfortable. Hell, even the mecha fight in that episode, with quicksand-like streets, is lifted directly from Eva. Of course, because parental issues must be present in some for or the other (because every major character in Eva had it), we need a random throwaway dialogue from Sayako Nanamori, apropos of nothing, that comes off as extremely cringe-worthy (and with revelations that come a lot later, completely useless). Less obvious as a failed ripoff is the Bähbem company, clearly a replacement to SEELE, their menace rarely felt, and while the kernel of the idea looks interesting, the execution is sloppy. The show is clearly uninterested with its associated characters.



Again, RahXephon is a show built on musical influences and themes, with instrumentalists and puns on musical notes for a lot of names. However, the musical connection is only skin deep, since most of the soundtrack is very average and generic, with a battle theme clearly ripped off from Eva’s battle theme. Also, the role of the instrumentalists seems merely nominally related to actual music, with the constant references to tuning and the mysterious song calls to the mechs never really amounting to anything.



But what about the mecha fights themselves? The designs are very clearly defined, and the origins are very well planned, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the majority of Dolems are just boring. RahXephon attempts an action arc like Eva, but the creators miss a huge part of what made Eva fights such classics. None of the Dolems are interesting, none of them have memorable appearances or attacks, and all of them are dispatched by the same pattern - enemy fights Ayato, Ayato seemingly loses, RahXephon gets an unexpected power increase, dispatches Dolem with ease. Now, while it may seem that they’re just repeating the most interesting events that happened in Eva fights, the problem is this - of all the fights in the Eva TV series, only 4 fights had an Eva go berserk. The rest found interesting ways and strategies to use for defeating the enemy. RahXephon, on the other hand, relies on plot convenient power ups a little too much, ultimately resulting in the fantastical feeling mundane.



Coming back to the supporting cast and their storylines, it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of interesting ideas somehow lost in translation to screen. While the Bähbem storyline is a shining example, we also have the sudden revelation of Commander Watari as Ayato’s father, something that has practically no valuable buildup or effect. We have Torigai, who seems to be a conflicted, complex character with a lot of pent up frustration, but the show simply doesn’t seem to find any time for him. And why are the plotters in this series so stupid? Nanamori is clearly being manipulated by Isshiki, but she pretends she’s got an ace up her sleeve (plot twist: she doesn’t) and acts scandalized when he ultimately does do what he clearly set out to do. Of course, the best example is the final plan Terra enacts to oppose their overseers, which is to destroy the wall around Tokyo Jupiter and unleash the Mu on the world. Genius.



These things aren’t problematic by themselves, actually. If given enough time to play out, or more brainpower toward building the plot, it would have been much better. Unfortunately, the show is clearly interested in the main love story. Yes, RahXephon is, fundamentally, a love story. There is a long time where they pretend it’s about intrigue, suspense and interesting themes, but that pretense is abandoned towards the end. That, of course, wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t botched up completely.



The idea behind the love story is noble - a woman in love with someone who was stuck in time, and is now too young for her. The problem arises from her being pretty much the worst character in the series.



The only characteristic of Haruka Shitow seems to be a constant stream of pining for her lost love. There are no moments of chemistry, no touching moments they share, except for Haruka constantly screaming Ayato’s name every time he gets into trouble in a fight. She’s said to be a hard working woman who’s respected by all, but we’re never really convinced, even with the token shots of her doing some office work on the beach. Whenever she’s motivated to action, it’s only ever reactionary to Ayato, as if he’s the only reason she exists (which might probably be true, seeing as she doesn’t serve much more to the story, other than a belated Mishima reveal).



But what about the romantic teases from Ayato’s end, you ask? The scene where he gets sullen on seeing her with the scientist, or the dream where he finds himself being attracted to her? I’d have to argue that those were artifacts from the exploration of another theme RahXephon aimed to tackle - one of repressed sexuality.



We have Megumi having feelings for someone older, yet being treated like a child despite having to work like a professional adult soldier in the military, then later crushing on Ayato himself - one that goes unrequited. We see Asahina. and the tension that goes on between Ayato and her, which is probably the only instance of actual sexual chemistry between two people in the show. We see Torigai, someone who loved her but was too blinded by arrogance to give up on power, grappling with feelings of frustration at having lost her at the hands of someone who she apparently chose instead of him, trying to force feelings between himself and Megumi in Nirai Kanai. And, of course, we have the taboo relationship of a teenager with someone much older than him.



It’s a pity that this theme didn’t get explored a lot in the previous cases, though, because RahXephon could have had a lot more to get out of the experience, a lot more thematic richness, a more interesting cast of characters. Instead, it chose to develop these undertones with merely one pair. And it isn’t the one you think.



The relationship between Ayato and his mother, Maya Kamina, is screwed up in entirely too many ways. They act more like lovers with a lot of misunderstandings between them, an observation gleaned from the fact that an extremely high portion of the dialogue between them could be recontextualized in a suggestive way. Most of his time in Nirai Kanai he spends trying to get back to his home, despite it being full of humanity’s enemies. She wears lipstick for him and keeps trying to win him back. He asks her to dress for her the way she did. The Oedipal tension between the two is so thick that no amount of high frequency singing can shatter it.



The whole thing is messed up, uncomfortable and brilliant.



A huge part of it is Maya Kamina herself. The strongest character in the show, she is the perfect example of an enigmatic character done right (while also being the one aspect at which RahXephon kicks Eva’s ass in comparisons - remember Gendou Ikari?). Her episodes tend to be some of the best ones in the series. In fact, Tokyo Jupiter as a setting is also very well realised, combining a Truman Show-like paranoia with sinister undertones of mind control, and it contributes towards the high quality of its associated episodes. Combine that with episode 19’s perfect combination of emotion with horror, and the rest of the series simply fails to live up to them. Which is a shame, since the rest of the series form the majority of the story.



In the end, RahXephon comes close, so close to greatness, only to stumble in the end. A pity, since it does so much so well. To be honest, though, a flawed, experimental series like this is more interesting to me than a technically perfect series like Wolf’s Rain. I can still rave about all the things it did right, all the themes it attempted to explore. Even if the brilliant parts couldn’t add up to a satisfying whole.



In hindsight, maybe it did accomplish its aim of having the same legacy as Evangelion. After all, an explosion is infinitely more beautiful than mere fireworks.

