Ayato Kamina is a normal teenage boy living a normal life in the city of Tokyo. He lives with his oddly distant mother, has good friends, and one day comes across a mysterious girl called Reika Mishima. That same day, Tokyo is attacked by a horrific being of stone and sound known as a Dolem, and Ayato finds himself wrapped up in a conspiracy that sees him whisked away to a world away from his own, through the help of a newly-awakened golem called the Rahxephon.
Pretty soon Ayato is fighting for his own life and for the continued existence of the human race, as more and more Dolems controlled by the alien Mu threaten to take over humanity once and for all. Only a small resistance of fighters, including the dedicated Haruka Shitow, slimy Makoto Isshiki and the very odd Quon, have a chance against the invaders. And pretty soon, Ayato begins to find out more and more about his own past, the pasts of the people around him, and the true power and purpose of the Mu...
So let’s see; we have a stroppy teenage boy who drives around in a big bio-robot thing, being looked after by a middle-aged woman with serious issues, working with two teenage girls one of whom is outgoing and aggressive and the other of whom is quiet and mysterious, all the while working for a secret organisation against an inhuman enemy who attack using creepy, eldritch horrors, and...there’s a reporter who butts his nose in at everything...and a harsh stern leader...and morally bankrupt people behind the leader with their own agendas and...everything seems to lead back to Ayato’s...mother...
Yeah, okay, this is Evangelion, this is Evangelion, this BLOODY SHOW tricked me into watching BLOODY EVANGELION AGAIN SON OF a-
‘slams door’
...
‘quietly opens door, sits down and continues with the review’
So yeah, uh, Rahxephon is ridiculously similar to a little show which you might not have heard of, and one which I am really not a fan of.
Does this show do Evangelion any better than Evangelion does Evangelion?
Eh...kinda. Sorta. Maybe.
Let’s start with the very best thing about this show; the visuals. Rahxephon is an early original work from Studio Bones, and like so much of their work it looks gorgeous. The animation itself is phenomenal for the early 2000s, and there is so much wonderful direction and artistry on display, in particular with the designs and animation on the Dolems themselves, which are both hauntingly beautiful and distinctly unsettling, deeply human and yet clearly artificial and earthen. Then there’s the Rahxephon itself, and as giant robots go, I think I love its design more than any other I’ve seen; it’s fluid and graceful, with a wonderful angelic motif throughout its design. If I was to pilot a giant robot, I’d want it to look like this. I also have to praise Bones for their work on the characters themselves, although I think a lot of that is down to the general style of the time, which I really like. Strong, expressive characters, all of whom look different and none of whom default to the generixpressions which you see all over the place.
The music is also rather beautiful, with an opening theme song by Yoko Kanno which does exactly what you’d expect. It makes sense for the music to be good, given the show’s overall theme of sound and the voice, and there are a lot of nice little touches and good sound design here and there, particularly with the Dolems which actually exhibit their power through voice. The one particular thing does bug me is, again, the sad comparison I have to make with Evangelion. See, there’s a particular piece in Evangelion called Decisive Battle, which is an aggressive driving timpani and brass piece playing during scenes of particular tension. Okay, so listen to that, and then listen to the piece in the Rahxephon OST called “The Chariot.”
Eerily similar, aren’t they?
I need to address the elephant in the room here; yes, while Rahxephon is trying very hard to be its own beast, it is very clearly inspired by Evangelion, in a time when there were a fair few shows trying very hard to ride on Eva’s success. There are distinct scenes and character dynamics taken straight from the former series, the story goes in much the same direction (right down to the ending where a lot over very bad things happen to our favourite characters) and a lot of the writers and staff members were even working on the former show. It’s very hard to watch Rahxephon and say that it wasn’t in some way inspired by Evangelion’s success.
That being said, Rahxephon takes the bare-bones concept of Eva and turns the story into something all its own. The characters may be similar, but their stories and interactions are very different. The show’s concept is similar, but its aesthetic and viewpoint is something all its own.
And in some ways it’s nice to see a different take on the same story. Whereas Eva is very much Hideaki Anno’s project, and all the ups and downs that came with it, Rahxephon is a collection of people coming together each to put their own spin on the same idea. Rahxephon is no on person’s baby; Ichiro Okouchi, Chiaki Konaka, Youji Enokido and other big-name writers and directors all had a go at certain episodes, very much making this a team effort. It’s something you don’t see that often nowadays, with people genuinely flocking to ‘the director’ or ‘the creator’ of a certain work. Collabs are cool is all I’m saying.
These new ideas and takes on Eva’s concepts continue to the characters, which in many ways are the complete opposites of Anno’s characters. Ayato is a great lead; very clearly a stroppy teenager (with the added bonus of being a tortured artist) but he is immensely relatable and often rather likeable. The show drip-feeds information about him, his past, and the past of those around him, and there is no recurring character who I could outright call unrelatable. Sure, some of them are a bit undeveloped, but it’s a large cast, and when even your slimy villains have a lot of depth to them, it’s testament to the effort going in.
I will take a brief side-note here to talk about the dub, which I ended up watching pretty much because I had the DVD and though ‘why not?’. For an older dub, it’s not half-bad; it has the ‘overly-cinematic’ feel that comes with a lot of these shows, but it’s helped by a lot of genuinely good actors. Monica Rial is good as Haruka, Hilary Haag is great as Megu, and Chris Patton steals every scene he’s in as Ayato, nailing the character to a tee. The only major player who feels a little bit off is Illich Guardiola as Isshiki; he’s not ‘bad’, per se, but his performance never feels particularly natural. I’m going to blame misdirection more than anything else because more than anything he just sounds like he’s say ing eve r ee thing com pleet lee pho ne ti ca lee. But hey, it’s listenable, and by the end of the series he’s gotten the hang of the character.
That’s the other thing with the show; for as much as it improves on the likeablility of Eva’s cast, when it comes to the story issues it suffers from a lot of the same problems. In fact the two are largely the same in a lot of areas; starting solidly, introducing the stakes, have some deeply meaningful character-driven battles and scenes, then slowly but surely pulling apart the logic and explanation until the ending happens and you’re just left there wondering what the heck you just witnessed.
It’s because of this that I can’t really call Rahxephon a ‘better’ show than Evangelion. It certainly had a lot of effort going in to make it ‘as good’, and it has a style and beauty all its own. But the characters and story do kind of follow the same formulas, and fall into the same pitfalls along the way, except that when Evangelion did it, the pitfalls matched up with the human nature of the cast. It’s hard not to watch Rahxephon and feel a little bit of artificiality; after all, we’ve seen this story before.
But at the same time, the end result is something completely different. Rahxephon’s story is, ultimately, an optimistic one; a coming-of-age tale and a fairy tale and a hopeful glance to the future. And it’s because of this that I love it far, far more than I could ever love Evangelion. Eva’s story is deeply resonant and a harsh look into the human psyche and the depths of depression, and is based off a worldview so departed from my own that I can’t help but reject the show entirely. Some people can watch Eva and find beauty and meaning. I am not one of those people. Sorry.
So it’s in that regard that I love the fact that Rahxephon exists, and, shallow as it may seem, that somebody created a show under the same idea that follows my own worldview. Rahxephon is a beautiful and well-executed show, and a solid recommendation to anyone. I can’t call it ‘great’ same as I can’t call Evangelion ‘great’; both of them have very similar flaws in story and their overall endings. However it is still well-worth a watch, with the slight caveat that you really do need to watch Evangelion first; love it or hate it, it is an experience that will stay with you and one of the most iconic shows you will ever see.
In summary: Is Rahxephon better than Evangelion? No. Did I enjoy it more? Oh yes. Which should you watch? Evangelion for the experience, then Rahxephon for a new and different take on it. Between the two, you should find something you enjoy.
(And then you should watch Bokurano because it surpasses them both)
