Please don't spend money on this.

Disturbing yet enthralling

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Although RahXephon shares several similarities to Evangellion in the end it's core story is actually about love and not war and a love that even transcends space and time for that matter. Because of that both the Federation and the Mullians play a secondary role in this anime which in the end proves to be a good thing, that is if you are sentimental as i. Of course much like many anime on the way to find complete love our hero goes through many trials and lots of sad events but what's new? Personally although RahXephon is considered a sci-fi anime i think that it has amongst the top 5 love stories i have ever seen in an anime and no matter how many times i see it i always wish we had more Harukas in the real world.

SuperbI've recently viewed this series for the third time (the 1st was in 2003 and the 2nd in 2007) and incredibly I've yet seen new particulars that I've missed the previous times. I consider it a sign of a worthy production.The story is complex but not obscure and, in contrast to Neon Genesis Evangelion, everything reaches a natural explanation toward the end of the series. And where NGE takes a lot of references from the Qabbalah and the Jewish tradition, RahXephon takes its from Aztec and Mayan lore.Sometimes it takes time to check the crossed links in the anime, and sometimes require a little of work to understand what is apparently a missing point. For example is easy to grasp that Watari Shirou is the father of Ayato, a little more tricky it's to understand how Kisaragi Quon is the real mother of Ayato and his twin brother ItsukiThe characters are well developed, with deep and complex interaction between them. The main character, Ayato, is well characterized and doesn't provoke the impulse to slap him continuously (as Shinji Hikari does)Premising that I've seen the original Japanese anime and not the American dubbed one, I can state that the audio is simply outstanding. Starting from the ouverture of "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg" by Wagner the series is full of music, the recurring theme from "Polovetskie plyaski" by Borodin, up to the compositions by Hashimoto Ichiko, like the delicious "Katun no Sadame", make it tasty to listen. And the music pervades everything in the show, dolem (DO-RE-MI?) are named with music terms (like Allegretto, Fortissimo, Falsetto), the last purpose of the RahXephon system is "to tune the world" etc...Everything is cured even the name of the characters, e.g. "Kamina" means "the name of the god", "Ayato" is written as "the design of the man", "Watari Shirou" could be translated as "requests truth the samurai's son" There are also numerous references to other works in primis "L'oiseau bleu" by Maeterlinck (also Michiru, the dead daughter of Kunugi Jin could be a transliteration of Mytyl), but also references from Japanese folk tradition like "Urashima Taro". It's like a game to find them all.I consider it a masterpiece and I recommend to view it.

What can i say guys: like you all said, its one of a nice plot, nice animation, nice movements, little is bad on the whole thing. Storyline is great too, tears in my eyes, and still i cant shake the love in this one...OK, there are similarities with NGE, and these are A LOT! check wickepedia for a list of some. OK, i like Japanese anime for the depth of the characters, and the psychology of the whole thing. They bring a new meaning to the word DEEP! But with NGE, i had to go to 100 sites and to find 100 different interpretations to reach to the conclusion of what happened at the end of the series and EOE. the end of the season was nice, but didn't make much sense to me, plus it was sooooooooooo psychologically messed up, i couldn't get it out of my mind for the next 4-5 weeks! MENTAL. Of course had to watch it another 1-2 times, where you understand a bit more.now with this one, it flows much better. Still deep in love, drama, action, etc, but in a more understandable way. And not that the ending is too easy to understand the first time, the way that it rolls out, but it was great! I still cant get the love on this out of my head. tear-bringer all the way, and nice action to cover your mental health :) there's been so much mecha out there, you definitely don't know where to start from. One of the best is this one! you wont regret it, even if you watched the NGE. Plus this i wouldn't exactly call it a mecha, more like a love story with mecha in it...great stuff if you're into it.have fun

Pretty disappointing series which really started to annoy me towards the end. Although some of the concepts were quite nice (singing mechas! Heh!), the story behind it stood on very wobbly ground, with a lot of plot-points which didn't make any sense or had no relevance at all. If there's anyone out there who could explain to me why the Mu put Tokyo into a timebubble in the first place, I would be very happy. The only use I could find in it, was that they would have a plot-device to create the Haruka/Ajato-Storyline. Apart from that it was very unclear to me what the Mu were trying to achieve ("We want to tune the world!" doesn't say anything to me) or what their whole war with TERRA was actually about. And why exactly were they a threat to humanity and how did TERRA know? Information that was simply missing.Then there were quite a lot of subplots which sat there totally independent of the main-story. Most of them felt pretty useless in retrospective (especially the two Megumi-Lovestories) and made the impression that they were just there so that they had enough material to fill 26 episodes. And... keyword "lovestories"... there were too many going on at the same time. Especially in the last few episodes it started to become really ridiculous when there were about 5 or 6 women (maybe even more) in love with Ajato at the same time or had at least a crush on him.A lot of people made a comment about how rich and well fleshed out the characters are. Well, my impression was the exact opposite. Almost everyone in the series seemed very flat and uninteresting to me. And yep, underdeveloped. Maybe it's because they had just too much characters on board, so that it was too hard to focus on everyone. But when I take at the "X"-TV-series where they had a LOT more characters to work with and yet they were all more than your usual stereotype... and considering that they had fewer episodes to offer... Hm.Even some of the main-characters had their flaws, especially Ajato, whose characterization seemed to flip around from now and then and suffered from inexplicable mood-swings. When it was necessary for the main-story Ajato was an angry, impulsive guy. But then he could be very understanding and calm although the situation was (still) the same. And these irritating mood-swings could happen within minutes. VERY inconsistent writing, in my opinion...The other thing I was wondering about was why so many people are persistently proclaiming that this is NOT a copy of "Evangelion"... and how much it stands on its own feet and how much more it is different from the GAINAX-series. Well, hum... Apart from the very similar character-designs (watch out for the twins of Misato, Asuka, Commander Ikari and Ritsukos brother) and yep, even set-designs (hello, pyramid!), "RahXephon" copies entire episodes from its predecessor. Here we have the "hero gets unconscious in the mecha and has surreal dreams"-ep, there is the "evil mecha who sucks his enemy into another dimension"-ep, and so on... The same goes for some of the plot-lines, like the one about the old guy who pulls all the strings in the background to achieve his own personal goals (he even has a German name - like in "Evangelion"). But the most obvious rip-off of them all can be witnessed in the last two episodes when everything goes "End of Evangelion", but in a very stale, shallow and meaningless way, lacking the philosophy and the depth which made the EVA-series and -films great. And when most of the questions are left being unanswered it doesn't feel mysterious or exciting in any way. They're just gaps which result from bad editing and even worse scriptwriting.The only good positive aspects were the great animation and the decent soundtrack (lovely title-song). But that alone doesn't make a good show.All in all an anime-series which wants to be important and meaningful at all costs but actually doesn't have anything to say. Underneath the pseudo-complicated plots and the pseudo-intellectual psycho-babble there is nothing more than hot air and a lot of steam. Very disappointing and not worth a second watch.