RahXephon delivers the goods, especially in the areas of characters, costumes and mecha designs.

RahXephon. V.1, Threshold V.2, Tonal Pattern. V.3, Harmonic Convergence. V.4, Dissonance. V.5, Synaesthesia. V.6, Aria. V.7, Crescendo.
TV series (26 episodes), 2002. Director: Yutaka Izubuchi. V.1, five episodes/125 minutes; v.2, 4 & 6, four episodes/100 minutes; v.3, 5 & 7, three episodes/75 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: A.D.V. Films.

The publicity for RahXephon ("This century's first high density sci-fi animation," "Finally, a mecha anime for the 21st century!") implies something special. In general, it delivers. RahXephon was the first major TV anime series created by the new BONES, Inc. animation studio (founded in October 1998 by veterans from the Sunrise studio), and they went all out to make it stand out with especially attractive character, costume and mecha designs. The solipsistic sci-fi plot of an average guy finding out that he is not average, and actually the whole world is a sham constructed around him, is nothing new (from the Japanese Megazone 23 to the American The Matrix). Creator/director Yutaka Izubuchi stated in interviews that he took a lot of old sci-fi anime stereotypes and updated them to a modern, more sophisticated artistic and plot level.

Ayato Kamina is apparently a normal high school student. Suddenly Tokyo is attacked by mystery fighter planes, and Japan's Self-Defense Force defends with incredible flying giant stylized statues of singing women named Allegretto and Fortissimo who shatter the attacking planes with sonic waves. Ominous "men in black" government agents try to hustle Ayato off at gunpoint, but he is saved from them by an ass-kicking female secret-agent type while one of his classmates, a girl whose beauty is so ethereal that it is a good bet she is not human, leads him to an unmarked subway stop that looks like a cross between a military base and an Aztec shrine, where... (and this is in just the first episode).

After this attention-grabbing pilot episode, an introspective mood soon predominates. Ayato learns that Tokyo was conquered by aliens called Mulians 15 years earlier, and enclosed in a force-field dome cutting it off from the rest of the world. The Mulians use mind control on the inhabitants to Tokyo to keep them from realizing what is going on. Ayato is soon helped to escape from Tokyo, and he joins the Earth Federation's TERRA defense force which seeks to learn more about the aliens to combat them effectively. Several episodes are spent introducing a supporting cast and building up their varied personalities.

Yet Ayato is quickly aware that he is not being told everything. Part of the secrecy appears due to petty factional backstabbing among the international agencies fighting the aliens, but some of his new acquaintances also seem to have secret personal reasons to help or hinder him. The more paranoid Ayato becomes and investigates what is being hidden from him, the more reasons he learns everyone has to distrust him. Is his mother the leader of the Mulians? Who are the Mulians, really? Who is actually behind the Earth Federation?

RahXephon was a 26-episode TV series, broadcast on Fuji TV weekly (with several breaks) from January 21 through September 11, 2002 on Tuesdays at 1:58 am (?!). Despite the ungodly timeslot, it was popular enough to be condensed into a theatrical feature with about 20 minutes of new animation (released April 19, 2003) and made into a video game. The action is not as important as the mature emotional depth of the characters and their relationships (episode 18 is a particularly somber shocker), and the complex sci-fi scenario involving different time-rates (times passes more slowly in Mulian-controlled Tokyo) and the uses of song and music as a sonic weapon (the 26 episodes are called First Movement, Second Movement, etc.).

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment's The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).