Wonderful character development!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

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.

The very beginning of the anime left me scratching my head and wondering what the hell just happened. I loved the middle of the series when Aiyto was on the new island and watching his relations with everyone else. Towards the end he starts getting an attitude problem as he finds out he is a "mulian"(enemy of humans) *spoiler* The Ending just seamed illogical to me and really stupid. It kinda fits the shoddy story but i would have rather seen it go other direction. *spoiler*If you like mecha anime, its definitely worth watching the first 2/3 of the show.

The main problem with RahXephon is that it tries too hard to duplicate the success of Neon Genesis Evangelion, ending up rather derivative and turgid in the process. It has it all: the teenager with the knack for mecha piloting and whining, the cute but enigmatic "waif prophetess", the mysterious mecha that isn't really a mecha, the strange invaders named according to the show's theme, the ancient conspiracy, the world cataclysm, and, of course, the Looming Apocalypse™.Another issue is the rather incoherent and contrived feel that comes from trying to combine a musical (specifically operatic) motif with Mayan mythology. The writers did not seem particularly knowledgeable about music, however, and the most conspicuous example of the musical element is the fact that many of the angels, er, dolem look like giant stone Valkyries, suitably stylized to look Mayan, who use song as a weapon. Another is the rather silly naming scheme for the dolems, which seems to involve picking random terms out of a book on music.Despite these rather glaring issues, RahXephon did have some nice aspects, such as the music, unsurprisingly, and some plot twists involving the origins of Ayato and so forth. Although hardly a great series, it's not too bad if you can't find much else to watch.