It’s the CLAMP version of Armageddon. No, no one is forgetting the feeling of love toward her most precious person this time, nor are any fantastical worlds being destroyed due to the lack of a Pillar. From one of CLAMP’s earlier and still ongoing manga series, X revolves around the story of the choices and world of one teenage boy, Shirou Kamui. For it has been prophesized that the Chi no Ryu, the “Dragon of Earth,” will lead the other six angels to the destruction of humanity. Opposing the seven angels is the Ten no Ryu, “Dragon of Heaven,” who will, with his other six seals, fight at any cost for the sake of human life. But who is the Chi no Ryu, and who is the Ten no Ryu? They are found in the chosen one, ‘Kamui’, whose name can be read as either ‘one who carries the will of the gods’ or as ‘one who will destroy the gods’. He is the one who will decide fate, by choosing to become either the Ten no Ryu or the Chi no Ryu. Once the ‘Kamui’ chooses, the fate of the world will be shown on the Promised Day in the year 1999…
That sounds dramatic. It was dramatic. The ending was even dramatic.
But why, oh why, did it begin to stink so much?
It must’ve been waiting to happen. [EN: Sheesh...]
Perhaps because it’s one of the older CLAMP pieces, I was expecting the animation to be prettier. CCS was gorgeous to watch, MKR had the grace of a dead pig, and the latest work is in different styles. But X surpasses them by looking … well, plastic. I find it odd that none of them have any lips, just skin and a slit that constitutes for a mouth.
But aside from that.
On its own, this anime is relatively okay. It has a good plot, good characters, and nice, fairly decent battles.
But the farther you get into this show, “okay” slowly changes into mediocre. The more plot gets crammed in, the less you know. The less you see. More is happening, but it somehow has little impact.
What do I mean? Well, to start off, you have the people. The characters in X are great. You’ve got the seven seals, the seven angels, and their supporting cast. With the two divisions alone, you have fourteen characters. They’re all amazing individuals, with interesting side stories. Parts of their stories are clichéd, some aren’t. Angst is prominent in all of them, and with most of them, some type of romance. But, they still manage to all be individual.
It’s just a horrible shame we didn’t get to see much of them.
Perhaps it’s because there were so many characters and so, so little time. It’s already a stated fact that Kamui is the Main Character Of This Series. And he’s likeable. He really is.
But they make him so incredibly flat. He’s always on the defense, and shoving his own offense down your throat at the same time. And then when he finally stops doing that, he’s moping. And it’s not just him. Concentrating on him so much leaves little room to concentrate on anyone else, not even the other “Kamui”, the Gemini to Shirou Kamui. He had the potential to become one of the most ruthless, wicked, cruel, and interesting characters ever – and instead was reduced to, “This world wishes for rebirth”, and “Kamui, I am Kamui”. At the end of the show, I had the rather annoying feeling that the other “Kamui” hadn’t done anything of his own choice, and had just been brainwashed. At the end, you have no idea what the real personality of the other “Kamui” is like. Other than that he likes songbirds – alive, that is - after all.
And it became the same for the other characters. Filled to burst with fascinating, tragic pasts – there’s not a single person in this story who had a “happy” past – they became rather flat. By the end of this show, everything is gone, as well as the potential. The relationship between Kamui and Subaru was toned down significantly – as well as other hints of yaoi relationships. In fact, I was beginning to get the impression from this anime that Subaru and Seishirou were “just friends”.
Neither is anything well balanced. As I said, there are seven seals and seven angels, making fourteen real main characters. Theoretically. Some characters either aren’t important enough, apparently, which is why Kazuki/Nataku had, at max, ten lines in twenty-four episodes before the end.
Why this lack of characterization happened – or rather why it didn’t happen – is clear: there wasn’t enough time. They condensed – or tried to – a fifteen plus volume, still-running manga series – into twenty-four episodes. Stretching manga by adding fillers is bad, but equally so is cramming everything in. And that’s what they did. The X manga is – plot wise – a slow manga, the pace being slowed down even more by the fact that CLAMP was very, very fond of double page layouts with little text. But because of this, everything about the X characters develops slowly, look by look, touch by touch. <SPOILER>Hinoto’s insanity was supposed to be a gradual thing – in this anime, I had no idea why she was going insane, so when the anime ended I was left with a sense of incompletion.</SPOILER> It seems to be like CLAMP – Card Captor Sakura was equally slow to develop.
But CCS had seventy episodes to stretch things over – very slowly – and X had twenty-four. In the end, it was almost as rushed as the X movie, but with the nice fact that major characters didn’t die within the first five minutes. In terms of plot, it’s understandable – but not necessarily forgivable – as to why it began to reek towards the end. As stated before, this manga series is still running. There was no end that they could take the television series finale from.
The plot is planned by destiny. Seven seals versus seven dragons, big face off in 1999. Whoever wins determines the fate of humanity. Naturally, it’s going to come down to one on one. The fact that the prologue OVA tells you which side Kamui chooses, plus who dies, has the watcher start this show knowing what the characters know. The OVA is also the majority of where one will see Kakyou moving.
And so, the real power of X lies not so much in the plot, but in the characters that drive it forward. It is in the intricate relationships between the characters, and what they do to each other. The Seishirou-Subaru-Hokuto angle was absolutely wonderful.
It was unfortunate, and bad, that it was cut off before half the anime was done.
Without the characters that drive this plot, the plot falls apart. Fore-ordained suddenly becomes staid, boring, and predictable. Half the fun watching this in the beginning is thinking of all the disturbing ways to get around prophecies, and watching them backfire.
It’s odd, because when I first wrote a review for this, I had only watched twelve episodes. Despite its plastic looks, I was pleased. It had potential this way and that way, twelve having been a pivotal movement. Everything was going to start moving, all the cogs were going to start moving, and most especially, a closer look would be taken at the wonderful characters. The absolute possibilities this anime had was flooring.
It then made for a much higher drop as the show tumbled down. Which is why this review is as negative as possible.
There are fairly good things about this anime as well. Although they fell into a “character of the episode to spend some time on before we ignore him or her or it again”, it didn’t make them bad. When they bothered to characterize characters, it usually turned out well – exception being Kazuki – such as the Yuzuriha episode. Never mind that I had an urge to laugh, hysterically, during her angst scenes. It was still well done.
It wasn’t horrible. I’m nitpicking over this much more now then I did while I was watching. In fact, I enjoyed watching it. But I wouldn’t do it again. Not because it’s disturbing, like a horror film, but because its stupidity can only be taken with grain of salt once. Twice, I pull out the chainsaws.
