X TV Series DVD Anime Review

Overview

At the millennial edge, the concluding battle for humanity’s future is staged. Kamui Shirou’s destiny has been decided as he returns to Tokyo to face his ultimate challenge. The Dragons of Heaven, defenders of the Earth, stand ready to protect the world from the Dragon of Earths, the seven angels of legend, who embrace the devastation of the planet to bring about its purification. Now Kamui must decide which side to fight for although he finds the idea utterly unappealing. It isn’t until realizing that his two childhood friends, Fuma and Kotori Monou, are in grievous peril that Kamui decides to step into his fated position in the climactic struggle of the Year of Destiny: 1999.

Review

So let’s talk about X TV series a bit. I’ll tell you why I sat down and watched all 26 episodes of X in a 2 day period. Actually it’s more like a zero to 25 episode show because the zero episode is like a collage of things to come; so if you see it, don’t be weirded out. Originally created by Clamp, the basic story found in X is that Kamui holds the key to the future, and the battle of this future will be waged by the 7 seals and the 7 dragons of earth. These 14 beings are super human, and have varying abilities. The true key, is that they must wage war as soon as they see each other. OK, so you’ve read the overview above. It gives you an idea of the struggle between opposing forces, but it doesn’t tell you about the bazillion bouncing characters that roam throughout the saga.

You see each side has 7 angels making a total of 14 really important characters and a ton of extras and superfluous characters as well. As the show goes on each angel gets to tell his or her back story that we get to see acted out up to the point of the present where all they do is try to kill members of the opposing team. These back-stories are well crafted because once you’ve seen them you love that character unconditionally and would hate to see them die, even though a lot of them do.

Let me say the fight scenes are topnotch and quite entertaining; it has all the high flying battle scenes with well developed characters and emotional scenes that might be lacking from Dragon Ball Z. To say the honest truth, I felt the show to be very “X-men vs. The Avengers” if you follow what I’m saying. Both sides have these super cool secret bases of operation; each angel has a very distinct gift or power. Interesting components to the fights are the use of Barrier Fields (cool idea) that only the angels of Earth could put up. It turns out that anything within the field is displaced in reality so things like buildings are destroyed but they have no physical effect on the outside world unless the angel that puts up the field dies (super strange).

The philosophies that permeate the show are a smashed together combination of Eastern and Western religious beliefs and of course add sprinkles of Meta-Physics and you have X. You never know if it’s about God, Earth, reality, so forth and so on. Hell it’s just fun to watch. Believe it or not with all the fighting and death, there is some real humor that shines in here. I was even disturbed that I was having a good time watching a violent and apocalyptic show, but people see the best in everything I guess.

Now while on the subject of apocalypse and the “End of the World” and yata, yata, yata, each side, the angels of Heaven and Earth have what is called a Kamui (not going to get into it) lets just say, really dangerous guys and team leaders. These Kamui guys are the only individuals that can wield Divine Swords that believe it or not burst from the bodies of Human sacrifices (no way, yes way). Women give birth to these super weapons, you gotta see it. This show just keeps on getting crazier. To top it off these Kamui’s were once best friends (dangit).

People out there, this is a sure good time. If you’re pissed that there just isn’t anything good to watch lately, check this out. Oh yeah, sorry no mecha in this show.

I haven’t seen the X motion picture, so don’t confuse this with the series. They may be two completely different animals.

Review by David Marini
www.everythingevangelion.com