To Build A Better Robot
For being a self-professed anime junkie, I must admit to being only lukewarm on the standard 'mecha' (giant robot) concept. In such a visceral medium, the exploits of in a suit of armor the size of an office building slugging it out against some monster of the week in a downtown area seems a rather detached form of entertainment. And that's only if the director isn't pretentious enough to beat the viewer over the head with a cross constructed from a disturbingly poor interpretation of Christian mythology (as if there's any other kind).

[Whereupon the narrator coughs three times in succession, the 2nd one sounding suspiciously like the word "Evangelion", before continuing].

My problem is that there seem to be no real consequences for this kind of story, other than for the strangely brooding main character with a score to settle that almost always seems to be piloting these giant 'bots. Sure, people may get killed, but it's just ink and paint eating it if there's no point of connection between the audience and the subject material. It's the thin line between making a show and showing off, which the vast majority of anime ends up doing anyway. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for catering to vices; though without anything to distinguish one from another, even guilty pleasures can become hollow. So it was with trepidation that I accepted the gift of a series called RahXephon on another's recommendation with the promise that this would be a standout among recent animated Japanese exports I'd ocularly imbibed of late.

Robot Jerx
Hunkering down to watch the 26-episode series, the first half-hour segment introduces us to 17-year-old Ayato Kamina, a normal Tokyo teen. Constantly brushed aside by his single workaholic mom, he pours his talents into a painting - a girl in yellow on a cliff staring out to sea. On his way to school with his friends, his bullet train is derailed one day by what seems to be a war breaking out in the city as huge fighter jets are not only battling ground troops, but mysterious giant mechs shaped like busts of busty angelic women. Escaping the battle to find help for his chums, he runs into the exact girl from his painting - Reika Mishima. Trying to protect Reika, he encounters another mysterious woman -- one who fights off shadowy suits with blue blood, and offers to show him the truth about what's going on. With Reika in tow, Ayato runs once more into his third and strangest encounter yet - a giant egg surrounded by picturesque ruins. Being absorbed into the huge hardboiled relic, Ayato finds he's inside the titular RahXephon, a giant angelically-themed mech...one that his oft-absent mother seems to have more than a little to do with. Still, it's a damn sweet ride to pick up your prom date in. Confronted with one of the chickmechs he saw earlier in the day, Ayato decimates it, but too late to save Reika, who disappeared in a blast from its weaponry. Since the only things Ayato's shown himself to be adept at are running and stumbling into things, he flees Tokyo, only to find that it is surrounded by a huge dusky red barrier which his mech penetrates easily. Upon reaching the outside, he again meets the blue-haired woman who fought the men in black. Introducing herself as Haruka Shitow, she explains to him that Tokyo is under control of a species called the MU, blue blooded bastards who've declared war on humanity and sectioned off the city through the huge dome he saw, called Tokyo Jupiter. Aside from effectively walling off their base of operations, it distorts time -- the city Ayato came from is actually several years in the past. She is part of a resistance force determined to bring the Mulians down and save the world. Kamina and his wonderful toy were the objective, and she invites him to join their military. After half an episode of tedious navel gazing, pontification and pathos, Kamina decides to throw in with their merry band of outlaws.

At first glance, the plot reads like anime Mad Libs - any proper noun in the above paragraph could be substituted to become nearly any other series about an awkward teen and his giant robot. Sure, there's an underlying orchestral theme permeating the story to distinguish this from other mechanime (episodes are referred to as 'movements'), and the episodes are saturated not only with beautiful sound, but the bright pastels that animation houses have fallen in love with in recent days. And the voluptuous female character designs would certainly cause a Movement In A Minor, if that's your thing. These qualities hardly qualify as a solid draw, however. More of a drawback is Ayato, the rather feckless main character. Although he has his moments of establishing empathy with others around him and the audience,( the sometimes cute, sometimes eerie relationship between him and Haruka, 12 years his senior notwithstanding) and he seems doomed to be the dupe ex machina that powers RahXephon. More of interest is the supporting cast - I found myself interested in some of the multilayered second-stringers than the primary ones. Most of the military staff not played for comic relief has their own secrets and dark pasts, and while contrived in some cases, deal with them as real people would. Yet, at most, these fleshed-out characters only get an episode or two before the series is handed back to the caricatures. Even the battles with the huge Mulian mechs known as Dolem(ites. the tough black mechs that won't cop out when there's heat all about), though frequent through the bulk of the show, are brief and seem rather lacking despite the obviously high production values.

Cybored
Toward the tail end of the tale, RahXephon picks up as later episodes fill in the blanks of previous ones, but it's all a question of wanting to actually see the questions raised resolved. No matter - by the final episodes the series dives headlong into a shallow pool of dense symbolism more disappointing than the finales of Farscape and the X-Files combined. The safest bet is that even if you watch RahXephon all the way through, once is all you'll need, despite there being a movie in the works. Give me Cowboy Bebop any day. Although granted, perhaps I'm just bitter -- when I was in high school, all I got was my dad's old Volkswagen.