entertain

Wow, I just finished watching the last episode of this series about three hours ago, so it’s nice and fresh in my memory. I will now say that this series is really fucking awesome. It just is. It has great character development, a plot that keeps changing in the right ways to keep it interesting the whole way through, and animation that rivals the movie.

For those out there who have seen neither this nor X: The Movie; don’t watch the movie to see if you’ll like this, it’s a total spoiler, and it’s not even a fraction as satisfying! The movie is great if you’ve read the manga(I assume, since this is based on it), or seen this series first, but is in no way a substitute or preview. It is a very shortened version of the story, redone in a very basic way, so as not to require so much of the plot to have a finished movie that made some sort of sense.

The movie version is cool, has great animation, and is breathtaking. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most unsatisfying things one can ever watch, if not seen after knowing the full story already. The series is nearly as breathtaking, but with a full, and well-told plot, and thus, is far superior.

The soundtrack to this series is pretty cool too. It isn’t boring, and gives a great atmosphere to it. It is sort of a mixture between American, dramatic movie-music, and weird, anime-techno-classical mood music. It’s not as outstanding as it theoretically could have been, and I’m not about to buy it, but it’s not as bad as could have been either. By far.

Now that I’ve gotten over how well-done it is, here’s a little about the plot.

The premise, is that there has been written in the stars for centuries, how at one point in time, two groups of incredibly powerful individuals, knowing their fates from birth, will come together in two places in Tokyo, the city where the seven shields guarding humanity from apocalypse are held. And they will battle, until their two figureheads “Kamui” will have a final confrontation, deciding the fate of humanity and the Earth. One of the groups, the Dragons of Earth, wish for the world to be cleansed of humanity, so that is can return to its former state, and become healthy again, kinda of like über-extreme environmentalists I suppose. The other are the Dragons of Heaven, who are the pro-further-existence-of-the human-race group. They are shown as the good-guys in th story, and have the main character among them. The “real” Kamui, rather, the one who had been given the name at birth, though his nemesis becomes known as Kamui once they are both awakened.. but anyway.. (punches self for giving away a portion of the plot) One is given more information about the people of the Dragon of Heaven, and sympathises with them from the beginning. The interesting thing about the series, is that contrary to the movie, the Dragons of Earth are not villanized very much, but are shown more to be people who were brought together only by fate’s strings, and are not necessarily doing it out of their own “evil beliefs”.

Here are some more of the reasons I find the series to be so much better than the movie:

Being able to know so much about each character just really makes it a hundred times better. Unfortunately, I saw the movie several times before this even came out, and was never that sympathetic to most of the characters, because they just didn’t mean anything to me, and seemed to die before I even learned their names. “I didn’t care that all the main characters had died, but they sure looked cool..” is a pretty good way of describing the movie, and that’s what is completely different in the series.

And to your great happiness, the series is already being released in the US., and the First disk, along with a pretty box for the whole set is on sale now in most entertainment stores, thanks to anime’s recent popularity in the mainstream. Which I have mixed feelings, about.. but that’s another story.

Go see if you can rent it, or hell, just take my word for it, and buy the damn thing, or download it* if you do that sorta thing.. (slides eyes far to the left)
But watch it.

*BAMboozled.org and its affiliates do not in any way condone the pirating of licensed video in any way, shape or form.