Feb 17 2009
X on Sci Fi- X is not always the unknown
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Greetings tomos (friends) and fellow anime fans,
Wanna become as confused as Hell? Then by all means get X- the movie, X-the OVA or X- the tv series. Which one? Take your pick. Mostly all the same except unless you’ve watched the preceding groundwork animes Tokyo Babylon and a few others or at least have read the magnas (Japanese comic books) you won’t have a clue as to the plot, storyline, theme, characterizations or even the premise. The year is constant- 1999. Why? Because of the fear of the Y2K syndrome of course.
In X’s case it is Armageddon or the end of the world unless the forces of the two ‘ryuu’ or dragons decide otherwise. Two dragons of which one is the Dragon of the Earth and seeks to renew the planet thus restoring Terra or Gaia to her former glory. Unfortunately that would mean the end of Mankind. There would follow a moratorium before the next stage of evolution would begin.
The othe the Dragon of Heaven seeks to preserve Mankind and yet still save the planet. To these ends the two Dragons each must have a champion of their cause. Enter Kamui who adores his love Kotori. She and her brother Fumo are fast tomos (friends) with Kamui and exist happily together in the Shinto shrine maintained by Kotori and Fumo. In Shintoism mikos (preistesses) and preists or monks are usually family and these titles are passed down from father to son and more importantly from mother to daughter and mother to son as is the case with Kamui.
Several years have passed since Kamui left the shrine to be with his mother. Before he left he swore to always protect Kotori. As Fumo could not accompany his tomo he swore to always protect Kamui like a brother and to keep his (Fumo’s) sister Kotori safe until Kamui’s return. Kamui is told by Mama that the fate of the Earth rests with him and that he must choose to become one of the two ‘ryuu’ or dragons.
What he does not know is that Fumo and he are really ’star twins’ having both been born under the same ‘Subaru’ (Nai (No) not the auto makers. A ’subaru’ is a grouping of seven stars such as the ‘Pleiades’ the 7 Sisters or as in this case the ’subaru’ of the ‘Big Dipper’ which features prominently in the anime ‘Fist of the North Star’ where Kinshiro has been marked by the ‘7 Scars’ shaped like the star group) and as such they are almost identical even if their appearances are very different.
Then Mommy drops the bombshell on the kid. Whatever ‘dragon’ Kamui chooses to champion Fumo will be compelled to champion the other. That meant of course a final bro vs bro battle for Earth. Then she gives him the lowdown and tells him to trust Hinoto the light dream weaver but not her sister Kanoe the dark dream weaver.
This duet’s a real trip, man! Both advise Tokyo’s government officials and leaders on political strategy! And we thought that Ronnie Reagan’s wife Nancy using psychics to determine our government policies was weird! How and why do these sisters hold so much influence? Simple really. They can both enter your dreams and although not able to ‘predict’ true future events they can show ya all the ‘possible’ future scenarios. Sounds a lot like old Freddy Kreuger to me. Hinoto becomes Kamui’s adviser while Fumo takes his cues from Kanoe.
Each ‘dragon’ has a team of six or seven ’shinobi’ or warriors ranging in age from 14 year old schoolgirls to 30-something yuppies! And they all have fantastic powers like Ninjas, Samurai, mikos, preists, Kami (God) the only thing they don’t have is Light Yagami’s ‘Death Note’ books!
Each of the Heaven gang has been charged with protecting a certain portion of Tokyo like the Kabuu Kichuu or red light district, Tokyo Train Station’s area, the Sony skyscrapers sector which is where the giant super computer a la Metropolis is another Dragon team member, the Okachoa residential district, the Mt Fuji religious hills and of course the final battleground for Kamui and Fumo- the Tokyo Tower!
Each Heaven member and Kamui have the ability to activate a ‘power shield’ in the shape of a cylinder, triangle, pyramid, square, rectangle, etc. which they ‘call down’ from the BD ’subaru’. What this does is contain the entire district and instantly transport that area and the combatant to another dimension! If the Heavener prevails and defeats or kills his/her Earther opponent the status quo is maintained and any damges to the city are negated. However, should the H-guy or H-gal fail and/or die then all bets are off and the damages and killings are for real! The Earthers have no shields because they plan on annihilating Mankind and rebirthing the world. TYhey could care less about damages and deaths!
The two ‘teams’ resemble somthing out of YuYu Hakusho’s Spirit Files with two of them being just kids! One girl has an ‘inu yuyu’ or spirit dog to defend her. She’s the youngest having just turned 14. The other schoolgirl carries a katana (sword) inside her own body and uses it with devastating force. Both schoolgirls are Heaveners as is the hooker/stripper and her tomo who looks like a geeky Kikuchi from GTO.
The Earthers are masters of the natural elements and in the East there are five not four: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and Metal. Each one has an element under his/her control while the sixth is magical. To make things even more confusing Fumo and Kamui are sent in and out of dream sequences by Hinato and Kanoe almost constantly. In addition Fumo seems to become Kamui in appearance so much that the gangs think there are two Kamuis!
Koteri is kidnapped by Kanoe because of the sword she carries within her for Kamui! Of ourse for ’sword’ read ‘child’ eh? Told you this was deep folks, did I not? Kamui keeps seeing himself killing and decapitating his love Koteri and almost quits the fight several times. The tide of these battles is pretty much one-sided to say the least and like Code Gess all of this crap has been mystically ‘pre-ordained’ meaning it’s already been done before and well they already know the outcome! Such is fate- most things cannot be changed and as Hinoto told Kamui ‘Tokyo Tower will be the final battle for civilization’.
X reads like a very poorly written play of one of the Bard’s tragedies. Remember the old Shakespeare school joke? What’s the difference betwixt a comedy and a tragedy in Shakespeare? In a comedy somebody’s still alive at the end and in a tragedy everybody dies. Be warned- X ain’t for the squeamish orthe faint of heart. Blood, guts, gore, not much profanity if any, violence, beheadings, killings, destruction, mania, sounds like a Johnny Carpenter horror movie!
In this case X does not mean the unknown entirely. Instead X denotes the choice that must be made by Kamui. Choose Heaven and Kotori and Fumo must die but hey! the Earth and her peoples are saved! Choose Earth and well everybody dies!
At the end of the OVA, movie, series there is a different albeit definite ending. Having never seen X the series nor X the OVA (made for video) I dunno how the endings differ from the film and I ain’t gonna tell ya how the film ends either. The manga remains unfinished so who knows how X’s creators envision the end?
That is Kamui, Fuma and Hinoto in the top pix of this post. Most of the pix I have are from wikipedia.org/X(Manga) and they hae a superbly written synopsis of the main plot and characters with correlations drawn between the anime, manga, film and reality. For instance Kamui is clearly wrestling with his inner Kamui (Fumo) as to whether or not he made the right choice.
Animenewsnetwork.com/X(Movie), X(Anime) have good voice casts and so does crystalacids.com/database/X and voicechasers.com/productions/X. TV.com is not too good this time. Will CLAMP decide to follow in Death Note’s footsteps and cast a live action X movie? Maybe.
Incidentally the ‘Dragons’ and ‘Armageddon’ are mentioned in the Christian Bible under Revelations. The quotes are in wikipedia.org/X(Manga). Here are the Dragons sigils or symbols for the 7 Dragons of Heaven.
a href=’http://doyouloveanime.today.com/files/2009/02/x-the-subaru-or-7-stars-of-the-dragons-of-heaven.jpg’ title=’Subaru of the 7 Dragons of Heaven’><img src=’http://doyouloveanime.today.com/files/2009/02/x-the-subaru-or-7-stars-of-the-dragons-of-heaven.thumbnail.jpg’ alt=’Subaru of the 7 Dragons of Heaven’ /
And nowthe Earth Dragon sigil.
</aFinally here is Kamui himself.
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So try and catch X if you dare. Just don’t let the kids see it. And now a mystery pix for all to guess.
That’s about it for me folks but if ya have IFC and you’re a real night owl tonight is Hell Girl at 3:15 AM ET followed by Witchblade at 3:45 AM ET. HG is ‘The Kind Neighbor’ and ‘WB’ is Episode 10. That’s right after Tozawa makes his deal with Masane.
SFN/SYS/JM/KBYA/KYSOTI/TTFN/Toodles-K&K
I almost forgot. I just posted up to Chapter 33 of Angel Wings here:
www.fanfiction.net/anime/dirtypair/angelwings
www.animeonline.net/forums/fanfics/dirtypairfanfiction
http://animeforfanatics.blogspot.com
I have blogs at animefofantics as well as at opensalon.com (Keiman’s Anime Blog) and eons.com/groups/group/anime-a-holics
Check out my Yahoo Groups’ Animeaholics1 and my posts there at animeontv. Until next blog time-K&K
