Hensoukyoku

Halfway through RahXephon: Tagen Hensoukyoku and a LOT of things are different from the series. It’s like they changed a lot of the plot conveniently to shorten the required airtime. For example, in the series, Ayato totally forgot about Mishima Haruka, but in the movie, he apparently spent 3 years thinking about her after the incident. In the series, after Haruka took care of the two men-in-blacks, Ayato ran into the train with Mishima Reika, but in the movie Haruka took out a tranquilizer and took him away without any hassles. Not to mention a gazillion other things were changed, some important plot details, others I couldn’t care less.

Also, Asahina, the girl who liked Ayato, had been with him since before the incident. Apparently she and Haruka were love rivals then… that wasn’t mentioned at all in the series.

Still, the movie feels a bit like a high-quality clip show with some extra stuff added in… but more RahXephon is always good. :P Can’t wait for the english script to come out. I’m preeeettty sure I missed a joke or two and of course the deep philosophical speech made by Lord Barlem…

P.S. I don’t remember Ayato and Haruka doing “it” in the series… and since when did Quon become the sleeping beauty?
P.S.S WTF? In the ending, Ayato’s mother pointed in the OPPOSITE direction from what she pointed at in the series… (at the streets in from of the school instead of the school)

UPDATE: Finally finished the movie… let’s just say it’s a complete recap of the series with a new storyline. I mean almost everything was changed. It’s like they took random clips from the series, add in a bunch of new stuff, then thought of a completely new plot that roughly follows the general idea of the original. And even though it feels like a new story, you WILL be fricking confused by it if you’ve never seen the original series…

I really enjoyed the movie though… for some reason. Good practice for jap too. The ending is… different… to say the least.

UPDATE 2: On a related note, I’ve read chapter one of the RahXephon manga… WTF? Are we still talking about the same thing here? The manga reads like a comedy… and the art style is cooooompletely different. The most important thing is the storyline, it’s like a fan fiction of RahXephon or something, a completely different storyline that every once in a while follows the series for like one frame.