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| 4. Iodine
 
Based on the ongoing manga rather than the recent feature film,
X provides a more personal, more even look at the battle for the end of
the world being fought between two groups of supercharaged CLAMP superheroes.
With over a dozen major characters and a plot that hardly has room for them all,
complication is the word of the day. Fortunately, the series takes it nice and
slow, focusing on one or two characters at a time, with pretty decent results.
Seething Kamui, who is the center of the story, is given only minimally more screentime
than any of the other warriors, which helps immensely. Every player gets a chance
to make an impression, but many of these are fleeting, and not very satisfying.
The premise is such that development is touch and go, and the ending still feels
much too abrupt and lacking. Animation is the usual
television quality, with simplified, but still lovely designs. The use of computer
effects is restrained and adds some nice touches. The music is nicely dramatic,
and the vocal performances keep all the characters very human and down-to-earth.
What ultimately helps the series pull off its horrific premise is the very human
focus, putting the spectacular battles in the background so the relationships
can be explored. A good chunk of time is spent on the backstories of the players,
so the series is almost an anthology of these personal portraits. |
| 3. Cross
Scars 
Although the X movie was created as the original animated
form of CLAMP's X manga it was well known that such a long and detailed
saga could never be done justice in such a short time. As a result this new 24
episode TV series has been produced in the hope of better results. The story focuses
around Kamui a young man who holds the fate of the world in his hands. He has
the choice to either become the Dragon of Heaven and ensure that the world remains
safe or he can choose to become the Dragon of Earth and wipe out civilization. The
X TV series is a decent anime but in several ways it seems fundamentally flawed.
First the good! As a story about a fight for the end of the world there are numerous
touching stories within this series, as none of the characters here seem to have
it easy. Anyone with a liking of dark series should find X an appealing
one. The plot to X is a solid one too. The range of characters is good
to see in X and there are plenty of interesting and likable characters
within the series. Although as will be seen later this also leads to problems.
The plot of X is another plus for the series. While an anime about the
end of the world isn't anything new the events that do occur are reasonably surprising
and the series is good enough to sow some doubt into your mind about the outcome
of the events as well. The animation in X also deserves praise. Although
in modern times animation in series is increasingly slick X has great animation
and crucially it manages to keep up this high standard throughout all 24 episodes. Despite
all this X is still slightly unsatisfying. The number of characters is
the major problem. The Dragon of Earth and Heaven each have six seals and they
along with a couple of other characters make up the cast of X. That's a
large number of major characters and even in 24 episodes it seems like there's
just not enough time to devote a decent amount of attention to some of them. This
problem is confounded by certain characters who don't come to the front until
half way through the series. Kakyo is an example of this and details of his relationship
with Hinoto, which were plentiful in the manga, are given no explanation in the
anime. Similarly near the end of the series there's no closure about what happens
to certain characters which is unsatisfying. The characters on the 'bad' side
also seem to have problems with their motivation, it comes across like some really
have no reason for wanting the end of the world but they'll go with it anyway. The
pacing of the anime also seems hinder the series. X starts off quite slow
and while this builds up some anticipation of the coming events nothing changes
in the second half. Despite the impending apocalypse characters seem perfectly
content to carry on with their normal jobs, which doesn't seem to fit well with
the epic events. Thus the final events seem rather anticlimactic. The notion of
fate plays a large part in X and in actual fact turns out to be a hindrance.
Apart from certain characters constantly banging on about the idea, when we're
told events are going to happen, and they then do, we're not really shocked and
because the characters know their fate there's no sense of dramatic irony either. Even
after 24 episodes X still feels like it needs more expansion and refinement
from the manga. But the series still impresses on several levels despite the flaws
it carries. |
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