X: The Movie by Rintarô (Review)
I wanted to blame it on the dubbing. I won’t launch into my normal diatribe against dubbing, but just blaming it on bad English voice actors, or even clumsy English dialog, isn’t enough. That alone can’t explain the incomprehensible plot, anticlimactic battles, and barely-there character development that make up X. Billed by some as the “next big thing” in anime after Princess Mononoke, X comes nowhere close to approaching the beauty and grandeur of Miyazaki’s masterpiece. If I must say one good thing about X, it sure aims high. But that just makes the disappointment I felt after sitting through it all the more painful.
I mentioned Princess Mononoke but X actually strives a lot harder to be like Akira, widely regarded as the best anime movie ever made (a claim I find hard to contest). But never fear, Akira fans. X is no threat to Akira’s supremacy. Both movies deal with confusing plots, post-apocalyptic psychic battles, and friends turned into bitter enemies. But whereas Akira is a fascinating, albeit confusing movie, X feels clumsy, stilted, and way too serious to be very enjoyable.
Set in Tokyo, the main character in X is Kamui, a teenage boy possessing incredible psychic powers (though we never learn how he got them). After a bizarre dream sequence in which his mother commissions him to protect Tokyo before messily pulling a sword from her naked body, Kamui returns to Tokyo and his childhood friends, Fûma and Kotori. He is soon contacted by two groups; the Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth. The first group wants to save Tokyo and humanity. The second wants to purge the Earth of humanity and return it to a tranquil state. The catch is that Fûma turns out to be Kamui’s psychic counterpart. Whatever side Kamui chooses, Fûma is fated to join the other side, forcing the two friends into a bitter showdown. Along the way, Kamui meets the other Dragons of Heaven who join his fight against the Dragons of Earth.
Like Vampire Hunter D, another “great-in-theory” anime film, X could’ve been awesome. I was expecting titanic battles with lots of action, a story of cosmic proportions, and animation that would throw me back in my chair. At least, that’s what I was expecting based on everything I’d read about the film. X has a lot of flair and visual style, especially in the character designs, but it’s all bark and no bite. Buildings explode, city blocks get levelled, and bodies get hacked to pieces, but there’s no story backing it all. Any potential story gets lost in a series of muddled dream sequences, terrible dialog, and characters that aren’t too terribly interesting or distinguishable (visually or otherwise).
Released in America by Manga (Macross Plus, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll), X really failed to deliver in a big way. I’m not one to complain about confusing plots or incredibly expository dialog. But on the other hand, I expect all of the dreams within dreams and compound sentences to add up to something other than one scene after another of highly-stylized anime characters flying through the air trying to blow each other up. In X’s case, that’s all I got.
If you want to watch an apocalyptic anime masterpiece, go with Akira. It may be confusing, but at least it’ll be worth watching two or three times and the final battle is still one of greatest cinematic showdowns I’ve ever seen. And even though it’s more than a decade old, it still packs more visual flair than most Hollywood blockbusters you’ll see all year. As for X, at least I’ll get $1.00 credit for returning it early.