RahXephon and Evangelion

[Roto13]

Has anyone seen both of these anime series'? If you have, you've probably noticed that RahXephon seems to be heavily inspired by Evangelion.

This site (http://www.evaxephon.com/) lists an assload of similarities between the two series'. Many of them are probably coincidental, and many of them are just anime cliches, but there are a few things that are obviously linked. One example would be pyramid-shaped base of operations.

RahXephon takes a lot from Eva, but it's a good series by it's own right. I personally prefer Eva, if only because it's so much weirder. :P

Discuss.

[Jowy]

I've never seen but a few episodes of RahXephon. I'm a closet NGE fanboy though, and have done the 'watch all 26 episodes and EoE in one sitting' event more times than you can shake a stick at.

[XxSephirothxX]

Yeah, you'd have to be blind not to notice the similarities in the two series. I think RahXephon is far superior than Eva for a few reasons, though. I like the focus on character development in RahXephon; not every single episode is about defeating a new enemy. That's not to say that Eva didn't have development of its own, but I think it was more important in RahXephon, and handled better as well. Also, Ayato was a far better protagonist than Shinji. He had a lot of problems of his own, and struggled just like anyone would to work them out, but he wasn't a whiny little bitch the entire time. Also, the importance of music in the series was quite interesting. I read a review once that basically said RahXephon was "Eva done right," and I thought that was a great summary for the series.

[Roto13]

Ayato is defintely a better character than Shinji. I didn't mind Shinji until End of Evangelion. >_> I can't believe he has to repopulate the world. >_>

[Dreddz]

I prefered RahXephon alot more to Eva. Characters were infinitely more intresting, story flowed better and the ending conclusion was far more satisfying than Eva's.

[Roto13]

I liked RahXephon's ending because it was basically happy. I prefer Eva's ending because it was so depressing. :P

[JKTrix]

This is my favourite anime. It was one of the first shows I ever got on Fansub, and I have a gorgeous DVD box set that includes the movie and such as well. While it wasn't my first ever anime, it was definitely the one that sparked my interest and broadened my horizon on what Anime really was.Up till that point, all the Anime I had seen is what came on the likes of Cartoon Network and Kid's WB (Sailor Moon, Pokemon, DBZ and such).

I haven't seen all of Evangelion, though I intend to pretty soon if only because I feel like I can't call myself a real anime fan if I haven't seen it. When I went to Japan, Asuka and Rei were *everywhere*, in all kinds of different situations.

This is probably my favourite review on RahXephon.
http://www.therossman.com/rrr/anime/rahxephon.html
It starts out by blatantly calling it 'Neon Genesis RahXephon' before going on about how RahXephon is awesome.

I love how RahXephon constantly throws hints at you regarding what is going on. You really have to pay attention and re-watch episodes in order to pick up on certain things. The love story was well executed and even had my girlfriend at the time cheering for them.

It's unfortunate that some people wrote it off initially as an Evangelion knock off, but I hope they can all watch it. If you like RahXephon, legally check out Eureka 7 which is currently showing in the US on Adult Swim, and DVDs are still being released. It's made by the same production studio and shares similar character depth in a nice meaty series.

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

I was always of the opinion that Rah-Xephon tried to be the next Eva but eventually failed. Instead of a confusing and nonsensical ending, they made a confusing and nonsensical ending and decided to come up with some utter cop-out to "explain" things.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Yeah, RahXephon was kind of a mess, and its incessant, half-baked rehashing of Eva was largely to blame.

[Tasura]

Somewhere I once saw an AMV type thing that had both openings going at the same tim side by side, and they were quite close, even down to the timing of the scence changes.

[Shlup]

Everytime I turn on RahXephon I'm like "Hey, Evangelion's on." And my husband says "What? Change the channel. Stupid anime geek." I like RahXephon though.

[Roto13]

I'm going to say one thing I hate about RahXephon. The movie. It sucks.

[Nasarian Altimeros]

At least the movie had a semi-comprehendible ending with the antagonists finally being given a decent motive.

How they manage to make the original ending in Rahxephon worse than Evangelion's is beyond me.

[Roto13]

The ending of Evangelion was awesome. Only two people left to repopulate the earth.

The RahXephon movie was just a rehash of the series. My god. I don't think they even bothered to re animate most of it. I was bored out of my mind.

[edczxcvbnm]

I have said here many a time that RahXephon is what Evangelion should have been. Evangelion for got to tell this thing called a story. It had a story but it really didn't tell it. RahXephon on the other hand tells you the whole story. There are some parts I wish they would have elaborated on but I wasn't retarded as all get out to the point where they made a movie to attempt to explain what was going on.

[JKTrix]

The RahXephon movie didn't attempt to explain anything, it was a sort of 'alternate story'. A lot of the scenes that were the same in the movie do seem like they were taken straight out of the show, which I was disappointed in at first as well. I think the Japanese-only PS2 game even takes a different spin on the story.

RahXephon is not a show that you can fully grasp and enjoy by casually watching. You have to switch on and notice the little details that will explain most things (if not everything). I don't understand how folks can say that it's a 'mess', perhaps some elaboration will enlighten me. The ending wasn't nonsensical, it makes sense if you've followed the story closely enough.

From the general tone of my experience with Evangelion, it seems quite a bit depressing as a whole. They kept talking about how humanity is so pathetic or whatever, got on my NERVs a bit. Eva from what I've seen was definitely more of a psychology and philosophy lecture than a piece of entertainment. It's something you also have to pay close attention to in order to grasp fully, but it's very different from RahXephon in that manner.

If there's stuff about RahXephon you don't get, I wouldn't mind answering questions as best as I can.