Related Titles: X (tv) | X/1999 (manga) | Tokyo Babylon (anime) | Tokyo Babylon (manga)

Genre: Philosopical | Psychological | Occult | Fantasy | Apocalyptic | Fate
Company:
American Liscensing Company: Manga Entertainment
Format: 1 movie
Dates: 11/30/1996
Original Creator: CLAMP
Age Rating: 15-18 and up

Synopsis: It's the year of destiny, and 16 year old Kamui Shiro, a powerful psychic, has returned to Toyko after a 5 year absence, having left when he was very young. He wants to be with his childhood friends, Fuma (his best friend) and Kotori, Fuma's little sister (and Kamui's possible girlfriend). He wants to protect them from all dangers, but destiny and fate are haunting Kamui and pulling in himself and his beloved childhood friends. It is his destiny and sole decision to decide the fate of the world, no matter if he wants this role or not. Will he join the side of the Seven Dragons of Heaven to save mankind? Or will he join the Seven Dragons of Earth and destroy all civilization so the earth can heal itself from man's destruction? And can he still protect the ones he loves?

SCORE: 71%

The X movie is a beautiful mess. And I mean that! A beautiful piece of art (but the visuals are not perfect by any means either) but also a huge mess of confusion and almost bizarreness. This is definitely a movie for fans of the X manga that know the characters. And the bad thing is that many X manga fans did not like this movie anyway!

Usually the more I approve of an anime and like it, the more likely that it'll get the top amount of 4 pictures I allow in my reviews (unless pics are hard to find) instead of the average 3. I don't dislike this movie, but it wasn't that good. The reason why it gets all these pictures? Like I said, this movie is a beautiful mess. You have to have a good selection of the art in the review, even if the movie execution was bad!

Plot: A wonderful premise, but horribly executed. The story is interesting enough, and the manga had even more imagery than the movie, but the movie still had too many visuals. Visuals were a must of course, but with 14 plus characters who all needed development time, all the visuals made it hard for little character development for even 3 characters, let alone 14 plus more! And this was another big no-no; most fans of X enjoy it for the characters, and when the characters aren't developed at all, you have some very pissed fans.

This is the first X feature I ever saw, and I hated how I knew nothing about the characters by the end of the movie. It was even hard to connect with Kamui, the main character, and about the only one that really had a chance to get developed. I couldn't help but feel like I had been cheated in the character department, and the movie had enough to it to let me know that it had just scratched the surface of some wonderful personalites. Unfortunatly, I wouldn't be able to find out anything about the characters after this movie was through! In fact, the only way to learn more about the characters from this movie is if you bought the DVD and went through the Special Feature's tarot cards!

The characters were royally screwed! Many kept their original personas, but many characters were missing. It's just as well, there are too many characters to begin with. But then, in this movie, instead of the gentle, bedridden, melancholy dream watcher and Dragon of Earth named Kakyo, we get a new character who is an asshole who controls water (instead of Yuto. Water is suppose to be Yuto's speciality) named Shougo Asagi. He doesn't even exist in any X story except the movie!

For continued complaints about the characters, check out my Extra Rants and Bitchings below. It's just too long to go here, and I'm also trying to not compare the movie, tv show and manga to each other too much, since each should be judge on their own sole performance and merit.

The whole story about how the Dragon of Earth would grant wishes in the most demented ways and being an enigmatic person who looked like who you wished for was completely left out of the movie. I suppose it's hard to go through everyone's wishes when character development can't happen....

And how it ended and everyone's situations...man, that royally sucked. Hate the ending! Unlike the tv series (sorry I gotta make this comparison here) this movie is definitely a tragedy and leaves no feeling of comfort on how life is any good at all or if you have any say in your own life and destiny by the end of the movie. It doesn't have to, but that's the case. You might like that, you might not. It's up to you. I like tragedies, and boy was this one ever one that made you feel hopeless!

Nice idea, badly executed.

Visual: No mistake about it, this movie has some wonderful visuals. Some of these visuals are truly wonderful and even better than the newer X tv show, such as the final battle. I always loved CLAMP'S X character designs, even with their exgerrated bodies, eyes and facial structures to make so many pretty people. The explosions, the fights, the blood, the dream sequences and the quiet moments were are beautiful executed. However, for a movie that was good purely because of visuals, they did have problems.

It's common in CLAMP character designs for the shoulders of men character to be exgerrated too much, making for too small of heads. It happened in this movie some, even though it is not nearly as bad as Tokyo Babylon.

Kanoe's melons couldn't have gotten any bigger. Some shots, her boobs were so big, just one of them was bigger than her head. It's not like I was trying to look, but with her little slut outfit going on, they were just right there!

Sorata is only suppose to be a teen, 17 if I'm correct. He's suppose to be a little more masculine looking than most of the male characters, but not like an older man. They didn't get his face right, and he ended up looking older than Yuto and Aoki who are in their 30s to 40s.

Why did Fuma change into his school uniform when he finally became a Dragon of Earth? I thought maybe this uniform was worn to show they were the Kamui Dragons when I first saw the movie, I had no idea they were school uniforms. So, why did he change? Is it impossible for Japanese kids to do anything out of their school uniforms? LOL I suppose it was done just to show how Fuma and Kamui were suppose to look alike. That was pretty dumb though. Fuma has a kickass trenchcoat and boot combo in the manga and tv show we he goes crazy, and doesn't wear his school uniform again after becoming the Dragon of Earth.

Flowers, petals, blood, flames, wind, electricity and water all looked awesome. This movie looks a little rough since CGI was just starting to be used when this movie came out, so most everything is still rendered by hand in this movie. Only Hinoto's world dream bubble and maybe a few other things were added with CGI, and looked right but sometimes awkward. But I liked the look of all the hand rendered effects and charcters.

More than once, pictures of REAL people were used in the movie, at least 5 times. This was very visually distracting, seeing a CLAMP character run by a realistic picture, breaking your attention and imigination you may have focused towards the movie. Also, any character that was not a main character or not designed by CLAMP had completely different looks to them and DID NOT look like CLAMP characters, once again breaking the feel for the movie. The extras looked like combinations of characters out of Ghost in the Shell, Akira and Jin-Roh. This was so very distracting too.

Good visuals, awesome visuals, but too many and they did not combine well. Too distracting and did not come together.

Sound: My friends are right, this is one of the most badly composed soundtracks I have ever heard, with a unnatural musical sound form early-mid-90s music. Quite frankly, I think the music fits the movie's theme, and makes many scenes feel bizarre and creepy with this simplistic, kinda off-beat music. A lot of music didn't work, but some worked really well, such as the creepy sounds of saxophones or clarinets.

Voices fit okay, but weren't really that good. Many did not fit the characters. Kamui's voice was good, but got a little whiny and bitchy sounding (not as bad as Subaru's from Tokyo Babylon though, geez). But, this fit Kamui, not because he's whiny or bitchy, but because when he sounded this way it was during scences when he was crying or desperate. I know I wouldn't sound my prettiest if I was upset too. His voice made me feel uncomfortable, but that's a good thing, because I think the acting made me feel for Kamui. ^_^

Sounds. Geez! Very good. However, crashes and explosions aren't extremely loud or overdone, and thank God. I like to still be able to hear out of my ears at the end of a movie. This is one of the few movies that made me say "yuck" when someone got stabbed. A couple times in the movie, the sounds of flesh and blood being stabbed or ripped was pretty gross. It made me squirm a little!

The Dub: The original voices weren't that good to begin with, so the dub is at about the same level of quality as the original. The original is almost easier to watch. I liked Kamui's voice for some weird reason, especially when he yells the line "I won't take responsibility for it" at Hinoto. I dunno why, but I did. LOL

Extra dialogue that explained who the characters were was added in the dub. I disliked this, but I suppose it was necessary for audiences unfamiliar with X. I wish that hadn't been necessary and it was a pain in the butt to listen to.

Dub Letter Grade: C

Extra Rants and Bitching: I've never been a big Kotori fan, but her abilities and role sure got jilted in this movie, as did everyone else. I especially hated how Subaru (my favorite X character, who's the main character of the older Tokyo Babylon) gets killed off right at the beginning of the movie. You get no idea about who he is or his tragic past. I'm sure many viewers not familiar with the manga were wondering why Subaru and Seishiro had a personal grudge between each other and why Seishiro only has one good eye. But of course the movie never gives any info. In fact, Subaru has the most tragic story out of all the X characters, right up there with Kamui's.

Kanoe was maybe a little slutty before, but boy was she ever a ho in the movie! I don't remember her being the badly dressed and touchy in the manga!

When Fuma changes personality in the manga, it's an immediate change where he immediately doesn't remember who he is anymore, saying he is Kamui, and Kamui's twin star. In the movie, he was sane for most of the movie, even willing to be the Dragon of Earth, and willing to kill his sister. He didnt' completely forget who he is until his final confrontation with Kamui. I did not like this one bit! It made Fuma a jerk and an asshole instead of an insane sexy maniac who doesn't remember who he is and who's fate is out of his own hands! Grrrr...LOL.

Kusanagi was made into an absolute jerk for this movie with not a single characteristic that he orginally had. He's was just a sadistic, dumb and cruel soldier instead of the kind hearted big lug he was in the manga.

It was interesting how Kamui seemed to completely forgotten Kotori was dead at the end of the movie when he was crying out for Fuma (lol).

With the bad development of the movie, there was no angst or hints of shounen-ai between Kamui and Fuma like there is in the manga or tv show! I didn't like that and noticed that after viewing the manga and tv show and then watching the movie over again. The only hint of this material was when Kamui was crying at the end of the movie calling out Fuma's name. Poo! In fact, there was shonen-ai hints between Subaru and his enemy Seishiro in the manga and tv show, and also between Kamui and Subaru, since Subaru becomes a very dear friend and comforter for Kamui. In the movie, you get no hints of this, and Kamui doesn't ever get to know Subaru or even meet him! I hated this, because this shonen-ai stuff is funny shit, yo!

Overall, all the Dragons of Earth were made into almost completely evil characters, which wasn't the case in the manga.

Score Comments: Techniqully, for all it's problems, this score should be lower, but there is no doubt that it's an okay movie to watch at least once. I just didn't have the heart to give much of a lower score to a movie with such bizarre visuals, even if the character development sucked major ass.

Like fate? Want to watch something as depressing as hell? Enjoy bishonen, bishoujo and eye candy? Watch this then. You might like it. ^_^

Websites:
Official X movie Website from Manga Entertainment

Have a website about this series, or do you know of a good one? Want me to link to it on this review? Well, the feel free to email the sucker to me! Just make sure to put "Review Link" in the subject.