he 1996 film adaptation of the X/1999 manga series crammed hundreds of pages
of story into a bare 98 minutes of action, losing most of its coherency in the process. Pioneer's eight-DVD TV series takes on the same story in far more detail, beginning with an "episode zero" that serves as an extended trailer. It starts by introducing the concept of "dreamseers," psychics whose dreams show the future. The precognitive gift is not necessarily welcome; fragile, melancholy Kakyo Kuzuki has been set apart all his life because of it, and even when he meets a vibrant young woman who briefly tugs him out of his self-pitying, helpless funk, he knows when and where she will die and is powerless to help her. Despairing, he lies back and gives himself over to visions of the coming conflict between the Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth.
Anyone who saw X the movie will know exactly what's going on in these early episodes, but novices may be lost as the story jumps rapidly between characters. As a series of portents manifest in Japan—a shift in the stars, a glowing pattern appearing in a window, a drift of flower petals that form a pentagram—a group of supernaturally skilled people known as the "empowered" gather for a conflict that presages "the End of the World," and the name "Kamui" is mentioned over and over.
Meanwhile, a high-school boy named Kamui Shirou returns to Tokyo after a six-year absence. As a child, he saved the life of his playmate Kotori, and her older brother Fuma promised always to protect and look out for him. When he returns, Kotori and Fuma are glad to see him, and remind him of their mutual history, but he shrugs them off and tells them to stay away. Kamui's not very good at listening to others—he's being spied on by a dreamseer, threatened by magical forces and stalked by empowered people who want to talk to him, and he resentfully turns his vast psychic skills against anyone who gets too close. He just wants the magical sword whose creation killed Kotori and Fuma's mother.
Killer characters are captivating
In spite of the many dynamic battles in these opening episodes, X gets off to a relatively sedate start and seems to move along slowly, simply because it keeps so many significant things frustratingly obscure. Those who aren't in the know may get through these first four episodes having learned only three things: 1) Being powerfully psychic isn't necessarily fun. 2) Doom is approaching. 3) Kamui is a jerk.
But seeing the story unfold gradually, as it was meant to, instead of rushing toward contextless, meaningless conflict, makes for a pleasant change, especially since the television version of X is as beautifully animated as its big-screen predecessor. Closely following the manga's weird designs, which focus on huge-eyed, stick-bodied characters with paper-cutting chins, the animation revels in dark, saturated colors, gloriously detailed motion and more airborne debris than a Ridley Scott movie. The much-repeated images of characters soaring on angel wings and feathers falling like snowflakes get a bit redundant, but they're still strikingly beautiful. Virtually every frame of the series begs to be made into a poster.
And the glowering Kamui aside, the series shows flashes of pleasant, surprising wit. Episode 2 features the first significant clash between a Dragon of Heaven and a Dragon of Earth, not that those designations have really been explained at this point. The two characters introduce themselves politely, banter over their rivalry, praise each other's powers, express concern for the ordinary people around them, and then lay waste to a dimensionally-shifted segment of Tokyo, laughing merrily all the while. Their combat is kinetic, glorious and ridiculously destructive, but the two of them clearly regard it as a courteous game of boundary-testing, and their mutual delight at it all is infectious. X promises much more along this line: pretty images, breathtaking feats of skill and memorable characters who don't take themselves half as seriously as they take their missions. It also promises much more focus on a sulky, powerful boy who's far less interesting than the vast cast of extras circling around him. But then, no series is perfect.
Not much in the way of extras on this disc—just the trailer for episode zero. And since episode zero is practically a trailer itself, the whole thing feels like a version of George Carlin's gag about the ever-diminishing subsets of "your stuff."
— Tasha
Back to the top.
