X adds a fascinating Gothic twist to the typical hero stories. It has been described as "Hitchcock meets Disney" by several critics, which is accurate in all but one sense -- the animation is superior. CLAMP draws absolutely beautiful eyes and startlingly wild visages (take Hinoto's strange appearance, for example) that add to the tripped out feel of the anime.
I saw X in English, so I cannot speak for the Japanese one, but the biggest dissappointment in the anime was the slipshod voice acting. X is rather old for an anime, so this might account for the distant old-movie quality it has, but Hinoto and some of the Dragons of Earth are the only ones with real emotion.
The other flaw of X was its tiny length - 5 books of manga cannot be compressed smoothly into one little movie. Characters are killed off as soon as they are produced, and there is little time for charatcterization. The abrupt ending also makes X come off as a "kill 'em all" massacre type of shonen anime, which garbles the complex themes.
X is suprisingly one of the more realistic animes when it comes to character reactions, though - it's one of the few animes in which the protaganist blatantly tries to avoid saving loved ones. When he does come around, however, his sacrifices add a sharp edge to the anime's mood. This is not an anime to watch all alone. |
