This is originally taken from my livejournal entry.

            I very rarely rant, really. Not about TV shows or with how adaptations are made. Very rarely. But I am now, because I saw an adaptation that just *urks* me, because it means that my favorite scene got all fucked.

            Everyone knows how I love Fuuma. Fuuma-bay-BEE. My boy. Love him. Obsess over him. He's all over my webpage--the only character to ever get his own layout on my site. Love him, love him, love him--when he's Dark Fuuma; Dork Fumma can go hang, as far as I'm concerned. Dark Fuuma has this overwhelming sexual presence that just jumps off the page and attacks you. To quote Ri-chan, "Fuuma's sexuality is 'yes'."

            So, Dark Fuuma shows up for good in the end of book 7 of X. In the scene, a tearfully-happy Kamui proclaims that he has made his choice and he's going to become a dragon of Heaven so he can protect the place where Kotori and Fuuma can be happy. That's when everything goes terribly wrong for our young hero, because Fuuma immediately, in that lovely CLAMP way, changes from boring ol' dork to Walking Evil Dark Sex God. And oh, the homoerotic elements--you can cut them with a knife, I tell you. And I chose that expression because one of the key elements of this imagery is the use of blood. I could give you a long treatise/discourse on the connection of blood and semen and all of the imagery CLAMP so loves to use, but there's no point; you're all smart folks. Use your grey matter for now; that essay is coming later. Besides, most of you have seen pictures, so you know the scene. And when Fuuma goes dark, suddently, Kamui is impaled with sharp, pointy objects and bleeding heavily, his face a mask of pain that bears a striking resemblance to a mask of pleasure, and also considering that Kamui never fights Fuuma very hard, one could easily say that he wants all of this (oh, wait, that would be me saying that). But anyway. In this specific scene, Fuuma magically binds Kamui and stabs Kamui through the hand with the Sacred Sword, as well as impaling Kamui's thighs with large pieces of broken glass. And then, when Kamui is panting from pain, Fuuma leans over him, and whispers "Ii koe da na, Kamui" ("Oh, that's a nice voice, Kamui."...and to be fair, I was singularly *un*impressed with the Viz translation of that line--not as homicidal as a friend was over a translation of one of Seishirou's lines, but pretty close); explains what he has become, and then licks the blood off of Kamui's neck. Then, while Kamui is helpless, Fuuma pulls away, goes to Kotori, who has been tied to a cross, stabs her with the Sacred Sword, and tells Kamui, "Kamui--omae wa ore ga korosu." Kamui--I am going to kill you. And then he leaves.

            OK. Cool. Pick up the X animation DVD, all ready to see Fuuma go dark, since the seiyuu that does his voice is fucking *amazing*--the first time I heard him talk using the dark sexy voice I nearly drove off the road. All happy, waiting to hear that voice coming out of Fuuma's pretty, pretty mouth.

            First, things seemed much improved, actually--Kamui's decision wasn't the overblown production it was in the manga--just him, standing outside the door to the room where Kotori is sleeping and Fuuma is watching over her, his hand on the handle, and him deciding to himself that he wants to protect them. Then he opens the door, and you know things are all wrong because Dark Fuuma's voice comes out, and Fuuma, still sitting at the chair by his sleeping sister's bedside, says, "So you've decided now." He stands up and walks to Kamui, talking and suddenly exuding that Dark Fuuma sexuality that we all know and love. "If you become the Dragon of Heaven, then it's my fate to become the Dragon of Earth," and goes to Kamui, putting his hand around the hilt of the Sacred Sword and next to Kamui's (and oh, how dripping with ST that simple guesture was) and then, he goes all Dark completely, and half the building goes boom and Kamui is knocked out. When he wakes up, all is blastied to bits, and he runs to the roof, where Fuuma is waiting, Kotori tied to the cross and still sleeping. Kamui's confused, and Fuuma takes advatage of this to impale Kamui's hand with the Sacred Sword, so Kamui is backed against a big rock, the sword through his upraised hand actually into the stone. Kamui is screaming in pain, and that's when Fuuma gives his "Ii koe da na, Kamui." line.

            No, no, NO, NO, NO, NOOOOO. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, the way that's supposed to work is him to wait until Kamui is not screaming, but just *panting*. It's part of the atmosphere of the thing, and it also sets up Fuuma as this kind of sexual predador. It completely changed the rest of the dynamics of the scene, just making Fuuma seem like a menacing sicko than a oversexualized sadist. It killed some of his sexuality, and that sexuality is crucial for setting up the full extent of what Fuuma has become and how much he's changed. It made the physical closeness and the licking of Kamui's blood more menacing than sexual. No, no, No, No, NO. God damn it. It really pissed me off, because, like I said--the sado-masochistic overtones are so important in the Fuuma/Kamui dynamic, and the way they animated it made it menacing rather than SM. While yes, Fuuma is menacing in his sexuality, the whole crux of the subtext is that *Dark Fuuma can only do that which someone wishes the most*. He reacts to people based on their deepest wish, and to become a menacing, darkly sexual sadist was *what Kamui wanted from him*.

            Nataku wanted a father figure. That's what Fuuma became to him.

            Seishirou wanted someone who, in some way, took him on face value and had no illusions abotu what he was, and who knew him better than he knew himself. So that's what Fuuma was to him.

            Yuzuriha wanted soemone who could bring Inuki back to her. That's what Fuuma became to her.

            Subaru wanted someone to make him like Seishirou. That's what Fuuma became to him.

            Kamui wanted someone to punish him. That's what he got. Exactly what he got. Someone to punish him, and of course, it took sexual overtones because Kamui's a fourteen-year-old boy in the rush of puberty and hormones and he's not all that straight, either. He got exactly what he wanted.

            And the anime killed that. It killed it by just making Fuuma a kind of stock bad-guy villian, who, oh, look, he just licked Kamui, gross.

            Excuse me?!!?

            And then, it got a little worse. However, I can forgive this one, since I see that they were trying to do. In flashback when Kamui is making his decision, he flashes to a memory of Fuuma saying, "Kamui, omae wa ore ga, kanarazu, mamoru"--Kamui, without fail, I will protect you. After he goes dark, when he's leaving (and BTW, seeing three Dragons of Heaven coming would *NOT* make Fuuma give out an annoyed, "Ch'!" and stalk off. Fuuma. Does. Not. Do. That. He has this incredible sense of humor and style about such things. It's another big part of the anime turning him into this stock villian characters, when he's NOT. It's way more complex that that! He grants wishes, people. It's who he is. The problem is...he grants *exactly* what your wish is, and at heart, a lot of people secretly masochists) he says, "Kamui, omae wa ore ga, kanarazu...korosu." Kamui, without fail, I will kill you.

            No, no, no, no, NO. There is no way to deliver that line without sounding stupid. I'm sorry. That one stupid word--and I do see what they were doing, giving that parallel--kills it. I mean, gyeh. Slap the writer upside the head for that. And give whoever told the seiyuu to give a pause in between "kanarazu" and "korosu" a good BEATING. All it did was make Fuuma into a stock villian by making him cliched, and, no matter what you think about Fuuma, the man is Not. A. Cliche. His situation is, he is not.

            And that's what bugs me the most. They took this incredibly complex man and situation and made it a cliche. They took out all of the subtexts that tell you so much about Kamui through the lens of Fuuma that you can't even see Kamui in this at all, other than victim--and he's more active in the dynamic than that. He's a victim who wants to be victimized, and who in some ways forces Fuuma into that role, because that is not Dork Fuuma's nature at all--it isn't Dork Fuuma's nature at all, and even though he's now Dark Fuuma, some of Dork Fuuma is still vital and active, as seen through little scenes of compassion. The Twin Star fulfills wishes, even if it means completely circumventing who he is (Dork Fuuma) and becoming someone else (Dark Fuuma) to do it, if that wish is strong enough. Fuuma is victimized by Kamui, because Kamui so seeks to be victimized that he makes Fuuma do it. Fuuma is at heart the most passive of any of the players in X, even though he is the one who drives much of the action, and therefore the most dynamic. He can only act based on the secret desires and wishes of those around him; what he himself wishes is of no relavance, and he can't act on his own desires. Part of what defines Fuuma is the paradox.

            And they turned that into a cliched bad guy.

            Fuck you, too.