Your point on the romantic relationships is spot on. It is honestly amazing so many problems with the writing in story and themes made it to the final draft. Obvious problems no less.
RahXephon's writing, while often very flawed and objectively questionable, is one of the reasons it fascinates me. Its fascinating because it is so weird and flawed, because it makes me ask if anyone even bothered to do any drafts past the very first. The series is such an odd combination of technical skill, bold ambition, and borderline incompetent writing.
Thinking about it, the story definately qualifies as what I would call an "idea salad". It doesn't feel like its mostly the creation of one individual imagination. It feels like the ideas came from a large group of writers, and then the director selected which ones he liked, and merged them together in a very clumsy way.
You can see what they were doing with the Meso American imagery, they saw how subtle and on the nose references to religion worked for Evangelion amd tried their hand and failed miserably especially by comparison
It just feels so under baked to me I can't wrap my head around what the plan was. Was it supposed to tie into the concept of circular time and some deeper themes connected to that or was it just because it looked cool? Either one could have worked fine, but the aspects present are so underutilized I ask "why even bother?". Its another classic example of ideas out running resources.
I think timbre is pronounced with a flatter “a” sound, like the “a” in Baben. At least that’s how I reconcile with it being a French word that I can never hope to pronounce properly. Pronouncing it like “tamper” sounds appropriately American. Also fate can also be a positive theme. Where instead of the struggle being about coming to terms with a cruel fate, the struggle can be about improving oneself in order to accept an important fate and the responsibility that comes with it. Probably in the format of a coming-of-age hero story.
That's a good point about how someone can be assigned an important responsibility, and this in turn can shape them for the better as they work to be able to see to it. I still don't understand RahXephon's viewpoint on fate. I think the series does want it to seem like Ayato is running from his duty to re tune (his fate) and coming to accept this as he matures. While this would strip him of some agency (as it essentially forces him to re tune and limits his future options), if it was readily apparent this was needed and more was done to show Ayato run from duty, it could have worked. But instead alot of Ayato is dedicated to figuring out who he is and what he wants, only for him to go along with other's plans anyways and essentially reduce himself to a tool. It seems like the series is stepping on its own toes here. I don't know, RahXephon makes my brain hurt sometimes.
One thing that occured to me watching this vid is, did Ayato and Haruka go to the same school or not? In the after credits scene where we see them meet it seems like they don't, but earlier in the series I think its mentioned they did. Small point, but I think indicative of the lack of forward thinking by the writers.
I'm not sure, but I think they did after meeting the first time on the island. Its another small detail that is inordinately important when we zoom out and, yeah, is indicative of a lack of tight planning. I feel like the series would have been better if there was either a lot more planning and streamlining, like in a conventional series, or just none at all, like a true art piece ignoring all logic and going in even more truly weird and abstract directions. We could have either had a much more coherent or much less coherent show and I feel both would have been more interesting than what we ultimately got.
Your point on the romantic relationships is spot on. It is honestly amazing so many problems with the writing in story and themes made it to the final draft. Obvious problems no less.
RahXephon's writing, while often very flawed and objectively questionable, is one of the reasons it fascinates me. Its fascinating because it is so weird and flawed, because it makes me ask if anyone even bothered to do any drafts past the very first. The series is such an odd combination of technical skill, bold ambition, and borderline incompetent writing.
Thinking about it, the story definately qualifies as what I would call an "idea salad". It doesn't feel like its mostly the creation of one individual imagination. It feels like the ideas came from a large group of writers, and then the director selected which ones he liked, and merged them together in a very clumsy way.
Its been 16 parts? Well, thats... a lot of attention.
I may have gone a little too far in a few places... but its time for some new stuff soon!
You can see what they were doing with the Meso American imagery, they saw how subtle and on the nose references to religion worked for Evangelion amd tried their hand and failed miserably especially by comparison
It just feels so under baked to me I can't wrap my head around what the plan was. Was it supposed to tie into the concept of circular time and some deeper themes connected to that or was it just because it looked cool? Either one could have worked fine, but the aspects present are so underutilized I ask "why even bother?". Its another classic example of ideas out running resources.
I think timbre is pronounced with a flatter “a” sound, like the “a” in Baben. At least that’s how I reconcile with it being a French word that I can never hope to pronounce properly. Pronouncing it like “tamper” sounds appropriately American.
Also fate can also be a positive theme. Where instead of the struggle being about coming to terms with a cruel fate, the struggle can be about improving oneself in order to accept an important fate and the responsibility that comes with it. Probably in the format of a coming-of-age hero story.
That's a good point about how someone can be assigned an important responsibility, and this in turn can shape them for the better as they work to be able to see to it.
I still don't understand RahXephon's viewpoint on fate. I think the series does want it to seem like Ayato is running from his duty to re tune (his fate) and coming to accept this as he matures. While this would strip him of some agency (as it essentially forces him to re tune and limits his future options), if it was readily apparent this was needed and more was done to show Ayato run from duty, it could have worked. But instead alot of Ayato is dedicated to figuring out who he is and what he wants, only for him to go along with other's plans anyways and essentially reduce himself to a tool. It seems like the series is stepping on its own toes here. I don't know, RahXephon makes my brain hurt sometimes.
One thing that occured to me watching this vid is, did Ayato and Haruka go to the same school or not? In the after credits scene where we see them meet it seems like they don't, but earlier in the series I think its mentioned they did. Small point, but I think indicative of the lack of forward thinking by the writers.
I'm not sure, but I think they did after meeting the first time on the island. Its another small detail that is inordinately important when we zoom out and, yeah, is indicative of a lack of tight planning. I feel like the series would have been better if there was either a lot more planning and streamlining, like in a conventional series, or just none at all, like a true art piece ignoring all logic and going in even more truly weird and abstract directions. We could have either had a much more coherent or much less coherent show and I feel both would have been more interesting than what we ultimately got.
It makes so much sense, that the creator of Yandere Simulator is a huge fan of RahXephon.
I wonder why...