Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums > General > The Lounge > RahXephon and Evangelion

[Roto13]

Has anyone seen both of these anime series'? If you have, you've probably noticed that RahXephon seems to be heavily inspired by Evangelion.

This site lists an assload of similarities between the two series'. Many of them are probably coincidental, and many of them are just anime cliches, but there are a few things that are obviously linked. One example would be pyramid-shaped base of operations.

RahXephon takes a lot from Eva, but it's a good series by it's own right. I personally prefer Eva, if only because it's so much weirder. :P

Discuss.

[Jowy]

I've never seen but a few episodes of RahXephon. I'm a closet NGE fanboy though, and have done the 'watch all 26 episodes and EoE in one sitting' event more times than you can shake a stick at.

[Azar]

Yeah, you'd have to be blind not to notice the similarities in the two series. I think RahXephon is far superior than Eva for a few reasons, though. I like the focus on character development in RahXephon; not every single episode is about defeating a new enemy. That's not to say that Eva didn't have development of its own, but I think it was more important in RahXephon, and handled better as well. Also, Ayato was a far better protagonist than Shinji. He had a lot of problems of his own, and struggled just like anyone would to work them out, but he wasn't a whiny little bitch the entire time. Also, the importance of music in the series was quite interesting. I read a review once that basically said RahXephon was "Eva done right," and I thought that was a great summary for the series.

[Roto13]

Ayato is defintely a better character than Shinji. I didn't mind Shinji until End of Evangelion. >_> I can't believe he has to repopulate the world. >_>

[Dreddz]

I prefered RahXephon alot more to Eva. Characters were infinitely more intresting, story flowed better and the ending conclusion was far more satisfying than Eva's.

[Roto13]

I liked RahXephon's ending because it was basically happy. I prefer Eva's ending because it was so depressing. :P

[JKTrix]

This is my favourite anime. It was one of the first shows I ever got on Fansub, and I have a gorgeous DVD box set that includes the movie and such as well. While it wasn't my first ever anime, it was definitely the one that sparked my interest and broadened my horizon on what Anime really was.Up till that point, all the Anime I had seen is what came on the likes of Cartoon Network and Kid's WB (Sailor Moon, Pokemon, DBZ and such).

I haven't seen all of Evangelion, though I intend to pretty soon if only because I feel like I can't call myself a real anime fan if I haven't seen it. When I went to Japan, Asuka and Rei were *everywhere*, in all kinds of different situations.

This is probably my favourite review on RahXephon.
http://www.therossman.com/rrr/anime/rahxephon.html
It starts out by blatantly calling it 'Neon Genesis RahXephon' before going on about how RahXephon is awesome.

I love how RahXephon constantly throws hints at you regarding what is going on. You really have to pay attention and re-watch episodes in order to pick up on certain things. The love story was well executed and even had my girlfriend at the time cheering for them.

It's unfortunate that some people wrote it off initially as an Evangelion knock off, but I hope they can all watch it. If you like RahXephon, legally check out Eureka 7 which is currently showing in the US on Adult Swim, and DVDs are still being released. It's made by the same production studio and shares similar character depth in a nice meaty series.

[Behold the Void]

I was always of the opinion that Rah-Xephon tried to be the next Eva but eventually failed. Instead of a confusing and nonsensical ending, they made a confusing and nonsensical ending and decided to come up with some utter cop-out to "explain" things.