RahXephon
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Template:Infobox animanga/Header Template:Infobox animanga/Anime Template:Infobox animanga/Manga {{Infobox animanga/Novel | title = | author = Hiroshi Ohnogi | artist = | publisher = Media Factory | first_run = July 2002 | last_run = February 2003 | num_volumes = 5 }} {{Infobox animanga/Movie | title = RahXephon:Pluralitas Concentio | director = Tomoki Kyoda | studio = BONES | release_date = April 19, 2003 | runtime = 120 min }} {{Infobox animanga/Game | title = | developer = | publisher = Template:FlagiconBandai | genre = Adventure, Action | ratings = CERO : 12 | platforms = PlayStation 2 | release_date = August 7, 2003 }} {{Infobox animanga/OVA | title = | director = Tomoki Kyoda | studio = BONES | num_episodes = 1 | release_dates = August 7, 2003 }} Template:Infobox animanga/Footer Template:Nihongo is a science fiction anime television series about young Ayato Kamina, his ability to control a godlike mecha known as the RahXephon, and his inner journey to find a place with the world around him. There is also a somewhat tweaked manga adaptation of the anime.
The story has been influenced by the writings of James Churchward, and the main character is familiar with those writings.
The 26 episode television series was produced by BONES and aired January 21–September 10, 2002. The English language translation was produced by ADV Films that released 7 volumes of video on DVD. Additionally, there is a movie that rewrites the story by way of parallel dimension, taking most of its scenes from the TV episodes but also featuring a couple of new shots. The anime was released in Singapore by Odex. The manga is published in English in North America by VIZ Media, and it is published in English in Singapore by Chuang Yi. A novel series is published in English by DrMaster. A PlayStation 2 game has been published in Japanese.
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Characters
Main article: Characters in RahXephon
This section represents the story as told in the television series. The manga and movie are different in some respects, including cutting and compositing characters. Character names are in western order.
At the beginning of RahXephon Ayato Kamina is a modest 17 year old living in Tokyo. Not exactly a model student, he enjoys his spare time painting and being with his class mates Hiroko Asahina and Mamoru Torigai. Ayato's mother Maya spends a lot of her time at work, making his relationship with her rather distant though still loving.
Reika Mishima, another class mate of Ayato's, meets him during an attack on Tokyo and leads him to the RahXephon. Haruka Shitow, an agent of the agency TERRA, takes Ayato and the RahXephon to TERRA's base.
At the base, Ayato pilots the RahXephon and gets to know the TERRA personnel Megumi Shitow, Jin Kunugi, Elvy Hadhiyat, and Dr. Itsuki Kisaragi among them, and moves in with professor Rikudoh, Megumi's uncle. Quon Kisaragi, a girl living with Dr. Kisaragi, seems to share some of Ayato's abilities; she is a musician.
Ernst von Bähbem of the Bähbem Foundation sponsors the work of TERRA, while the Federation (a future UN) takes an interest in TERRAs operations.
As the story progresses, friendships, past romances, adoptions and family relationships are revealed. Some of these revelations may be surprising, but hints to them may be found earlier in the story.
Plot
Background
The premise of RahXephon is the fight between Humans, and pan-dimensional invaders known as the Mulians, short Mu (pronounced "moo", or "moo‧li‧ans"). The Mu appear to be human; the only consistent physical difference seems to be their blue blood. The Mu first invaded in the late 1990's. After a conflict with Humans that escalated to nuclear war, they in 2013 enveloped the entire city of Tokyo and some outlying suburbs in a transdimensional sphere resembling Jupiter. It is referred to as Tokyo-Jupiter. This "absolute barrier" appears uncrossable, although it turns out that with enough power and technology it is possible to cross and even destroy it. The Mu control Tokyo, its citizens in effect cut off from the outside world and led to believe that the rest of the Earth has been destroyed. The barrier has a time dilation effect, with time inside Tokyo-Jupiter passing one sixth as fast as the normal time.
Although RahXephon is usually placed in the mecha category of anime, its "mechas" aren't mechanical at all. They are referred to as "Dolems". Dolems are made of clay and are animated by a musical force resembling magic. Further, each Dolem is bound to a Mulian; when a Dolem is destroyed, this Mulian is killed as well.
The underlying theme of RahXephon is one of music and sound. A Dolem attacks while singing, and somtimes the attack is the song itself. The RahXephon can also attack by having its pilot — the instrumentalist — sing a song. These songs in turn unleash powerful forces (such as light-energy blasts or heat waves) that cause near-apocalyptic destruction. Each of the Mulian Dolems has an Italian name from musical notation, like "Allegretto", "Falsetto", or "Vivace". The ultimate goal of the RahXephon is to "tune the world". According to the show's creators, the name "RahXephon" is composed of "Rah" (the Mulian sun-god), "Xe" for the X factor (the unknown), and "-phon" as a suffix for instrument (-phone).
Central plotline
The unusual relationship between Ayato Kamina and Haruka Shitow is one of the most important plotlines of the series.
Ayato and Haruka first met before the Tokyo Jupiter incident. Haruka lived with her mother, who was a widow at that time; their family name was "Mishima". Ayato, a boy genetically engineered by the Bähbem Foundation to become an instrumentalist, also lived in Tokyo with his adoptive mother, Maya Kamina, who was in charge of his education. His clone, known as Itsuki Kisaragi, was raised at the Bähbem Manor at the same time.
After their initial meeting, Haruka and Ayato soon fell in love with each other and rarely parted. However, during the Tokyo Jupiter incident, Haruka Mishima and her mother were away from Tokyo on a holiday trip while Ayato remained inside. Some time later, Haruka's mother married again and her family name became Shitow. Haruka's sister, Megumi, was born. In the meantime, Haruka had a relationship with Itsuki Kisaragi (probably because he was so similar to Ayato), but her heart always belonged to Ayato. Another change in Haruka's life after Tokyo Jupiter was that she started to have her hair cut shorter.
Ayato sustained heavy mental damage and Maya modified his memories to make him forget Haruka. There is much evidence throughout the series that the entire population of Tokyo Jupiter is being collectively brainwashed by the Mu. Though Ayato had forgotten Haruka visions of her continued to haunt him; this is visible in his paintings. Ixtli, RahXephon's soul, adopted Haruka's appearance and family name (Mishima) but took the given name Reika.
By the time Haruka infiltrated Tokyo Jupiter and met Ayato again, she (as well as Dr. Itsuki Kisaragi) was considerably older than he (because of time dilation). Despite his original mistrust towards her, Ayato gradually re-discovered his love for Haruka. By the end of the series, Ayato ascends to the status of a new god (together with his genetic mother Quon Kisaragi). Haruka flies to be with Ayato, or perhaps to wake him from his fury, and her fighter jet takes a point-blank shot of the RahXephon's energy beams that were actually directed at Quon.
In any case, after Ayato's RahXephon "defeated" and merged with Quon's, he re-tuned the world (i.e. modified the past) so that he and Haruka would not have been separated. In the final shots of the series, adult Ayato (who can now easily be mistaken for Dr. Kisaragi) is seen with Haruka and their daughter Quon.
RahXephon on the Nature of Reality
The ending of the RahXephon series (as well as the ending of the RahXephon motion picture, Pluralitas Concentio) suggest possible link between RahXephon and a modern day Buddhist ontological view, and/or other similar subjective views of reality (existential anime reviewers have often mentioned such ties). While at the end of the series Ayato Kamina chooses a side of “light” as opposed to retuning the world to benefit the Mu, the consequences of his decision reflect an oddly familiar world view (it should be noted that utter compassion and love fueled his final decision).
In the series an emotionless Ayato appears standing beside a large tree, speaking with his love in gentle but straight forward tones. Ayato explains how things turned out how they were meant to. It was obvious that Ayato was no longer human: he seemed to blend in with his natural surroundings. It was also obvious that Ayato could not stay in the world anymore.Since his love for Haruka Shitow was strong he granted her past memories of the time they should have spent together, and thus the ending of them together is shown at the end of the series. This might have confused the casual audience and thus RahXephon: Pluralitas Concentio adds scenes to the ending in order to clarifying exactly what could have happened.
In Pluralitas Concentio there is a scene by a lake in which Ayato explains the entire situation to Haruka and the moviegoer. He explains how he cannot remain with her in the world as they know it and that now he, in fact, somehow transcended his human state (a state of “Enlightenment” it seemed to many fans of the series). Ayato could not remain with Haruka and Haruka could not remain with Ayato – Ayato was forced to remain in both the past and the present fused with Ixtli (the RahXephon’s soul, Ayato’s other true half) in order to bring harmony to the universe. (Music fans and philosophy majors take note of the difference between concordant sounds and dissonant sounds as they are the only aspect of the RahXephon world which is not subjective, such tones in fact reverberate throughout the world of RahXephon like the recurring image of a droplet of water against a puddle as seen often in the series. They are, in fact, what holds the world of RahXephon together.)
If Ayato left from being in the state which was apart from past and future (a state of reality which is both nothing and something all at once), the world would fill up with discord once more and require retuning. The intelligent moviegoer would immediately speculate that this is perhaps why there is a RahXephon in the first place, and that perhaps the world in the series needed retuning. It should be also noted that the Alice and Wonderland book, “Through the Looking Glass” was mentioned repeatedly throughout the motion picture, once again supporting this view of a subjective reality. Which reality is correct, the Mu world or the human world? The movie does not decide that for the audience, neither does it speak of the legitimacy of the world untuned or the world tuned.
However what it does do is present an ending in which an aged Haruka explains to her daughter how that question of which reality is more legitimate is futile, or even foolish to ask, instead what matters is what took place: a couple much in love was able to hold onto memories of being in love, while the world was retuned. Whether or not the retuning of the world actually changed the physical world is unknown. It should be mentioned though that one should not speculate that the world itself was not changed simply because it wasn't mentioned: both in Pluralitas Concentio as well as the series, the world of RahXephon was significantly devastated.
The philosophical themes present in Pluralitas Concentio are not entirely new; such themes were present in the anime series as well (the motion picture just helps to understand them for those that did not understand after the end of the series). This aspect of the anime makes it approachable by people of all ages, from those that like philosophy to youngsters that simply enjoy mecha battles.
Anime Episodes
Each episode of RahXephon has a title screen that provides an English title for that episode, which generally does not correspond to a translation from the Japanese title. The titles listed below are the official English titles, with the official translations from Japanese in parentheses.
- Overlord (Invasion of the Capital)
- Awakening (God and Man Awaken)
- Welcome to Our Town (City of Two / The Town with Two People)
- Watch the Year Hand (His own Watch)
- On Earth as it is in Heaven (Niraikanai)
- Lost Songs, Forgotten Melodies (Obliterated Cities)
- Phantom in the Clouds (Day of Assembly)
- The Dreaming Stone (Bitterly Cold Holy Night)
- Sanctuary (Small Shrine of Time)
- War in the Remembrance (Sonata of Recollection)
- Nightmare (Kyoja Circuit)
- Resonance (The Black Egg)
- Sleeping Beauty (Human Specimen #1)
- Time After Time (The Boy in the Mirror)
- Childhood's End (The Children's Night)
- Island of Others (The Moon Princess)
- Ground Zero (Return to the Labyrinth)
- The Bond of Blue Blood (The Memory of Lost City)
- Ticket to Nowhere (Blue Friend)
- Interested Parties (The Artisan's Battle)
- Good Bye my Friend (The Carved Seal of Xephon)
- Downfall (Operation Jupiter Obliteration)
- Where the Sweet Bird Sings (From Here to Eternity)
- Twin Music (Doorway to the Tuning)
- Deux ex Machina (God's Uncertain Music)
- Time Enough for Love (Far Beyond Eternity)
Other story formats
Manga
The manga was created by Yutaka Izubuchi and BONES, with artwork from Takeaki Momose. As previously mentioned the manga adaptation of RahXephon presents the same overall scenario as the anime but features some differences, ranging from significant to minor.
| Anime | Manga |
|---|---|
| Ayato Kamina is a more sensitive character | Ayato is a bolder, occasionally sensitive character |
| Reika Mishima is distant and enigmatic to Ayato | Reika and Ayato have grown up together as adoptive siblings |
| Reika is a more serious figure with a conscious role and motives | Reika is more comical and unknowingly a Phoenix-like being, with no motive |
| Megumi is an employee of TERRA whom Ayato has recently met | Megumi is only a minor character acting as Reika's classmate at Niraikanai |
| Haruka competes with Megumi for Ayato's affections | Haruka competes with Reika for Ayato's affections |
| Two or three beach scenes. Otherwise little "fan service". | Panty shots and nudity frequent in first volume. |
| Quon is privy to secrets and quite prominent | Quon is equally knowledgeable but less prominent |
| Jin, Nanamori, Quon and Kisaragi look mostly the same in both versions | |
| Maya, Reika, Haruka and Ayato look different than in the manga | Reika and Haruka and are drawn in a style with rounder faces |
| Dolems are used regularly | Dolems appear less often |
| Tokyo Jupiter time is the year 2015; actual time is the year 2027 | Tokyo Jupiter time is the year 2015; actual time is the year 2033 |
Other books
- Hiroshi Ohnogi, one of the screenwriters on the TV series, has written a series of RahXephon novels. These novels are being published in English by DrMaster.
- Two different illustrated guide books have been published.
- RahXephon Bible: Analysis Phase covers the series as far as episode 15, and is available in English; it contains episode notes, character pages and brief profiles of crew members.
- RahXephon Complete covers all episodes, the OVA, movie and video game; it contains longer interviews with crew members as well one pair interview with Yutaka Izubuchi (director of RahXephon) and Hideaki Anno (director of Neon Genesis Evangelion); this book is only available in Japanese.
- There are also several art books available.
RahXephon video game and OVA
Image:Ps2rahxephon.jpg The RahXephon video game was released for the PlayStation 2 by Bandai Japan in 2003; there is no English version. The game is mainly an adventure game with some action sequences. The player moves around in a 3D environment, and some scenes feature hand-drawn animation. In the action sequences the player fights Dolems with the RahXephon. Examples can be seen on the game website (Japanese).
The special Plusculus edition of the game contains a bonus OVA episode called Thatness and Thereness (Her and Herself). This episode shows Quon Kisaragi's dialogue with her other self as a series of dream sequences. By the end of the episode, Quon remembers something crucial about her past and makes a decision for the future.
Super Robot Wars
The RahXephon characters and mecha have appeared in the Super Robot Wars series by Banpresto. It has so far only appeared in one single game, Super Robot Wars MX. The RahXephon is a very powerful unit, with the power of a Super Robot but much of the agility of a Real Robot. This made it extremely deadly. Although not quite as overwhelming as the Zeorymer (an unbalanced unit according to some), it is one of the more effective units in the game.
RahXephon's storyline also had a major role in the game's overall mixed plot, as the series' climax was also the climax of the game: It goes away a few stages before the last, but comes back in the final fight in Shinsei Ayato form.
Audiodrama
An audio drama titled RahXephon Sound Drama was released on CD in September 2002. In consists of 13 scenes and 4 music tracks, for a total of 17 tracks.
Influences
Ancient civilizations
RahXephon has many references to the Mayan culture. The Dolem's control system appears to consist of the pilot wearing a helmet shaped like a face from a Mayan sculpture [1]. Also, the cities of the Mu contain artwork that appears to be Mayan in origin. In addition, the date that the RahXephon awoke was December 21, 2012, which is the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar (according to the Mayans, December 21, 2012 marks the end of the Age of the Jaguar, and the transformation of Earth into the fifth and perfect phase). Even the leader of the Mu is named Maya. This is probably not coincidental since the series draws many of its references from James Churchward's 1931 novel The Lost Continent of Mu; it is a story about an advanced ancient race from a large island in the South Pacific which had sunk, like the legendary continent of Atlantis.
![[1]](http://www.ratware.plus.com/Travel/Mexico/LargePics/MayanSculpture.jpg){kind=link}
Creation stories
The tuning of the world resembles the idea of creation by song, found in creation mythologies like that of the Hopi [2] and fictional mythologies like J. R. R. Tolkien's Music of the Ainur and the creation story of C. S. Lewis' Narnia.
Another symbolic element is that of the Golems, creatures made from clay, recalling Biblical imagery from Genesis as well as more recent stories in Jewish folklore. It is interesting to note that in Genesis, Adam is made from clay, reinforcing Bähbem's image, or aspiration, of being God.
Post-classical literature
A possible basis for Ayato and Haruka's relationship is found in Robert F. Young's short story The Dandelion Girl. In Young's story the protagonist encounters a girl standing on a hill in a dress, the breeze blowing in her hair; this girl comes from the future, while the girl in RahXephon comes from the past. The Dandelion Girl is also referenced in the 'Coda' after the credits of Episode 26. Another science fiction influence appears in the secondary title for Episode 26 as Time Enough for Love is the name of one of the Lazarus Long books by Robert A. Heinlein.
The summary movie explicitly references Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll; the series itself does not, but it has some commonalities with the book: Both use mirrors and reflections, and both feature the stopping and reversal of time. In the manga version of RahXephon, the choice of literature is different: Some of the characters compare themselves to those in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum; the book does briefly appear in the anime.
The philosophy of Novalis may also have had a general influence on the themes in RahXephon: Novalis was a Romantic philosopher who said that "the world becomes a dream, and the dream becomes reality." There are several clearly dreamlike sequences in RahXephon—for example where Ixtli appears—yet those dreams are, in fact, reality on another level. Novalis also wrote the unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, about a young Heinrich who is searching for the "blue flower" that he once saw in a dream and has yearned for ever since. Ayato thinks he has seen Haruka somewhere, and is yearning for her as well as seen from his constant paintings. Actual blue flowers also appear in RahXephon as symbols of the Mu.
Visual arts
A reoccurring significant image in the anime is a picture that is a modified version of noted Surrealist artist René Magritte's Le Grande Famille [3]. Bird wings, black and white feathers and eggs appear as central story objects.
Music
The motif Quon sings or hums repeatedly is the theme from Polovetsian Dances from Alexander Borodin's opera Prince Igor, about a warrior prince. The melody is also found in a song from the 1953 musical Kismet titled "Stranger in Paradise", dealing with the love between two people of different worlds.
Japanese culture
TERRA is based in Kanai City on Nirai Island, part of the Ryukyu Islands. These places have been named as a pun on Nirai-kanai. In traditional Ryukyu beliefs "Nirai kanai", also called "Nira-hara" or "Niraasuku", is the place out at sea where the gods live. These gods are believed to visit the islands of humans during certain religious festivals[4]. In RahXephon, Mu is suggested to be the real-world basis of the Nirai-kanai legend.
The impermeable barrier between Tokyo and the rest of Japan with the Tokyo-Jupiter effect might be interpreted as representational of a perceived cultural barrier between the urbanized, seemingly more Westernized primate city of Tokyo and the comparably more rural and traditional rest of the country. This analogy would make the Mu into a representation of the Japanese view of Westerners from just before the Meiji Restoration to the reconstruction following World War II: similar anatomically except for a few minor variances, an invading force, both militarily and culturally, an initially technologically superior enemy that causes the Japanese (or in RahXephon, humans) to require rapid advancement in military technology, and a scapegoat used to inflame nationalistic (or in RahXephon, non-Mu) jingoism.
Comparisons to other Anime
Many similarities can be found between RahXephon and other mecha and romance anime shows.
Reideen the Brave
In an issue of Newtype magazine the director of RahXephon has said RahXephon is meant to be a sort of modern-day Reideen. As such there are many similarities between Reideen and RahXephon, particularly having to do with the titular "robots". The main difference is that RahXephon generally does not have "attack names".
- Akira Hibiki and Ayato Kamina both have mothers who are from a race called the "Mu". This in turn means that both Akira and Ayato have Mu blood.
- Akira and Ayato both "meld" into a surface in order to enter the cockpit of their respective robot. Akira enters via Reideen's forehead; Ayato can enter the RahXephon both directly and through a portal that is separate from the body of the RahXephon.
Reideen and RahXephon both
- are portrayed as intelligent, sentient beings.
- possess similar general aesthetics, particularly the human-like face that is covered on the sides.
- can attack with a sword that protrudes out of their right arms.
- can form a bow on their left arms with which they can shoot arrows.
- can attack with their voices. Reideen uses the technique "God Voice" while RahXephon sings.
In Super Robot Wars MX, Reideen and RahXephon's plots are closely related.
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Many fans compare RahXephon to Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE), favourably or unfavourably. Some say that RahXephon can be favoured to Evangelion because of its clearer ending and more active protagonist. Further, RahXephon used less still images and recycled footage from previous episodes than NGE did, a result of Gainax's notorious tendency to go overbudget at the beginning of a TV series and having to finish it on a shoestring budget, a tendency also manifested in Nadia. NGE had expanded the adult and non-Japanese market for anime, thus breaking the ground for later anime shows like RahXephon to follow. RahXephon benefitted from larger budgets that take foreign distribution into account, as well as from technological advances in anime production.
Critics say that since RahXephon was made several years after NGE, and because of similarities in the respective protagonists and in the style and execution of events, that RahXephon is not as original or groundbreaking as NGE. They also contend that the series lacks NGE director Anno's strong and psychology-filled writing, and also his unique, gritty, unpredictable visual style. NGE itself had its share of similarities to previous mecha anime, but its iconic status and fame makes it a natural target of comparison to other mecha shows.
One aspect of RahXephon seen favorably by some is that it devotes less time to battles than NGE does, counterbalancing this with more character development, and an ensemble of characters that have complex relationships. This complexity—as well as early foreshadowing of events—suggests that RahXephon's story was planned and written early in the production cycle. In contrast, NGE's writing was sketchily pre-planned (as admitted by assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki) and was more influenced by the reactions that TV executives and viewers had to previous episodes.
It is somewhat amusing to note that the very beginning of the series' first episode, Ayato disparagingly comments that "All's right with the world, huh?" This may be interpreted as a reference to Evangelion, as NERV's logo bears the words "All's right with the world" (the last taken from Robert Browning's poem Song from Pippa Passes).
Other similarities
- Towards the end of both series, well-known classical compositions were used for scenes of dramatic climax. NGE used Ode to Joy, while RahXephon used Polovetsian Dances. In contrast, the original scores are quite different from each other; especially in calm and relaxed scenes: While RahXephon uses light jazz or classical-jazz fusion, NGE uses easy listening instrumentals in such scenes — it is easy to hear the difference.
- Elvy's cross necklace is the same as that of NGE's Misato. Both characters are outgoing women who hold important command positions and enjoy drinking lots of beer in their spare time.
- In NGE the primary enemies, Angels, had a "Blue Blood Type" at the height of their malignancy. As noted, the blood of RahXephon's Mulians is also blue.
- In the RahXephon OVA Thatness and Thereness, Quon Kisaragis's dialogue with her other self seems to visually reference Rei Ayanami's dialogue with Armisael, the sixteenth angel in NGE.
- Both shows might disappoint viewers who come expecting more and longer mecha battles. RahXephon in particular tries to avoid falling into a "monster of the week" routine. It is criticized by some, however, because battles seldom are won by tactical and strategic thinking but rather by learning a new ability or overcoming a personal issue, like in a "power-up anime". NGE had some battles won by this kind of "catharsis", but also had more battles where tactics were part of the story.
Gundam SEED
In RahXephon, we follow the story of Ayato, who is forced to leave behind a peaceful life in Tokyo, and who then chooses to pilot a giant mecha, the RahXephon for a planetwide alliance against the Mulians, his people, who are perceived as invaders. In Gundam SEED, we follow the story of Kira Yamato, who is forced to leave his peaceful home in the colony of Heliopolis, and eventually chooses to pilot a giant mecha, the Strike Gundam, for the Earth Alliance, against ZAFT, a military organization representing Coordinators, despite being a Coordinator himself.
Both protagonists suffer from guilt at fighting against their people, and both suffer from discrimination due to what they are. Both characters have been genetically modified, with specific intent. Ayato was the first successful Instrumentalist, while Kira was the first successful Ultimate Coordinator. Both characters also have a sibling previously unknown to them. Both characters are motivated by a desire to protect those who are important to them, and both must also deal with the death of a close friend they failed to protect. Both characters must also fight against a close friend from their pasts.
Infinite Ryvius
- In Infinite Ryvius, each Vaia ship shares with its mecha an avatar that interacts with the human characters. The RahXephon has an avatar called "Ixtli" (commonly translated as "Ishtori"); the Ryvius' is called "Neeya". In both shows, the avatar takes the form of a person familiar to one of the human characters. The avatars feel the pain and express the will of the vessels.
- The Dolems establish a psychic link to a given person; they both control and are controlled by this individual. The Vaia establish a similar link to a ship's captain, but also—to a lesser degree—to other crewmembers. This idea of a bond is fairly common in mecha shows, though not in the traditional shows where machines were lifeless objects.
See also
- Time Enough for Love – a 1973 novel by Robert Heinlein from which the final episode is named.
- Childhood's End – a novel from which an episode is named. "The overlords" appear as characters.
- Kanno, Yoko – The composer of the theme song.
- Litvyak, Lydia – The namesake of the aircraft carrier Lilia Litvyak
- Nahuatl language – Classical Nahuatl is supposed to be the "Naacal" language spoken by the Mu. Many of the words in the series come from Nahuatl.
- Operation Overlord – The 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy, from which the TERRA operation in the first episode is named.
- Operation Downfall – The planned 1946 Allied invasion of Japan. Imperial Japan surrendered before the plans could be carried out.
- Pocky – The snack sticks often offered at Rikudo Shougo's residence.
- Ramune – The soft drink that Ayato is unfamiliar with but encounters after joining TERRA.
- Shodo – Japanese calligraphy
- Shogi – Japanese chess
- Yolteotl
External links
- Official Japanese website
- Official English website
- {{{2|{{{title|RahXephon}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- Mu timeline by Philip R. Banks. Contains story details (spoilers).
- RahXefun contains an episode guide with music information
- Rahxephon.new.fr A french website / un site français sur Rahxephon afin de faire connaitre cette merveilleuse sériefr:RahXephon