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X: The Movie

18 NOV

X is described on the DVD cover from one critic as being "One of the greatest orgies of battle and destruction ever seen in a live action film or an animated one... A feast for the eyes." However, just like with the other critics comments on the DVD cover, I highly disagree. To me this film is a terribly, confusing experience.

The film tells the story of Kamui who returns to Tokyo after 6 years of absence. Two factions begin to take an interest to him known as, the Dragons of Heaven and Dragons of Earth because depending on what faction he joins Kamui will lead them to victory with their cause. In this case, he joins the Dragons of Heaven who want to prevent the Dragons of Earth from destroying humanity. Meanwhile, his childhood friend Fuma joins the Dragons of Earth since he is told that it's the only way he can save his sister, Kotori. The plot is the basic good vs evil story, but while it did have some promising concepts and ideas, the plot just comes out as being a convoluted mess with wasted ideas either because of the amount of dream sequences the film has or if something isn't explained fully enough. For example without giving anything away, let's just say you'll be confused in the first four minutes and I literally mean that.

Now for one of the films only good qualities, the animation. While I disagree that the film is passable just because of the animation on it's own similar to how people say Avatar is brilliant just because of visuals on it's own when in fact the plot is quite weak and basically a retelling of Pocahontas, for it's time X's animation is pretty good. It leads to pretty visually stunning pieces and some nice environments.

Ugh, along with the characters (which I'll get to later) the sound is atrocious. The English dub voice acting is some of the worst I've ever heard in an anime. This mostly because the voices sound quite off and the actors do a pretty weak job of potraying the characters. An example of this is from the beginning of the film where Kamui sees his mother explode in dream and proceeds to scream, "Mother!!!!" which is possibly one of the cringiest things I've ever heard. As for the other elements of the sound, the music really isn't that memorable other than the DVD menu music and the ending theme, Forever Love. Another problem I have with the sound is that the audio can sound a bit crackly at times. It definitely wasn't the DVD because if you listen carefully you can tell that the audio wasn't recorded that well though it might just be the copy I borrowed from the library I went to. Overall for the sound it's quite weak with some terrible voice acting and unmemorable music.

Now for the segment which I have the least to talk about, the characters. What I mean is that they are all very boring and uninteresting. Most of them, with the exception of the main three characters have no backstory whatsoever thus making them boring to watch even in the action scenes since I'm not rooting for anyone. Fuma seems to be the only character who gets some character development though it's very poorly done. In general, I really couldn't care less about the characters since they lack backstories and character development especially the main protagonist, Kamui.

In conclusion, X is not only the worst animated film I've ever seen but also one of the worst films I've ever seen in general. I've seen the likes of other terrible animated films such as Yugioh the Movie but at least that was enjoyable because how stupid it was, thus making it entertaining to watch. X on the other hand was just a boring and confusing mess. If you're interested in checking out the franchise watch the series which retells the story because although I've only seen the first two episodes of it, it does a MUCH better job at being interesting and entertaining though that's a story for another day. Anyway, avoid this film at all costs.

Other Anime Reviews by Ryukiaccel

X: The Movie user review by Ryukiaccel

X: The Movie

overall score: 2.5/10

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User Review Scores

  • Story 3/10
  • Animation 7/10
  • Sound 3.5/10
  • Characters 2/10
  • Overall 2.5/10

Recent Anime Reviews by Ryukiaccel


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