The X Movie Review
By Karasu, Inuhoshi, and Kouri
Having watched this movie, we have only one question: “What?” As in, “What was going on?” “What just happened?” “What were they thinking?” No, amend that: two questions. “Why?”
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Correct us if we’re wrong: Subaru enters the story in manga 6. And he’s pretty damn cool. In the movie, he comes in at the very beginning. Normally, we would have no complaints, because he’s pretty cool. Until you realize, five minutes later, that both he and Seishirou are now dead.
Need we repeat ourselves: “What?!”
Yes. Dead. Except you don’t figure this out until Hinoto informs you later, and even then you’re half-expecting that she’s wrong and he’ll show up again somewhere. And actually, it’s never mentioned that Seishirou’s dead. You just have to figure that out for yourself.
Kamui. Kamui is pretty cool; he keeps the whole pissy attitude bit, but his cloak needs help. Why does he have a cloak, and why does it make him look like a vampire? A third-rate vampire, at that. It disappears later. We don’t know how or why.
Not knowing how or why is a fairly common occurrence in this movie. Such as, “Since when does Kanoe have all the powers she randomly has in this movie?” She pulls Kotori through a pool of blood, moving her physical body into a dream. You may be thinking that this is impossible. Yeah, we know.
Let’s take the new guy, whose name escapes us because they only mention it once and then he’s dead ten minutes later. He’s pretty cool. Too bad he died really quickly. However, he had a personality, which is more than we can say for the rest of the characters. However, he allowed himself to be blown up by a train.
Speaking of dying too quickly, this is another fairly common theme. They show up, have no personality, and die, usually in some random, stupid way. Like Karen, who stands in front of a train for no reason, and lets it hit her. Seiichirou and Nataku at least die fighting each other, though we can’t figure out what exactly happened.
To give the movie credit, Nataku was fairly well done. As a matter of fact, Inuki was too. That’s about it. That strikes us as rather sad.
And you thought Fuuma was an evil bastard in the manga? You should see this. Okay, he never licked Kamui’s neck, or ears, or anything else. However, he did go around randomly killing people. I know, you’re thinking he did this in the manga, too. No. This is worse. He kills Yuuto and Kusanagi, to name a few. For no reason. Whatsoever. I think he may even mention that there’s no reason.
And how about the swords that come out of nowhere? For one thing, Kotori has one, when she’s not supposed to. For another, Kamui’s appeared out of thin air. It was cool, kinda weird, and completely inappropriate.
How about the plot? Oh, wait, I forgot. There wasn’t one. The movie was basically one flat line of combat, one pointless fight after another. Most of these fights resulted in two deaths: one Angel and one Seal, as one gave their life to kill the other. There are a few exceptions, such as when Fuuma killed Kusanagi to save them the trouble.
Speaking of Kusanagi, though he had little to no personality in the manga, since when can he put cigarettes out on his hand? He’s turned into some macho bastard, and proceeds to kick Kamui’s ass somehow. How? We don’t know. But it’s okay, because Inuki takes off his arm. (Kusanagi’s, not Kamui’s, although in this movie, I wouldn’t put it past them to do it the other way around.)
Yuuto was okay, for the few lines he had. Same with Satsuki. She had two lines, and then got killed by Fuuma, or the Beast, we’re really not sure. The Beast, by the way, makes a really big deal out of refusing to save Yuuto out of jealousy, which we thought was really cool. However, if we hadn’t read the manga, we would’ve had no idea what was going on, because it came out of nowhere. It also would’ve been much cooler if Yuuto’s death had been given any purpose at all.
Arashi and Sorata weren’t bad, though the whole romance thing which we all thought was really funny in the manga didn’t exist until the very end, when it came out of nowhere and ended up getting Sorata killed. Actually, it got Arashi killed too, because while she was crying over Sorata’s body, Fuuma came up behind her and ran her through. Fuuma, you suck. Sorry, we mistook you for somebody honorable.
Random aside: Why is Kanoe feeling Kotori up?
While we’re on the subject of Kanoe, did you know she engineered this whole thing to prove her sister wrong? Just to set her sister free, because once she’d been proven wrong, the government would no longer want to hire her. Never mind the fact that the human race would be wiped out of existence. Then, Hinoto touchingly cries over her dying body while she explains this, since Fuuma once again randomly killed somebody (somebody being Kanoe), then a big rock falls on them both. How’s that for plot development? Oh my God, they have personalities! Kill them, quick! They might develop into - gasp - characters!
Ahem, anyway.
How about that great sword fight at the end? Oh, wait, what sword fight? Basically, Fuuma comes running menacingly at Kamui, who freaks out and lops his head off with a sword that wasn’t supposed to be there. Then he once again cries over a severed head. We feel pretty bad for him.
Then the movie ends. Right there. With him crying over Fuuma’s head. And we are thinking:
“What?”
So, basically, the movie had no plot, no character development, no conflict, no resolution, and no logic. It was as if they took the premise, the characters’ looks, names, and loosely, their powers, and wrote a new story. Bits and pieces of the manga show up occasionally. Just enough to confuse you.
However, there is hope. At the very end, they showed a preview for the series. This looked much more promising. In fact, it had us cheering. It looks really good. It actually has the characters it’s supposed to have. And the plot, as it happens in the manga. Also, not that this has anything to do with it, the Tokyo Babylon tapes (subbed, do not buy the dubbed) are also really good. We just don’t want you getting the wrong idea of all CLAMP movie stuff. So when the series comes out, we have every plan of buying it. We suggest that you do, too, and skip the movie. Unless you have interest in making fun of it, which is what we did.
Our conclusion is as follows: this movie was one big clusterfuck.