Anime: X (aka X/1999)
Mar. 22nd, 2010 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaThis is one of the things you can blame ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachelmanija for, since she showed me the first dozen or so episodes at horse camp.
X (which was apparently released in the US as X/1999, or maybe just the manga was) is a CLAMP production that, like many CLAMP productions, has a lot to do with destiny, beautiful people, angst, flashbacks, semi-digested chunks of mythology, angst, suggestive situations, big fancy swords, dramatic revelations, stirring speeches, beautiful people, sakura blossoms, and angst. This does not mean it's bad! In fact, like so many things that skirt the edge of the Id Vortex, it works very well and sucks the attention in pretty hardcore! I enjoyed the first half very much and am considering Netflixing and mainlining the second half before I jump into the next plot arc of Naruto. So, as is so often the case, I mock because I love.
Also I should warn you that I have taken a lot of NyQuil in the past few days. So. This may show the effects of someone who's just the tiniest bit stoned on cold medicine. ;) Also, it's really long, because the first thing to go is my conciseness.
It begins with the end of the world. Well, no; with a prophecy of the end of the world: the Seven Dragons of Earth are going to try to end the world, while the Seven Dragons of Heaven are going to try to save it, and one boy! is the key! to the destiny! of the world! Unfortunately, that boy is Kamui, whose main hobbies seem to be sulking, folding his arms, getting in fights in which he pwns (at least that one's relevant to the destiny! of the world!), and standing on the tops of tall things. Oh, and telling his friends to go away and leave him alone. I think it's one of the major signs of a Person with a Destiny: dead or missing family, traumatic backstory, mysterious powers, awesome weaponry, scar or birthmark (optional), and antisocial personality.
Behind the cut, I spoil everything up through episode 14, aka The One With X-Treme Psychotherapy. Please don't spoil me beyond that!
Kamui returns to Tokyo, apparently to reclaim the destined Sword of Awesome but also with the very important goal of snubbing his childhood friends. See, because he's a serious teenage boy in Japan, even though he came back to Tokyo to pick up the Sword of Awesome (it has a real name, but I've forgotten what it was) and intended to leave again right after, he decided to enroll in high school while he was there, even though he has no parents or guardians and his powers make truant officers (or whatever the equivalent in Japan would be) kinda moot. But I guess the power of secondary education compels him! So he enrolls at exactly the same school his childhood friends Kotori and Fuma (brother and sister and, not coincidentally, the children of the dude who guards the Sword of Awesome at the shrine) are attending.
At first I thought he'd signed up there, yanno, on purpose, because he wanted to see them again. But then he spends the next while hiding from them and telling them to get lost a lot, so that doesn't really... follow. Rachel and I came to the tentative conclusion that he enrolled there because that school had an appropriately moody black-and-red uniform, and the fact that Kotori and Fuma were there was an unhappy coincidence.
So Kamui attempts to get the Sword of Awesome, fails, tries again, gets attacked by some Dragons of Earth, gets attacked by some Dragons of Heaven, kicks ass, threatens people, hides in his apartment, goes to school(????), sulks, and stands on tall things, over the course a few episodes. I begin calling him Batman.
Kotori: Why are you pretending we weren't friends?? *sad anime girl wobbly eyes*
Kamui: *folds arms, sulks, stares off into space, says nothing*
Me (as Kamui): Because I'm the goddamn Batman!
Anyway! Meanwhile, we are meeting the other Dragons of Heaven and also some of the Dragons of Earth. Among the Dragons of Heaven are a shrine maiden named Arashi, who can summon a gigantic sword out of her hand and perform awesome attacks that bisect people and things with it, and who is a very standard Serious Dedicated Girl; Sorata, an incredibly friendly and somewhat goofy but good-hearted young man who attacks with electricity, and who may be my favorite character; Yuzuriha, a teenage girl who likes pocky and ice cream and happens to have a constant companion in the form of a giant invisible spirit dog; Subaru, a psychic/spiritualist who aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangsts over a love/hate relationship that ended, as such things do, badly, and who is almost always surrounded by Sakura of Doom; Aoki, a wind magician who's also a family man and works for a publishing company, a combination I find kinda awesome; and Karen, a fire mage who also happens to be a devout Catholic and a prostitute, also a combination I find kinda awesome although in a different way.
Oh, and they're all led by Princess Hinoto, who is apparently unable to see, hear, speak, or move, but who gets around all of those by being a super-powerful psychic and dream-seer. She never does get up, but to be honest even if she could walk it'd be tricky because she has the most incredibly elaborate robes, and also massive quantities of hair arranged all neatly around her. That must be heavy. She predicts the future and tells the Dragons of Heaven what to do, and also looks like she might cry at any moment, which I guess, if you can see the End of the World in your dreams, kinda makes sense. Anyway, Hinoto's vision is that there are six Dragons of Heaven and six Dragons of Earth, and then Kamui will pick one side or the other and that side will win. Or at least, that's what she says it is....
The other side, the Dragons of Earth, I won't detail in as much... well, detail. They're lead by Kanoe, who is said to be Hinoto's sister although I'm not positive whether that's literal or just means 'counterpart' or 'other half.' She can't see the future but she can see inside other peoples' dreams. She also has the advantage of actually doing stuff, as opposed to just sitting around looking like she might cry. I've forgotten about half of the Dragons of Earth, but there's Yuto, who's Affably Evil and fights with a whip and is sleeping with Kanoe; Satsuki, who speaks to computers and finds humans dreadfully boring; and Seishiro, who is the other half of Subaru's love/hate thing, and who appears to be the source of the Sakura of Doom. I wonder if Kanoe hires someone to follow him around with a broom, 'cause otherwise that's going to get messy.
So there's this long lead-up where things go like this: Kamui tries to get the Sword of Awesome (or sometimes just wanders around); people attack him; he fights back; Kotori follows him around and worries about him; Fuma follows them both around and worries about them; Sorata and Arashi follow Kamui around, because it's just the hip thing to do; Sorata chatters a lot, which is a relief because NOBODY ELSE TALKS LIKE EVER; Arashi gives Sorata stern looks, which apparently turns Sorata on, because he falls totally in love with her; Yuzuriha wanders around Tokyo with her dog and eats ice cream and becomes the character I identify most with; Kamui stands on top of tall things and broods. Brooooods. Brooooooooooooods.
Oh, and we learn backstory for a bunch of the characters. Sorata seems to get off easiest, because he just has a dim memory of his weeping (and from the drawing, kinda deranged) mother, oh and the fact that he's been told that he's doomed to die protecting the woman he loves. (He picks Arashi right off the bat, I think on the principle that if he's going to die for a woman he's going to pick a really beautiful chick who can pull gigantic swords out of her hand. I love Sorata, I really do. I seriously hope he gets laid at least once before his Doomed Death.) Yuzuriha is traumatized because when she was a kid everybody thought she was making up her invisible magical intelligent spirit dog, because, well, invisible. To be honest, I would love to have an invisible magical intelligent well-behaved spirit dog who was infinitely loyal to me, but what do I know? Subaru, well, doomed love/hate relationship with Seishiro, which is insufficiently angsty by itself but then Seishiro kills Subaru's sister for reasons that were not at all clear to me. (And does it by punching straight into her chest and stabbing her in the heart with his fingers, which is a neat trick, I guess.) Oh and also, this is awesome, according to Rachel the backstory is that Subaru and Seishiro are doomed to kill the ones they love the most? or something? and so Subaru is all angsty and pained because Seishiro hasn't tried to kill him, ergo Seishiro doesn't really love him, ergo aaaaaaaaaaangst.
I love this shit.
Anyway, angsty backstories! We're just getting warmed up! Satsuki is being pursued by people who think it's awesome that she's Dances with Mainframes, so that sucks. Also she killed her dad, but nobody seems very bothered by that, least of all her, so I'm not sure it counts as angsty backstory. Oh, I forgot Nataku (another Dragon of Earth), but I guess that's because there isn't much to remember of Nataku. He's an androgynous clone of some kind, and he stole the first Sword of Awesome be...cause it was awesome? I guess? I'm not even sure if he's taking orders from Kanoe yet. Arashi... I don't remember angst from her, I think she's just Stoic. Then there's the Comatose Dreamseer, aka The Person In The Series With Even Less Initiative Than Kotori or Hinoto, but I'll get to him in a bit. Maybe being a dreamseer saps your will to live or something, I dunno.
Then there are the really hardcore angsty backgrounds. These are AWESOME. I mean, AWESOME. When it comes to angst, CLAMP don't fuck around.
Kotori and Fuma? Their father protects the Sword of Awesome at the Shrine of Somethingorother. Where did the Sword come from? Their mother EXPLODED giving birth to it.
Their mother EXPLODED giving birth to a SWORD.
As Rachel put it, this is about the most Freudian thing ever. It even rivals the sword imagery in Utena. It's also ++traumasauce, because not only did she explode, she did so in an operating theater in a hospital where her children were waiting outside. And the operating theater had porthole windows exactly sized for small children to look in! And nobody was watching the small children to keep them from WATCHING THEIR MOTHER EXPLODE!
There is not enough !!!! in the world.
But! Kamui's angst rivals even WATCHING YOUR MOTHER EXPLODE. See, Kamui's mother was a shadow... replacement... mage... thing. Er, I mean, she had the magic power of being able to take on someone else's hardships onto her own body; apparently this power was not uncommon in her family/clan, and was often used to, say, protect emperors from assassination, because the assassin's blows would instead kill the shadow replacement mage person. So Kamui's mother made herself the shadow replacement person for Kamui, and then, when Kamui reached semi-adulthood, she BURST INTO FLAMES to take all of his future hardships onto herself. And he showed up in time to WATCH HER BURN TO DEATH. And then he found out from his aunt that it was ALL HIS FAULT.
So meanwhile, back at theranch shrine, the plot kicks into gear: the androgynous clone person shows up and kills Kotori and Fuma's father to get the Sword of Awesome. Kotori and Fuma's father lingers a while, like you do, and Fuma gets all angsty because, see, he's a basketball hero and his team needs him, but his father needs him too--! And Kotori convinces him to go, and then sends Kamui after him because it'd mean a lot to Fuma for Kamui to be there, you see. So Fuma goes, but he's all distracted about, yanno, his father dying, and then he sees Kamui across the room! And their eyes meet! And it gives Fuma the strength to go on and win the game!
My slash sense, which had been pinging regularly throughout, freaked out and kicked into high gear. And just in time, too, because shortly after that Fuma's father finally kicked the bucket, but not before Fuma's dad revaled that Fuma is Kamui's twin star.
Me: Um.
Rachel: Yeah.
Me: Um.
Rachel: Yes.
Me: That means 'boyfriend,' right?
Rachel: 'Destined boyfriend,' I think.
Me: Yeah, to me, that's canonical. Fuma, you are Kamui's destined boyfriend.
But it gets even better. I fucking love CLAMP. So later, Fuma tells Kamui, "I am your twin star," which is about as slashy as it gets anyway. But he does so while holding Kamui in his lap (Fuma is noticeably taller than Kamui) and cradling his face. Their noses are like an inch apart.
Me: Wow.
Rachel: I don't think I've ever touched anyone in that particular way who wasn't someone I was dating.
Me: "Kiss him, you fool!"
Rachel: In fact, I don't think I've ever touched anyone like that unless I actually was about to kiss them.
Me: Me either.
Rachel: Although, actually, that is not the most slashy scene in the whole series.
Me: I can't wait!
And then! And then! His aunt, who explained the whole thing to him, shows up later and EXPLODES WHILE GIVING BIRTH TO ANOTHER SWORD. Damn it. Remind me not to marry into whatever the hell clan that is. She does so while Kamui and Fuma are watching, of course, for extra added angst potential.
So now they have to take the sword to this... foundation? university? school? organization from a totally other different anime (literally, as I understand)? Where it will be protected. And while there, they find out from Kamui's now-dead aunt that the Dragons of Heaven aren't exactly 'good' and the Dragons of Earth aren't exactly 'evil:' the Dragons of Heaven want to keep going with the world as it is, and trust humanity to not fuck up too much more; the Dragons of Earth want to wipe out all humans and let the earth recover from their environmental depredations. Sorta. And he has to decide which side he's on: keep going like we are, or start over fresh.
Since basically the only thing Kamui cares about at this point, besides standing on tall things with his arms folded, is protectinghis boyfriend and his boyfriend's sister his childhood friends, he makes the decision to join the Dragons of Heaven so that they will, you know, not die.
In a plot twist that I had sort of anticipated, as soon as Kamui chooses the Dragons of Heaven, Fuma, being his 'twin star,' by default becomes a Dragon of Earth. What I didn't anticipate was that the conversion would turn Fuma (previously loyal, good-natured, if a bit dim), instantaneously, into a swaggering, snarling, smirking, hypercompetent Extremely Evil Dude. Like, super-evil. Like, he knocks Kamui out, grabs his little sister (catatonic, somewhat understandably, from seeing another woman explode), and runs up to the roof. When Kamui comes to and gets up to the roof, he finds that Fuma has constructed....
Wait, this deserves a line to itself.
Fuma has constructed a gigantic cross out of parts of the building, and nailed/chained his little sister to it.
I say again: when it comes to angst, CLAMP doesn't fuck around.
Then, in what apparently is the slashiest scene, Fuma swoops across the rooftop, grabs Kamui, pins him to the wall with his sword, purrs evilly in his ear, and licks his throat. Licks. His. Throat.
Then, while Kamui is clearly still trying to process all this, Fuma swoops back to his sister and kills her, and then leaps away, apparently having stolen all of Kamui's badassery and competence when he turned evil.
While all this is going on, Kotori is having a little Moment of her own inside her head. While temporarily catatonic, she 'meets' the permanently comatose dreamseer Kakyo, who utters what may be the angstiest line of anything ever when he tells her not to synchronize her heart with his, for she would surely die of the pain. The paaaaaaaain, I tell you. Whatever Kakyo is going through apparently trumps watching your mom explode. (I keep coming back to that. But seriously. Her mom. EXPLODED. Before her eyes. How can you top that?)
Then, when she's being killed by her brother, Kakyo tells her she had the capability to be a dreamseer, not that it matters 'cause she's going to die basically imminently. And when she does die, she grows wings and flies away into the bright happy sunlight! I guess she does have the advantage that now she doesn't have to care whether the Dragons of Heaven or the Dragons of Earth win.
In yet another example of good being ineffectual and evil being super-competent, evil!Fuma spends the next episode wandering around getting shit done, while Kamui lies in bed, having taken over Kotori's role as Traumatized Catatonic Person. Subaru—remember him? love triangle guy surrounded by Sakura of Doom?—decides that this calls for his psychic powers, and so he does some extreme psychotherapy by leaping directly into Kamui's subconscious and having a chat with his traumatized inner child. This works surprisingly well! Although I'm not honestly sure Subaru, Mr. You Must Not Love Me Enough 'Cause You Didn't Try To Kill Me, is the best guy for extreme psychotherapy, but whatever.
Which ends with one of my favorite bits, where Subaru passes out on top of Kamui in bed. Kamui, who didn't even know Subaru, comes to with this guy lying on top of him... and gives him a hug. I think Kamui must give off 'get all up in my personal space plz' vibes, or something, but only to men.
So, conclusions:
* "Twin star" apparently wasn't supposed to mean "destined boyfriend," but dammit, it should. I will henceforth use it that way.
* Evil is way, way more competent than good. Cf. Hinoto and Kanoe, Fuma and Kamui, and everyone's mothers demonstrating their maternal goodness by exploding and/or bursting into flames.
* Standing on top of tall things is the most common superpower.
* The prettier you are, the more tragic your background. As in Naruto, where trauma correlates directly with ninja power, in X, trauma correlates directly with gorgeousness.
* Dreamseers have no initiative whatsoever.
And predictions:
* Sorata will, indeed, die saving Arashi. This makes me sad, because I think Sorata is my favorite character, and I love the way he talks even to people who won't talk back, as though they were reacting like normal human beings. I hope to heck he gets some action before he bites it. Poor dude.
* Kamui will save the world, but he'll die in the process, quite possibly while protecting Fuma. Because he promised, and a childhood promise in an anime, no matter how off-the-cuff, is sort of like a cross between a binding contract and a blood oath.
* Seishiro and Subaru will die killing one another. And oh, the sakura. There will be a lot of sakura. Everywhere.
* The girl and her spirit dog will live. She may wind up dating that Japanese defense force guy, despite the fact that he looks like he's about 35 and also looks like he thinks she's a crazy girl.
I love a good id vortex series.
rachelmanija for, since she showed me the first dozen or so episodes at horse camp.X (which was apparently released in the US as X/1999, or maybe just the manga was) is a CLAMP production that, like many CLAMP productions, has a lot to do with destiny, beautiful people, angst, flashbacks, semi-digested chunks of mythology, angst, suggestive situations, big fancy swords, dramatic revelations, stirring speeches, beautiful people, sakura blossoms, and angst. This does not mean it's bad! In fact, like so many things that skirt the edge of the Id Vortex, it works very well and sucks the attention in pretty hardcore! I enjoyed the first half very much and am considering Netflixing and mainlining the second half before I jump into the next plot arc of Naruto. So, as is so often the case, I mock because I love.
Also I should warn you that I have taken a lot of NyQuil in the past few days. So. This may show the effects of someone who's just the tiniest bit stoned on cold medicine. ;) Also, it's really long, because the first thing to go is my conciseness.
It begins with the end of the world. Well, no; with a prophecy of the end of the world: the Seven Dragons of Earth are going to try to end the world, while the Seven Dragons of Heaven are going to try to save it, and one boy! is the key! to the destiny! of the world! Unfortunately, that boy is Kamui, whose main hobbies seem to be sulking, folding his arms, getting in fights in which he pwns (at least that one's relevant to the destiny! of the world!), and standing on the tops of tall things. Oh, and telling his friends to go away and leave him alone. I think it's one of the major signs of a Person with a Destiny: dead or missing family, traumatic backstory, mysterious powers, awesome weaponry, scar or birthmark (optional), and antisocial personality.
Behind the cut, I spoil everything up through episode 14, aka The One With X-Treme Psychotherapy. Please don't spoil me beyond that!
Kamui returns to Tokyo, apparently to reclaim the destined Sword of Awesome but also with the very important goal of snubbing his childhood friends. See, because he's a serious teenage boy in Japan, even though he came back to Tokyo to pick up the Sword of Awesome (it has a real name, but I've forgotten what it was) and intended to leave again right after, he decided to enroll in high school while he was there, even though he has no parents or guardians and his powers make truant officers (or whatever the equivalent in Japan would be) kinda moot. But I guess the power of secondary education compels him! So he enrolls at exactly the same school his childhood friends Kotori and Fuma (brother and sister and, not coincidentally, the children of the dude who guards the Sword of Awesome at the shrine) are attending.
At first I thought he'd signed up there, yanno, on purpose, because he wanted to see them again. But then he spends the next while hiding from them and telling them to get lost a lot, so that doesn't really... follow. Rachel and I came to the tentative conclusion that he enrolled there because that school had an appropriately moody black-and-red uniform, and the fact that Kotori and Fuma were there was an unhappy coincidence.
So Kamui attempts to get the Sword of Awesome, fails, tries again, gets attacked by some Dragons of Earth, gets attacked by some Dragons of Heaven, kicks ass, threatens people, hides in his apartment, goes to school(????), sulks, and stands on tall things, over the course a few episodes. I begin calling him Batman.
Kotori: Why are you pretending we weren't friends?? *sad anime girl wobbly eyes*
Kamui: *folds arms, sulks, stares off into space, says nothing*
Me (as Kamui): Because I'm the goddamn Batman!
Anyway! Meanwhile, we are meeting the other Dragons of Heaven and also some of the Dragons of Earth. Among the Dragons of Heaven are a shrine maiden named Arashi, who can summon a gigantic sword out of her hand and perform awesome attacks that bisect people and things with it, and who is a very standard Serious Dedicated Girl; Sorata, an incredibly friendly and somewhat goofy but good-hearted young man who attacks with electricity, and who may be my favorite character; Yuzuriha, a teenage girl who likes pocky and ice cream and happens to have a constant companion in the form of a giant invisible spirit dog; Subaru, a psychic/spiritualist who aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangsts over a love/hate relationship that ended, as such things do, badly, and who is almost always surrounded by Sakura of Doom; Aoki, a wind magician who's also a family man and works for a publishing company, a combination I find kinda awesome; and Karen, a fire mage who also happens to be a devout Catholic and a prostitute, also a combination I find kinda awesome although in a different way.
Oh, and they're all led by Princess Hinoto, who is apparently unable to see, hear, speak, or move, but who gets around all of those by being a super-powerful psychic and dream-seer. She never does get up, but to be honest even if she could walk it'd be tricky because she has the most incredibly elaborate robes, and also massive quantities of hair arranged all neatly around her. That must be heavy. She predicts the future and tells the Dragons of Heaven what to do, and also looks like she might cry at any moment, which I guess, if you can see the End of the World in your dreams, kinda makes sense. Anyway, Hinoto's vision is that there are six Dragons of Heaven and six Dragons of Earth, and then Kamui will pick one side or the other and that side will win. Or at least, that's what she says it is....
The other side, the Dragons of Earth, I won't detail in as much... well, detail. They're lead by Kanoe, who is said to be Hinoto's sister although I'm not positive whether that's literal or just means 'counterpart' or 'other half.' She can't see the future but she can see inside other peoples' dreams. She also has the advantage of actually doing stuff, as opposed to just sitting around looking like she might cry. I've forgotten about half of the Dragons of Earth, but there's Yuto, who's Affably Evil and fights with a whip and is sleeping with Kanoe; Satsuki, who speaks to computers and finds humans dreadfully boring; and Seishiro, who is the other half of Subaru's love/hate thing, and who appears to be the source of the Sakura of Doom. I wonder if Kanoe hires someone to follow him around with a broom, 'cause otherwise that's going to get messy.
So there's this long lead-up where things go like this: Kamui tries to get the Sword of Awesome (or sometimes just wanders around); people attack him; he fights back; Kotori follows him around and worries about him; Fuma follows them both around and worries about them; Sorata and Arashi follow Kamui around, because it's just the hip thing to do; Sorata chatters a lot, which is a relief because NOBODY ELSE TALKS LIKE EVER; Arashi gives Sorata stern looks, which apparently turns Sorata on, because he falls totally in love with her; Yuzuriha wanders around Tokyo with her dog and eats ice cream and becomes the character I identify most with; Kamui stands on top of tall things and broods. Brooooods. Brooooooooooooods.
Oh, and we learn backstory for a bunch of the characters. Sorata seems to get off easiest, because he just has a dim memory of his weeping (and from the drawing, kinda deranged) mother, oh and the fact that he's been told that he's doomed to die protecting the woman he loves. (He picks Arashi right off the bat, I think on the principle that if he's going to die for a woman he's going to pick a really beautiful chick who can pull gigantic swords out of her hand. I love Sorata, I really do. I seriously hope he gets laid at least once before his Doomed Death.) Yuzuriha is traumatized because when she was a kid everybody thought she was making up her invisible magical intelligent spirit dog, because, well, invisible. To be honest, I would love to have an invisible magical intelligent well-behaved spirit dog who was infinitely loyal to me, but what do I know? Subaru, well, doomed love/hate relationship with Seishiro, which is insufficiently angsty by itself but then Seishiro kills Subaru's sister for reasons that were not at all clear to me. (And does it by punching straight into her chest and stabbing her in the heart with his fingers, which is a neat trick, I guess.) Oh and also, this is awesome, according to Rachel the backstory is that Subaru and Seishiro are doomed to kill the ones they love the most? or something? and so Subaru is all angsty and pained because Seishiro hasn't tried to kill him, ergo Seishiro doesn't really love him, ergo aaaaaaaaaaangst.
I love this shit.
Anyway, angsty backstories! We're just getting warmed up! Satsuki is being pursued by people who think it's awesome that she's Dances with Mainframes, so that sucks. Also she killed her dad, but nobody seems very bothered by that, least of all her, so I'm not sure it counts as angsty backstory. Oh, I forgot Nataku (another Dragon of Earth), but I guess that's because there isn't much to remember of Nataku. He's an androgynous clone of some kind, and he stole the first Sword of Awesome be...cause it was awesome? I guess? I'm not even sure if he's taking orders from Kanoe yet. Arashi... I don't remember angst from her, I think she's just Stoic. Then there's the Comatose Dreamseer, aka The Person In The Series With Even Less Initiative Than Kotori or Hinoto, but I'll get to him in a bit. Maybe being a dreamseer saps your will to live or something, I dunno.
Then there are the really hardcore angsty backgrounds. These are AWESOME. I mean, AWESOME. When it comes to angst, CLAMP don't fuck around.
Kotori and Fuma? Their father protects the Sword of Awesome at the Shrine of Somethingorother. Where did the Sword come from? Their mother EXPLODED giving birth to it.
Their mother EXPLODED giving birth to a SWORD.
As Rachel put it, this is about the most Freudian thing ever. It even rivals the sword imagery in Utena. It's also ++traumasauce, because not only did she explode, she did so in an operating theater in a hospital where her children were waiting outside. And the operating theater had porthole windows exactly sized for small children to look in! And nobody was watching the small children to keep them from WATCHING THEIR MOTHER EXPLODE!
There is not enough !!!! in the world.
But! Kamui's angst rivals even WATCHING YOUR MOTHER EXPLODE. See, Kamui's mother was a shadow... replacement... mage... thing. Er, I mean, she had the magic power of being able to take on someone else's hardships onto her own body; apparently this power was not uncommon in her family/clan, and was often used to, say, protect emperors from assassination, because the assassin's blows would instead kill the shadow replacement mage person. So Kamui's mother made herself the shadow replacement person for Kamui, and then, when Kamui reached semi-adulthood, she BURST INTO FLAMES to take all of his future hardships onto herself. And he showed up in time to WATCH HER BURN TO DEATH. And then he found out from his aunt that it was ALL HIS FAULT.
So meanwhile, back at the
My slash sense, which had been pinging regularly throughout, freaked out and kicked into high gear. And just in time, too, because shortly after that Fuma's father finally kicked the bucket, but not before Fuma's dad revaled that Fuma is Kamui's twin star.
Me: Um.
Rachel: Yeah.
Me: Um.
Rachel: Yes.
Me: That means 'boyfriend,' right?
Rachel: 'Destined boyfriend,' I think.
Me: Yeah, to me, that's canonical. Fuma, you are Kamui's destined boyfriend.
But it gets even better. I fucking love CLAMP. So later, Fuma tells Kamui, "I am your twin star," which is about as slashy as it gets anyway. But he does so while holding Kamui in his lap (Fuma is noticeably taller than Kamui) and cradling his face. Their noses are like an inch apart.
Me: Wow.
Rachel: I don't think I've ever touched anyone in that particular way who wasn't someone I was dating.
Me: "Kiss him, you fool!"
Rachel: In fact, I don't think I've ever touched anyone like that unless I actually was about to kiss them.
Me: Me either.
Rachel: Although, actually, that is not the most slashy scene in the whole series.
Me: I can't wait!
And then! And then! His aunt, who explained the whole thing to him, shows up later and EXPLODES WHILE GIVING BIRTH TO ANOTHER SWORD. Damn it. Remind me not to marry into whatever the hell clan that is. She does so while Kamui and Fuma are watching, of course, for extra added angst potential.
So now they have to take the sword to this... foundation? university? school? organization from a totally other different anime (literally, as I understand)? Where it will be protected. And while there, they find out from Kamui's now-dead aunt that the Dragons of Heaven aren't exactly 'good' and the Dragons of Earth aren't exactly 'evil:' the Dragons of Heaven want to keep going with the world as it is, and trust humanity to not fuck up too much more; the Dragons of Earth want to wipe out all humans and let the earth recover from their environmental depredations. Sorta. And he has to decide which side he's on: keep going like we are, or start over fresh.
Since basically the only thing Kamui cares about at this point, besides standing on tall things with his arms folded, is protecting
In a plot twist that I had sort of anticipated, as soon as Kamui chooses the Dragons of Heaven, Fuma, being his 'twin star,' by default becomes a Dragon of Earth. What I didn't anticipate was that the conversion would turn Fuma (previously loyal, good-natured, if a bit dim), instantaneously, into a swaggering, snarling, smirking, hypercompetent Extremely Evil Dude. Like, super-evil. Like, he knocks Kamui out, grabs his little sister (catatonic, somewhat understandably, from seeing another woman explode), and runs up to the roof. When Kamui comes to and gets up to the roof, he finds that Fuma has constructed....
Wait, this deserves a line to itself.
Fuma has constructed a gigantic cross out of parts of the building, and nailed/chained his little sister to it.
I say again: when it comes to angst, CLAMP doesn't fuck around.
Then, in what apparently is the slashiest scene, Fuma swoops across the rooftop, grabs Kamui, pins him to the wall with his sword, purrs evilly in his ear, and licks his throat. Licks. His. Throat.
Then, while Kamui is clearly still trying to process all this, Fuma swoops back to his sister and kills her, and then leaps away, apparently having stolen all of Kamui's badassery and competence when he turned evil.
While all this is going on, Kotori is having a little Moment of her own inside her head. While temporarily catatonic, she 'meets' the permanently comatose dreamseer Kakyo, who utters what may be the angstiest line of anything ever when he tells her not to synchronize her heart with his, for she would surely die of the pain. The paaaaaaaain, I tell you. Whatever Kakyo is going through apparently trumps watching your mom explode. (I keep coming back to that. But seriously. Her mom. EXPLODED. Before her eyes. How can you top that?)
Then, when she's being killed by her brother, Kakyo tells her she had the capability to be a dreamseer, not that it matters 'cause she's going to die basically imminently. And when she does die, she grows wings and flies away into the bright happy sunlight! I guess she does have the advantage that now she doesn't have to care whether the Dragons of Heaven or the Dragons of Earth win.
In yet another example of good being ineffectual and evil being super-competent, evil!Fuma spends the next episode wandering around getting shit done, while Kamui lies in bed, having taken over Kotori's role as Traumatized Catatonic Person. Subaru—remember him? love triangle guy surrounded by Sakura of Doom?—decides that this calls for his psychic powers, and so he does some extreme psychotherapy by leaping directly into Kamui's subconscious and having a chat with his traumatized inner child. This works surprisingly well! Although I'm not honestly sure Subaru, Mr. You Must Not Love Me Enough 'Cause You Didn't Try To Kill Me, is the best guy for extreme psychotherapy, but whatever.
Which ends with one of my favorite bits, where Subaru passes out on top of Kamui in bed. Kamui, who didn't even know Subaru, comes to with this guy lying on top of him... and gives him a hug. I think Kamui must give off 'get all up in my personal space plz' vibes, or something, but only to men.
So, conclusions:
* "Twin star" apparently wasn't supposed to mean "destined boyfriend," but dammit, it should. I will henceforth use it that way.
* Evil is way, way more competent than good. Cf. Hinoto and Kanoe, Fuma and Kamui, and everyone's mothers demonstrating their maternal goodness by exploding and/or bursting into flames.
* Standing on top of tall things is the most common superpower.
* The prettier you are, the more tragic your background. As in Naruto, where trauma correlates directly with ninja power, in X, trauma correlates directly with gorgeousness.
* Dreamseers have no initiative whatsoever.
And predictions:
* Sorata will, indeed, die saving Arashi. This makes me sad, because I think Sorata is my favorite character, and I love the way he talks even to people who won't talk back, as though they were reacting like normal human beings. I hope to heck he gets some action before he bites it. Poor dude.
* Kamui will save the world, but he'll die in the process, quite possibly while protecting Fuma. Because he promised, and a childhood promise in an anime, no matter how off-the-cuff, is sort of like a cross between a binding contract and a blood oath.
* Seishiro and Subaru will die killing one another. And oh, the sakura. There will be a lot of sakura. Everywhere.
* The girl and her spirit dog will live. She may wind up dating that Japanese defense force guy, despite the fact that he looks like he's about 35 and also looks like he thinks she's a crazy girl.
I love a good id vortex series.
