Xenosaga - The Animation

If you asked me to describe this series in a single word, I'd say "cliché." This series takes bits and pieces from countless other anime/manga titles and uses them to make something different. The initial space battle reminded me of other anime titles where massive fleets in space gather to battle and one gets blown away. While there is an interesting premise, the show does nothing with it.

So, what do we have? Well, if you were wanting an explaination to the giant artifacts (and Zohar) that were being collected, forget it. For some odd reason, they are given the names of Christ's apostles and there are 12 of them. And there's some little girl who's actually something else but that's all we know about any of that. So it begs the question, "What the smeg was that all about?" It made no sense to introduce elements and make them appear to be important story elements if in fact they aren't going to be important story elements.

Next we have the Gnosis. Yeah, we've seen the powerful alien races in other series who have strange abilities and are very powerful. I couldn't help but think of the Final Fantasy movie when I saw the Gnosis. Like the artifacts, we have no information about them except that some accident appears to have brought them into our universe/galaxy and that the artifacts may be something that attracts them. Otherwise, they are a 1-dimensional opponent.

The writers attempted to make something of the Realians being human-like, but again they mostly fail. The fact that the 100-series and MOMO-chan are very much cute, moé-type characters help, but it isn't enough to explain their creation, or why their creator apparently based the design on his daughter. We don't get enough of an explaination about the 99-series either to explain why one of them would behave the way they do.

Why were there these special children created on Miltia in the past with special powers? That's just another thing that annoyed me. Using the series villian and one of the heroes as a vehicle to explore this would have been nice. Instead, we are just shown an event that made the villian go mad and some sort of forced thing to make the hero feel a little guilty. Without knowing more, it is impossible to connect with either character. Have I mentioned "cliché" yet?

KOS-MOS was a mild surprise in the beginning, but she too took on an all to clichéd role. While we are shown Shion's relationship with KOS-MOS from a tragic event of a couple of years ago, we aren't told WHY KOS-MOS did what she did back then, nor are we told exactly who gave her instructions that weren't from Shion. Just another example of poor writing.

That leads me to the political element of the series. Again, having political powers at play can be an interesting concept when done properly. Here it is done like the artifacts, but eventually dropped. The political parts end up playing no real role in everything because those elements that should have been important are dropped in favor of clichéd crap.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point by now. If all that weren't enough, the series just ends without much in the way of resolving anything. Clearly, the writers set up everything to have a 2nd series, or maybe they want you to buy the video game to get the whole story, as often happens in these kind of series.

Bottom line: clichéd to the max. While there are elements of interest, none go anywhere as they are dropped in favor of clichéd shounen fare. As such, I can only give this a "watch."

Last updated Sunday, February 26 2006.

Currently being fansubbed by AnimeYuki and Anime-Kraze.

Posted some snaps of the first episode