RahXephon/Headscratchers
Before you ask a question, check this site: http://www.kenoki.com/nko/spoilerwarning.html This: http://www.khantazi.org/Rec/Anime/MuTimeline.html is a timeline for the series.
- How come isolation from the rest of Earth seemed to have no negative impact whatsoever on the everyday lives of Tokyo Jupiter residents, given how everything is interconnected in the modern world? Modern cities are extremely dependent on imports and exports, and one city surrounded by an impenetrable shell simply cannot survive for so many years.
- It's just cooler that way. But, seriously, Paradigm City in The Big O is similar. Cities cannot exist in a vacuum. Millions of people need vast swaths of farmland to keep them fed, a constant flow of fresh water in tremendous quantities, a place to get rid of sewage even if they're just piping it to a sewage treatment plant outside of city limits or pumping it into a nearby ocean (many coastal cities do this), and on and on and on. Even if a city is a manufacturing center and can make the goods its citizens need, it still has to bring in raw materials and get rid of trash.
- Then again, Paradigm City is nothing more than a Matrix-like simulation, if the ending of the second season is any indication, and such things are no doubt weirdness censored for the inhabitants. Even so, there are farms under some of the domes (tomatoes, remember?). And there are certainly settlements in the countryside outside the city (the episode with the hydroelectric dam) -- no doubt there are more farms out there to supply the city.
- Not to mention that I suspect the Mulians could bring whatever needed from their own dimension. It was after all just a big trick to keep Mommy's Boy from growing up.
- Then again, Paradigm City is nothing more than a Matrix-like simulation, if the ending of the second season is any indication, and such things are no doubt weirdness censored for the inhabitants. Even so, there are farms under some of the domes (tomatoes, remember?). And there are certainly settlements in the countryside outside the city (the episode with the hydroelectric dam) -- no doubt there are more farms out there to supply the city.
- Mulians were using serious brainwashing powers and such to keep everything going. Remember what happens when he comes back to the city?
- I always thought it was just conditioning to make everyone think everything was okay (pay no attention to the world behind the mirror *waves hand*), and really the Mu were bringing in supplies from outside the sphere.
- If you look at the map the camera focuses on in episode 2, it seems to show that the 'Barrier' is actually centered in the middle of Tokyo Bay and looks to cover from around Inabi to almost Oamishirasato (which is clear across the bay from Tokyo). And a lot of the land on that map are actually rice fields. Add in that urbanites rarely know anything about farming/fishing/ranching ect. and you actually have a pretty solid base for the mind-control to latch onto. This is assuming that the map in the episode is right and really does show the extent of the barrier and I'm actually reading the Google Earth map right; I can't seem to get an exact match.
- It's just cooler that way. But, seriously, Paradigm City in The Big O is similar. Cities cannot exist in a vacuum. Millions of people need vast swaths of farmland to keep them fed, a constant flow of fresh water in tremendous quantities, a place to get rid of sewage even if they're just piping it to a sewage treatment plant outside of city limits or pumping it into a nearby ocean (many coastal cities do this), and on and on and on. Even if a city is a manufacturing center and can make the goods its citizens need, it still has to bring in raw materials and get rid of trash.
- Who was Haruka talking to on the phone at the end? I've seen a fan theory that after the events of the series Ayato and Itsuki have become the same person, but I assumed Haruka was talking to Itsuki in that scene- she makes a reference to "your older brother"- which would invalidate that.
- I'm reasonably sure that Haruka is talking to Megumi. "Your older brother" is referencing Ayato still, except that he's simply her brother-in-law.
- Haruka specifically says 'Megu' in the dubs.
- Also Ayato and Itsuki did not fuse together. They're twins and, in essence, Itsuki's appearance is what Ayato would look like if he didn't go under time dilation i.e. what he'd look like if he were the same age as Haruka.
- And if he had Itsuki's ridiculous haircut.
- Why were almost all dolems female? Ok, some of them were very asexual, but a good chunk looked very feminine. There are only two "guy" dolem's counting Rah Xephon, and three male dolem operators counting Ayato. Can't guy Mulian's use dolems? Or do none of them have any (save for the aforementioned three)?
- What's the deal with Reika/ Ixtli appearing as an assistant to Isshiki? If she was never there at all ( or only visible to instrumentalists), why did the other bridge crew remark "Hey, check out the new bridge bunny!"? Or are Souichi and everyone just messing with the poor bastard?
- More like Reika was messing with everyone. In order for her plans to work, she needed Isshiki to bring down Tokyo Jupiter. She was present in everyone's perception and memory until she'd done what she needed to do, then she left, and no one besides Isshiki remembered her. As for why Isshiki remembered... maybe she just wanted to be cruel to him and make him look crazy.
- Why does Ayato make such a big deal about being 'a blue blooded Mulian', yet as far as I recall, he's never shown actually bleeding blue blood. To be more specific, WHY wasn't he ever shown bleeding blue blood?
- He doesn't have blue blood (except near the end of the Alternate Continuity of The Movie), but he has Mulian genes. (In the movie, blood turning blue meant that he would lose his memories, but the footage was mostly recycled from the series, so there were no scenes of Ayato with blue blood.)
- Exactly. You're shown early on that he has red blood, but also has the "Mu phase", so apparently not all Mulians have blue blood.
- In the beginning of the series, Asahina is shown bleeding red, as does presumably, all the proto-Mulians in Tokyo-Jupiter. Theres a break point where the blood changes color and the human becomes a Mulian.
- That seems to be up for debate. An alternate interpretation is that Ayato had blue blood the entire time, and only saw it as red because of the brainwashing. The part where Asahina is bleeding (blue) in Tokyo Jupiter and asking for confirmation that her blood is red could be a sign that the Mu brainwashed people into seeing red blood, and it's only after seeing the oddness of Tokyo Jupiter and fighting back that they can see it as blue.
- Exactly. You're shown early on that he has red blood, but also has the "Mu phase", so apparently not all Mulians have blue blood.
- He doesn't have blue blood (except near the end of the Alternate Continuity of The Movie), but he has Mulian genes. (In the movie, blood turning blue meant that he would lose his memories, but the footage was mostly recycled from the series, so there were no scenes of Ayato with blue blood.)
- Minor quibble, in the first episode Mamoru gets a bright *red* scrape when the subway derails. Now, Asahina also bleeds red, but she's not a Mulian yet. Mamoru, however, has to have been a Mulian the whole time, does he not? So why's his blood the wrong color? Or did he just "turn traitor" later?
- Ayato didn't see it, so we didn't either. Brainwashing, remember? And all three were always Mulians, they just hadn't displayed it yet.
- Ashahina didn't have blue blood in the first episode, either. Presumably, their blood turned blue between then and Ayato's return.
- I thought it was implied that it was all Ayato's conditioning that prevented him from seeing blue blood as it was. When that conditioning started to break (with his joining with RahXephon), he started seeing more of the truth.
- Also: shouldn't the Mulians technically be, well, purple-colored? The reason Caucasian humans are pink is due to all the blood. Take that away and we'd be a very pale white. Replace it with something blue and we should be purple, no? (I realize these are very nit-picky things, I'm just curious about them.)
- I like to think that their blood is red when in the body, but turns blue very, very quickly when exposed to air.
- Blood is extremely dark red while in the body, at times almost black, only turning bright red because the red blood cells burst from absorbing too much oxygen when in open air.
- Ayato didn't see it, so we didn't either. Brainwashing, remember? And all three were always Mulians, they just hadn't displayed it yet.
- The ending was supposed to be a happy ending for everyone after the tuning. Did anyone else feel a bit sorry for Hiroko? She ends up stuck with Mamoru, who's been somewhere between a complete asshole and actually abusive to her for the entire series. Obviously she can't get a totally happy ending, given that Ayato's already taken, but this troper wasn't particularly impressed by her being "reprogrammed" into a relationship, apparently because Ayato felt guilty about killing them both.
- I've always assumed that either Mamoru was re-programmed or that without the influence of the Mu he was far more balanced. After all, Kamina clearly was fine with Hiroko as she was, but wasn't too happy with Mamoru, so if he was to alter anyone I'd assume it would be the latter.
- Mamoru isn't really a bad guy. He's very jealous of Ayato because Hiroko has a crush on him, but otherwise he's shown to be very protective of her (which he took overboard on several occasions, chalk it up to the Mu blood giving him anger management issues :)). Without the Mu and without the war between him and Ayato, I always assumed he turns into a pretty cool guy.
- Why did the red dolem (Fortissimo, if I recall correctly) act hostile towards the RahXephon, twice? (once after the RahXephon hatches and once when Haruka and Ayato are about to leave the shrine of Xephon. Given that the Mu knew what the RahXephon was, it doesn't make sense that one of their own would attack what is practically the holy grail of Mulian culture. It would be understandable if someone held a grudge against Ayato decided to use the Dolem to get vengeful - like Mamoru later in the series - but if not for that, I can't figure out why it would attack a friendly target.
- Presumably the Mulians knew that RahXephon could leave Tokyo Jupiter and were trying to stop it. The fact that this backfires horribly is just par for the course, really.
- Although they explain his motives quite clearly in the movie, I still don't exactly get what Bahbem's game was.So he invented a tool capable of reshaping reality and kept himself alive for millennia for what now? For Science!? I could understand him trying out his new device millennia back and warping the reality all to hell and back because he lacked an artist's spirit, but why set about one colossal Xanatos Roulette to do it again the second time? Was he deathly homesick? The show didn't clarify it all that well. The movie made his views fairly clear - he hated non-mulian humans - but if that was the case you'd suspect he'd have at least hinted at it once or twice in the series.
- I think the general deal with Bahbem and the tuning was that, because of his first screw-up with his artificial god system, the world was basically doomed to rot. To avoid this, the system needs to be activated correctly to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. The whole series is a Gambit Pileup instigated by Bahbem to ensure that it works the second time around. He's not being altruistic by any means though; he just wants to see his creation work properly and doesn't really care about the outcome. He just wants the moment.
- Which leads to a Crowning Moment of Awesome 10000 years in the making when Jumanji smugly kills him just before the tuning occurs as punishment for being the universe's biggest Manipulative Bastard
- I think the general deal with Bahbem and the tuning was that, because of his first screw-up with his artificial god system, the world was basically doomed to rot. To avoid this, the system needs to be activated correctly to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. The whole series is a Gambit Pileup instigated by Bahbem to ensure that it works the second time around. He's not being altruistic by any means though; he just wants to see his creation work properly and doesn't really care about the outcome. He just wants the moment.
- Why do the Dolems attack humans? The war is completely unnecessary for any of the plots going on. Indeed, the attacks lead directly to the creation of TERRA, and so can be seen as very counter-productive to their end goal. Had they just plunked the Jupiter barrier over Tokyo without any warning it would, one assumes, have been seen simply as a freak natural phenomena, and things would probably have worked out significantly better for them all 'round.
- The humans attacked first, with nuclear weapons (leading to the death of Jin's daughter). As for continuing hostilities, I always thought the Mu figured it was necessary to bring about the tuning. After all, they needed to get Quon back, get the black egg, and set world politics up so that Ayato and Quon would be ready to "duke" it out for the right to remake the world. Besides that, it seemed their war was more with Bahbem and his lackeys (Terra included, even if unknowingly). For example, at the end, when Makoto's plan goes awry, the Mu still don't attack the peaceful human cities. They just kind of hover over them.
- And Kuki attacking TERRA was probably to help set the stage for Ayato to ascend, since Helena/Bahbem was on the boat when Ayato was about to fuse with his Rahxephon. Kuki also attacked to do some Evil Gloating for Kunuugi which, needless to say, backfired.
- The Jupiter barrier was also pretty clearly a human weapon. When Ishkii lowers the barrier around Tokyo, all hell breaks loose, and when Kuki confronts Kunuugi, Kunuugi activates one. I was under the distinct impression that the proto-TERRA forces deployed the barrier around Tokyo to contain the Mu, but we aren't told that so as to produce a nice mindfuck.
- The Jupiter barrier was a Mu invention. They created the Tokyo Jupiter to slow down Ayato's growth so he'd be the proper age when the time came (this is also why Quon was put in suspended animation: 17 is the ideal age for an Instrumentalist). TERRA simply managed to reverse-engineer and build their own Jupiter devices since the Mu War, thanks to their research on breaking the Tokyo Jupiter.
- I'd have to rewatch the series to be sure (like that's a bad thing) but I'm also pretty certain that Tokyo Jupiter was put up by the humans in order to contain the Mu. I think it happened to work out in the Mu's FAVOR, but I'm pretty sure it was human-constructed to begin with. Like in the sense that I'm fairly certain they say that outright rather than making the viewers work it out themselves.
- And Kuki attacking TERRA was probably to help set the stage for Ayato to ascend, since Helena/Bahbem was on the boat when Ayato was about to fuse with his Rahxephon. Kuki also attacked to do some Evil Gloating for Kunuugi which, needless to say, backfired.
- The humans attacked first, with nuclear weapons (leading to the death of Jin's daughter). As for continuing hostilities, I always thought the Mu figured it was necessary to bring about the tuning. After all, they needed to get Quon back, get the black egg, and set world politics up so that Ayato and Quon would be ready to "duke" it out for the right to remake the world. Besides that, it seemed their war was more with Bahbem and his lackeys (Terra included, even if unknowingly). For example, at the end, when Makoto's plan goes awry, the Mu still don't attack the peaceful human cities. They just kind of hover over them.
- Why does Ayato join Terra in the first place? Before the first time he fights on earth he's raging at the world and infuriated that he was lied to. After he destroys the D1 he just brings the Rahxephon into the water pillar/shrine thing and just goes along with what he's told, what gives?
- I suspect it's a combination of years of mind-control coupled with everything he knew being revealed to be a lie. In essence, he lost his entire pre-escape self and decided to...create a new him, in essence, by working for the only people he had left. He's still clearly not happy about it, though. There also seems to be an element of...speceism to it. He's human, TERRA is human, the people who lied to him for his entire life are alien, so he'll fight the aliens, 'cause he's not one of them; which helps explain his royal freakout at discovering that that he's a Mulian.
- The lack of any explanation about what the Mu, RahXephon, Reika, and... pretty much everything else important within the first few episodes. I watched it up to episode 15, and I still have no idea what they are. And if anyone tells me that it's supposed to be mysterious, don't; I didn't like it in Evangelion, and I don't like it for RahXephon. A story is supposed to make sense, not make the audience consult outside sources to understand the plot.
- Well, it is supposed to be mysterious, whether you like it or not. That just means that these sorts of stories are not your cup of tea. And outside sources are not strictly necessary for understanding the story: the Mu, the RahXephon, and Reika are all explained in the final episodes of the show. It's a story where everything is not handed to you on a silver platter; you pick up the pieces, and put them together yourself. Some people enjoy the mental stimulation this provides, and the ambiguity that promotes alternate explanations.