As a huge fan of the amazing manga (Japanese comic) by CLAMP on which this film is based, I was eager to see it, but found myself bitterly disappointed by this feeble adaption. Of course, this is partly due to the fact that you can't possibly squeeze everything from a serialised comic that runs for several hundreds of pages into one short movie, but it still feels as if the staff could've done a much better job.
The biggest problem is that the characters lack substance. The cast we know and love from the manga is presented rapidly, with hardly a mention of their rich personalities, amusing character traits or interesting pasts that made them so fascinating in the books. Even the main Kamui-Fuuma-Kotori triangle is built up so hastily that it lacks any impact. We end up with just a bunch of mindless drones who gratuitously slaughter each other in a matter of minutes. This is especially bad for the Dragons of the Earth, who were turned from very intriguing characters to just brainless psycho nasties (I hate the way they portrayed Kusanagi as a plain brute in the movie, while he's one of the most gentle and likeable characters in the manga).
Worse still, some of the best characters were left out entirely (Kakyuu is nowhere to be seen), or hardly appear at all (Subaru and Seishiro buy the farm after roughly one minute of screen time). The storyline in itself also suffers from this rushed approach. Since everything needs to be established too quickly, it hardly makes any sense, or holds any kind of point for those who aren't familiar with the manga. You end up hoping to at least see some cool battle scenes, and while there are a few impressive and fast-paced psychic fights in there, they're all over far too quickly.
In favor of this movie, it must be said that the chara design and animation is very pretty, with some pleasingly eerie and surreal moments. You could just see this as a kind of long videoclip of darkly elegant images. As a big dose of eye-candy for fans of the manga, who know the story by heart and are familiar with the character's proper personalities from reading the books, this does the job pretty well (in fact, I'm told that's how this movie was intended in the first place, to accompany the manga).
Because the harsh fact still remains that if one watches this without knowing the manga, it's just a pointless romp that makes no sense and leaves hardly any lasting impression (it -is- a very sad film that can produce a sigh or two from the viewer, but those will be silenced by the all-round "so what?" feeling).
And of course, they just -had- to dub this movie. Not only does that deprive us of the impressive performances from the Japanese voice actors (thus ripping out most, if not all of what little impact this movie -does- have), they've also left us with an archetypical bad anime dub, with several big mistakes. It's full of those annoying long "hhhhhuh?" gasps, pompous filler lines that sound awfully stilted (and were larded on just for lip-synch), and a voice for Kotori that makes her sound as if she swallowed a gallon of helium. Even worse is the way the dub actors couldn't pronounce the Japanese names properly if their lives depended on it. One can only wince in pain when they pronounce Sorata as "Sierrada" or Kotori as "Codery" (note that Kotori's name is misspelled as "Kotari" in the end credits), and everybody seems to have trouble remembering what Yuuto's name was again. Then again, since when has a dub ever done a Japanese film any good?
For CLAMP completist and X die-hards only, this is worth renting once or twice for the eye-candy. Everyone else is advised to give this a miss and seek out the truly tremendous X comics instead (the French version from Tonkam is your best option, though there's an English-language version floating around somewhere as well).
The biggest problem is that the characters lack substance. The cast we know and love from the manga is presented rapidly, with hardly a mention of their rich personalities, amusing character traits or interesting pasts that made them so fascinating in the books. Even the main Kamui-Fuuma-Kotori triangle is built up so hastily that it lacks any impact. We end up with just a bunch of mindless drones who gratuitously slaughter each other in a matter of minutes. This is especially bad for the Dragons of the Earth, who were turned from very intriguing characters to just brainless psycho nasties (I hate the way they portrayed Kusanagi as a plain brute in the movie, while he's one of the most gentle and likeable characters in the manga).
Worse still, some of the best characters were left out entirely (Kakyuu is nowhere to be seen), or hardly appear at all (Subaru and Seishiro buy the farm after roughly one minute of screen time). The storyline in itself also suffers from this rushed approach. Since everything needs to be established too quickly, it hardly makes any sense, or holds any kind of point for those who aren't familiar with the manga. You end up hoping to at least see some cool battle scenes, and while there are a few impressive and fast-paced psychic fights in there, they're all over far too quickly.
In favor of this movie, it must be said that the chara design and animation is very pretty, with some pleasingly eerie and surreal moments. You could just see this as a kind of long videoclip of darkly elegant images. As a big dose of eye-candy for fans of the manga, who know the story by heart and are familiar with the character's proper personalities from reading the books, this does the job pretty well (in fact, I'm told that's how this movie was intended in the first place, to accompany the manga).
Because the harsh fact still remains that if one watches this without knowing the manga, it's just a pointless romp that makes no sense and leaves hardly any lasting impression (it -is- a very sad film that can produce a sigh or two from the viewer, but those will be silenced by the all-round "so what?" feeling).
And of course, they just -had- to dub this movie. Not only does that deprive us of the impressive performances from the Japanese voice actors (thus ripping out most, if not all of what little impact this movie -does- have), they've also left us with an archetypical bad anime dub, with several big mistakes. It's full of those annoying long "hhhhhuh?" gasps, pompous filler lines that sound awfully stilted (and were larded on just for lip-synch), and a voice for Kotori that makes her sound as if she swallowed a gallon of helium. Even worse is the way the dub actors couldn't pronounce the Japanese names properly if their lives depended on it. One can only wince in pain when they pronounce Sorata as "Sierrada" or Kotori as "Codery" (note that Kotori's name is misspelled as "Kotari" in the end credits), and everybody seems to have trouble remembering what Yuuto's name was again. Then again, since when has a dub ever done a Japanese film any good?
For CLAMP completist and X die-hards only, this is worth renting once or twice for the eye-candy. Everyone else is advised to give this a miss and seek out the truly tremendous X comics instead (the French version from Tonkam is your best option, though there's an English-language version floating around somewhere as well).