I want to preface that I dont write reviews on this website. Despite it being a hobby for me with things like video games movies etc I dont feel like I classify myself as enough of a fan of anime to get really indepth with it. I only really watch one anime a year on average and when it happens its a highly vetted process where I only end up watching things that I pretty much am guaranteed to like either through trusted friend recommendations or knowing its something that appeals to me. The reason I bring this up other than to potentially apologize for not meeting standard anime review conventions is that X is a bit of an odd case I knew almost nothing about it and ended up only watching it out of being confused about the situation with its various adaptations. And even then I only knew about its existence from a wikipedia rabbithole. Despite this I came away liking it a lot more than I was expecting... and it was certainly a lot more bizarre than I thought it would be. And so I feel the desire to write my first review on anilist this is less because X is the best anime ive ever watched and more because its a relatively unknown one that I think warrants talking about. X started as a manga by studio CLAMPhttps://anilist.co/staff/96877/CLAMP Cardcaptor Sakura Chobits HOLiC in 1992 being produced all the way until March 2003 when it was abruptly halted before completion. The reasons for the cancellation revolve around publication issues involving graphic/dark content and a series of real life tragedies that closely mirrored what had happened in recent issues. To this day the manga has never been fully completed as CLAMP refused to revise or change their intended ending and promptly moved on with other work. From this several adaptations spawned: A music video titled X in 1993 a feature film in 1996 an OVA in 2001 and finally the anime in 20012002 as well as a fighting game by Arcsys of all people. I initially encountered X by reading the Devilmanhttps://anilist.co/manga/31474/Devilman/ wikipedia page and seeing it left an impression the main writer of CLAMP at an early age eventually directly inspiring X with similar themes and philosophy. Having just come off reading Devilman for the first time and loving it I decided that experiencing a Devilmaninspired piece of media by the people who made a decent chunk of my childhood anime was something I wanted to do. The manga was the obvious choice but hearing it was never finished gave me pause on wanting to read it. I heard that both the anime and the film had endings and that both were apparently unsatisfying in different ways I decided to go with the movie. Unfortunately it turned out the film was completely indecipherable to somebody without further context and just ten minutes in I decided to look elsewhere. I had heard online in passing that the movie starts up at roughly episode 3 or so of the anime so I decided to watch the first few episodes to get an idea before moving on to watch it. Twenty four episodes later it turns out I may have been duped a bit. It is here I can finally start reviewing X proper as a main aspect of the anime I was not expecting is its pacing. X the tv show which from now on is what im talking about starts off in the middle of a story working both backwards and forwards simultaneously. While there is an OVA that is meant to railroad you into the anime it can be safely skipped and I agree that it is not necessary to watching this series. Furthermore X has over 20 characters... most of which are major players in the plot and have an entire episode dedicated to them. It is not by episode 5 or so where you are really clued into what the story is even about even so the series continues on in a format closer to a character driven anthology series similar to something like Paranoia Agenthttps://anilist.co/anime/323/ParanoiaAgent/ than a traditional plot thread. This might frustrate the average viewer however I feel like I almost prefer this style of storytelling. As for the content of X it is quite hard to understand the appeal on paper. The visuals and soundtrack arent anything special for the time however the ED song Secret Sorrowhttps://www..com/watch?v=jub9e0IqtMQ might be a new favourite the plot can be easily described as a huge battle happens in tokyo involving the fate of the world and there are multiple recap episodes and obvious time filler despite being rather short. But I think what makes X so intriguing are the things surrounding the core aspects of the anime: the characters the setting the scenes. I was rather impressed at how many characters in X I genuinely loved and was always excited to see reappear on screen. While I dont know if id put any of them in a top three anime characters of all time list I think at least one or two might make it in a top ten or fifteen Having entire episodes dedicated to each one might not do much to make the main plot interesting but it really helps you connect with everybody and the strange scenario they find themselves in. Tying in with the characters is the theme which is a strange mix of religion tradition contemporary for 2001 at least and science fiction. One character seems to have a romantic relationship with a machine called BEAST which looks like a final boss out of a shmup and plugs into her through wires under her skin. On the other end of the spectrum many other characters come from small villages and shrines living in a community of religious tradition and only arriving in tokyo to meet up for the climactic battle. It never feels like these two distinct concepts or people are at war with eachother despite there being an actual war it is not a case of old vs new but rather a harmony between the spiritual and the technological. Spell cards will be used pentagrams will be drawn mystical weapons of power will form and in the next scene there will be people in a laboratory talking about cloning and artificial intelligence. It never feels jarring or out of place in this world the two work closely together. This is all fine and dandy but I dont even know if this is what the appeal of X is to me. Sure the characters and setting are great but theres still a decent amount of pacing issues and a lot of mediocrity elsewhere. It is here where I talk about the strangeness advertised in the opening summary of this review: the individual scenes. I would have to use at least two hands to count the times I recoiled back from the screen or said what? or jesus christ in response to what was going on in X. There are so many absolutely bonkers scenes that blindside you in this anime that it almost becomes formulaic in its insanity. But heres the thing: its not really because of gore or because of shock value or anything like that X is actually fairly tame despite its subject matter and really feels like it was toned down or censored from its source material. Its instead the good and the bad parts of the anime mixing together and making you lower your guard before throwing a gut punch your way. Youll either feel yourself start to grow impatient with the pacing or be really enthralled in a random characters story or maybe even thinking damn this is a pretty generic early 2000s anime and then suddenly out of nowhere something very Go Nagai will abruptly happen like a needle punching through a soft couch. Without getting into direct spoilers the first and one of the most memorable times of this happening to me was learning about how the divine swords were formed as the rather graphic revelation is sandwiched inbetween a tender and emotional comingofage backstory. Youll see characters eat food together and exchange sliceoflife dialogue and an episode or two later theyll be confronted with the question Why arent we allowed to kill other humans? Humans kill all kinds of other creatures what makes humans different?. Despite me knowing the manga was cancelled due to its graphic content and that its inspired off of Devilman and seeing stuff like this previously happen just episodes prior it still caught me off guard nearly every time. Of course this can sometimes backfire... Im probably going on too long at this point but I think that basically sums up the core of what makes X so interesting to me. Is the anime perfect? Not at all in fact I would say its a solid 7/10 at best if I had to rate it on a objective numerical scale. Too much recap the ending is unsatisfying/feels rushed and its very of the era in some ways. But I think these negatives actually make the anime better in the weird sense of providing you time to slowly lower your guard before snapping its fingers in your face. Apart from the outofnowhere scenes the characters are extremely likeable and the sciencemeetsreligion setting is very intriguing leading me to remain interested even in the more boring parts. I do not think X will be for everyone but I think if youre looking for something very offkilter and relatively unknown I would highly recommend you check it out. You might come out of it with a new favourite character or two and some unforgettable scenes who knows? By the way they managed to make the two boys that are totally just friends even more gay than the ones in Devilman. so kudos to that