Ask John: Is RahXephon an Evangelion Rip Off?

Question:
Surely you’ve heard of the debate that’s been going on, comparing RahXephon against Eva. Some say it outright rips it off while others say there are similarities but nothing more. I’m curious to see what your take on this is since I’m sure we’ll hear about it more once ADV releases this.

Answer:
Overexposure has dulled my enthusiasm for Evangelion over the years, but I still like and respect the show very much. Evangelion offers amazing action choreography and a stunning level of intellectual depth and philosophical pontification. RahXephon isn’t nearly as intellectual or theoretical, but is instead much more mysterious and subtle and, I dare say, artistic than Evangelion. To some degree I have trouble comparing them because Evangelion seems to be a show with an agenda, a point to make, while RahXephon is much more a show seemingly intended only to be engaging and stimulating and entertaining.

In that respect, RahXephon is less challenging and therefore easier to enjoy and like than Evangelion. I wouldn’t say that RahXephon “rips off” Evangelion, especially considering that Evangelion itself is a psychological parody and theoretical analysis of the giant robot anime genre that’s existed since the early 1970s. (In other words, Evangelion is very far from “original” itself.) RahXephon actually borrows far more heavily from Megazone 23 than it does Evangelion, and even Evangelion could be said to be heavily influenced by Megazone 23. I think that in its effort to be purely artistic entertainment, RahXephon knowingly pays homage to both Megazone 23 and Evangelion in the same way Evangelion re-uses the concept of a boy piloting his father’s giant robot that was used 20 years before in Mobile Suit Gundam, which itself borrowed the idea from even older shows like Tetsujin 28 and Mazinger.

To summarize, I would say that the similarities between RahXephon and Evangelion are intentional. To summarize in an analogy, RahXephon is to Evangelion as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet is to Franco Zeffirelli’ Romeo & Juliet. Neither is Shakespeare’s original, and both are exceptional productions and each enjoyable in their own rights, but one is highly classical and literary while the other is more contemporary and easily accessible.