Xenosaga: The Animation

4000 years have passed since humanity abandoned Earth. Forced to fight an alien form of life, Gnosis, mankind developed KOS-MOS - a battle android with amazing capabilities. When a ship carrying android is being attacked, KOS-MOS gets activated and save its creator, Shion Uzuki. But KOS-MOS doesn't want to listed her orders and executes some unknown plan. After their ship destroyed Shion and her companions find themselves thrust into the middle of a battle with Gnosis, U-TIC Organization and their own superiors. Battle with no clear sides.

To be honest I haven't really played the games but I just watched to pass some time.

This series will make sense to those who have played the game, but for "virgins" like me, it is not the most understanding plot line. The plot takes place 4000 year after the Earth is wiped out (it is not clear in the series what wiped out the Earth), and humanity is spread over the galaxy. There are several classes of people, from soldiers fighting for the Federation, workers for Vector Industries, Realiens who are designed humans, Androids, Cyborgs, a dimensional race called Gnosis, People working for U-Tic (bad guys), The Kukai foundation (good or bad?). They are looking for the Zohan (not Adam Sandler) and they only have zohan avatars (I don't know who made them or what they actually do, but they have Jewish characters on them).

It's a confusing mess and the way the plot unwinds doesn't help. It makes assumptions that you know what is going on, when new characters suddenly appear, or when a flashback happens. The problem is that the series (which is only 10-25 min episodes should be 2~3 seasons long (30~50 episodes) where the complex plot can be explained and flashbacks unveiled. It has the possibility to become an excellent show, but it seems that the producers wanted to finish with the series and move to their next project.

I watched this because I'd played the games, and that makes it a little hard to review. The games turned everything into a mystery and kept you wondering. Each character seemed to have a million secrets, and you wanted to know what they were. I didn't feel that way in the movie, but was that because it didn't emphasize the mysteries, thus making them feel unimportant, or was it because I already knew some of the answers.

I think mainly the former, because I really don't remember much from the games. This movie retells the story of the first game (I read that on wikipedia) and it seems less layered than the game was, telling a story more on the surface. It does offer up a few tantalizing mysteries, but none of them were answered. This would be excusable if they were planning on a longer series that would tell the whole story, but I don't know if they were.

Somehow this just seemed more involving in the game. Although admittedly I played it years ago so who knows what I'd think if I played it again.

I would say this is an okay anime, a short abridge version of the first two game. If you have time I strongly recommend playing the first Xenosaga.

It is still good to watch this afterwards because you get to see some slight changes in the story. I think the in-game cutscene are better than the anime, but it is still cool.

8/10.