NKO 3.0

Manga

The manga version of RahXephon is an alternate re-telling of the story, a spin-off. There were various changes done to the characters besides their designs. I don't wish to spoil much here, but I'll be sure to make a separate page referencing all the differences in the manga sometime later after I re-read it. Needless to say, it's also quite good and it has some pretty good twists. The manga only spans for 3 volumes. I didn't find it as complicated as the TV series though.

Guides

There were several art books released for RahXephon, among them were a few guides. One of them, the RahXephon Bible was actually translated to English and brought over to the U.S. Unfortunately, the guide only covered half the series. (I don't know why either.) There was another complete guide released sometime later but it was never translated. If anybody has any of these guides and would like to offer some comments I'll be glad to post them here. Just E-Mail me the impressions. I can't read Japanese so I can only have them to look at. =/ Needless to say the artbooks are high quality material with some very exquisite art covering official art for promotions, goods, DVDs, etc. You can see samples in the official art gallery.

Soundtracks

As far as I know there were 2 CD soundtracks released in the United States by Geneon. Searching the Web though, apparently there are three total soundtrack CDs for the TV series, another one for the movie, and also a drama CD. In either case, if you've heard the music from the TV series you pretty much know what these soundtracks are composed of. Very stylish jazz, classical, and some new age. The music is composed by the very talented Ichiko Hashimoto, who also sang the ending songs. She also voiced Maya Kamina in the series! The opening is performed by Maaya Sakamoto (Reika) and composed by the also very talented Yoko Kanno. As for the drama CD, I'm not very much aware of its content.

Novels

I'm afraid I don't know much about the novels as I have yet to purchase them. I've read some reviews and things don't look particularly good though. From grammar errors to Engrish? I'll probably pass on it. Either way, they're just a narration of the TV series. I cannot confirm if it's more elaborate though. Probably not. The novel series are scheuled to be 5 books long.