I finished watching Revolutionary Girl Utena. The later episodes get progressively darker, you have storylines dealing with incest, immolation of junior high students, and standing shirtlessly on the hoods of moving sports cars. It had one of the more satisfying endings to an anime series that I’ve seen, I was worried about getting a more traditional fairy-tale ending due to Utena’s Prince obsession but that thankfully didn’t happen.

Now I’ve moved on to RahXephon, which tells the story of an artistic boy named Ayato who discovers that strange people are out to get him, stumbles across a giant egg from which hatches a giant mecha that only he can pilot, sees that his mom has spooky blue blood, and bursts out of a shell surrounding Tokyo only to realize that contrary to what he has been taught, the rest of the world still exists, he has to set his watch 12 years ahead into the future, and he has to get to work fighting giant singing alien invaders!

There is much debate (among those who care to debate such things) about RahXephon and its similarities to Evangelion.

I don’t really care about the comparisons, other than so far with RahXephon, I have not yet wondered if I need to be doing mind altering drugs in order to understand it, and that thought did keep crossing my mind towards the end of watching Evangelion. Ayato is also MUCH less whiny than Shinji about being forced to fight invading aliens.

Production on RahXephon is by Studio Bones, the same people who helped bring you Cowboy Bebop. I enjoy the way music is interwoven throughout the series, songs are used as weapons as well as a path to self-discovery.
RahXephon also has excellent character development, continuing storylines are mixed with episodes that sometimes focus on tertiary characters yet provide more information about such burning questions such as:

What’s up with Ayato’s blue-blooded mom, is she EVIL?
Who’s running the earth, and are they facists?
What’s with the giant Jupiter-like shell surrounding Tokyo?