It's been over a year since this particular event occurred, and it's still very fresh in my mind. Unfortunately, that's not a good thing in this case, because the memories I have are of how incredibly immature and insensitive the audience I was watching this movie with was. A warning to those reading this: Massive spoilers for the entire movie lie within. If you haven't seen it or don't want to know what happens, please don't read this.

It all started on the last night of the X movie's week-long run at Cinema 21 in downtown Portland. I went there with my boyfriend (now fiance) Josh and our friends Aimee and Shannon (who was sporting his X club shirt). All of us had seen the movie subtitled before, but seeing anime on the big screen was still exciting to us nonetheless, so we decided to go check it out. We arrived at the theater about an hour early and got in line, having loud, boisterous conversations about anime while we waited. Finally, the doors opened and we got our tickets and sat down in the theater. Our group had some conversations with other people about upcoming anime, including the new Sailormoon S episodes which would begin airing on Cartoon Network the following Monday. I also spent my time checking out the rest of the audience. I was glad that I didn't see any parents who had brought their kids, thinking that X was going to be "the feel-good family movie of the year." I guess the fact that the movie was showing at 9:15 on a school night and was rated 'R' were good enough hints to leave the kids at home ^_^ Anyway, the audience was mostly adults...I had just turned 17 at the time, and I didn't even see very many other teenagers there. Before the movie started, I'd figured that the audience was made up mostly of anime fans who were capable of handling the situations of the movie...boy, was I dead wrong...

One question I had before the movie started was whether it was going to be subbed or dubbed. I thought it was going to be subbed, because in The Oregonian's review (which was pretty positive, giving the movie a 'B+'), the Japanese voice actors were listed under the cast. But, alas, the first thing I heard was Kamui's mother badly pronouncing Kamui's name. Oh, well...I could handle a dub. Soon after that, there were some giggles from the audience at the fact that Kamui's mother was naked, which made me start to get a little nervous. If these people were really anime fans, they should be used to seeing nudity, and they certainly wouldn't giggle at it. Things quickly went downhill from there. For reasons unfathomable to me, after Karen's line of work was revealed, the audience seemed to figure that practically every scene she was in was comical, and giggles abounded everytime she was on the screen. Another source of laughter was bad dubbing and cheesy dialogue. The dub as a whole was pretty good, but there were a couple characters with bad line delivery, such as the 14-year old girl when she was dying (I forget her name). I admit, I even snickered a couple times at things like that, but that's nothing compared to what happened at the end of the movie.

[Major ending spoilers Ahead] When Kamui decapitated Fuuma, there were a few shocked gasps from the audience, which made me think that they were finally getting the movie. But then, right after that, when Kamui is shown holding Fuuma's decapitated head, the theater just erupted in laughter. I couldn't believe it. My friends and I were absolutely shocked. On the screen is a boy who just lost everything important him, and was forced to decapitate his BEST FRIEND, and the audience is guffawing like a bunch of jackasses? They were so loud, I couldn't even hear what Kamui was saying! It seems we weren't the only ones outraged; a guy a few rows ahead of us got up and yelled, "Fuck you people!" and stormed out of the theater. Josh later told me he had been thinking of doing something similar, except he would have said, "You sick fucks!" Fortunatley, the movie ended soon after that and all the insensitive jerks left, leaving the rest of us to enjoy "Forever Love" in peace. On the car ride home, we talked the whole time, not about the movie, but about how outraged we were by the audience's behavior. I think Aimee summed it up best when she said, "Since when did X become a comedy?" After watching the movie with those people, I really hope that most of them weren't anime fans...otherwise, the anime community is in serious trouble. Even if they weren't, their behavior still says something terrible about American culture...after all, I highly doubt there were theaters full of laughing people when the movie aired in Japan. This experience was one that made me feel truly disgusted at the attitudes of most Americans. And one final note to the guy who left the theater: Thank you for saying what everyone who actually got the movie was thinking. It's unfortunate that you had to do what you did, but maybe it got someone in the audience to think about why you would get so upset at what they were doing (Of course, knowing that audience, they'd probably think, 'huh huh huh, he said the 'f' word, hyuk hyuk). My final thought on this: At movies, instead of having an age check, I think a maturity check should be required.

(This was written with the help of an angry diary entry which I wrote as soon as I got home...man, it gets me all pissed off again just writing about it...)