Follow TV Tropes

Following

Trivia / X/1999

Go To

Franchise

  • Development Hell: The manga currently straddles the line between this and "outright discontinued", and has remained "on hold" since 2003. Nanase Ohkawa, the lead writer of CLAMP, mentioned in 2005 that they were still looking for a magazine willing to publish the remaining chapters. However, decades have passed and CLAMP put two more works on hold to work on Tsubasa World Chronicle, which was a continuation of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, xxxHolic:Rei which is also a semi-continuation of Xxxholic, and a sequel manga for Cardcaptor Sakura. Fans of X/1999 were not pleased with this and, at this point, the general assumption is that the manga will remain unfinished. It doesn't help that several plot points have been left hanging since well before 2003, such as Kamui's "true" wish and, most importantly, who wins between the Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth.
  • Distanced from Current Events: Cause of several publication hiatuses during the initial run of the manga, and possible cause of the current "hiatus" as well. Thematic elements like the decapitations and seismic disturbances bore coincidental but unsettling resemblances to real-life events such as the Sakakibara murders and the Great Hanshin Earthquake, leading to the series being pulled from publication repeatedly. CLAMP denies Executive Meddling was responsible for the 2003 hiatus, stating that they themselves made the decision to cease publication as they were convinced the planned ending would not have been socially acceptable "at that time". The global climate around urban terrorism and national security may have been a major factor in that decision.
  • Series Hiatus: The manga has been on hold on since 2003. Though CLAMP stated a willingness to continue the series if they found a magazine/publisher willing to print the remaining chapters, multiple decades have passed and CLAMP has long been focused on other works. Fans generally accept that the "hiatus" is more a quiet cancellation on CLAMP's side.
  • What Could Have Been: The story was originally conceived by Ohkawa as a tale of a group of warriors fighting for justice, but those plans ended up in a brief Development Hell as the entire CLAMP team couldn't find a proper "hook" to make it engaging. Only later did the idea for mixing the previous concept with influences from Go Nagai's Devilman and Shotaro Ishinomori's Genma Taisen crystallize, giving birth to X as we know it.
  • Word of God:

Movie and anime

  • Acting for Two: Wendee Lee, in addition to playing main character Karen, voices both of Kotori's friends in the English version.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes:
    • Good luck finding a new, or even mint, copy of The Movie. Its last-known print runs were in 2001 on DVD (and in 2005 on an extremely limited UMD run, of all things), issued by Manga Entertainment, and the last DVD run was before CLAMP's hiatus on the manga. There hasn't been a single high-definition release of the work in any language since the "hiatus" was announced. Resources like blu-ray.com point to dummy entries made in anticipation of a release that never materialized; Manga Entertainment lost the rights to the movie and was later acquired by Sony, and Madhouse is now a subsidiary of NTV, so who precisely owns the rights to the film may be unclear. Even more notably, it has never featured on any streaming platform.
    • That said, the TV series remained in print a bit longer courtesy of Funimation (even getting a Complete Collection in 2010), and good-condition copies of the series are a bit easier to find. Like the film, however, it never got an HD release of any sort, in any language, and time and attrition makes discs slowly rarer. It is at least on Crunchyroll post-merger, available for streaming. In 2017, it received a Blu-Ray version, but this is only available via Germany or German-speaking countries.

Top