How Does the X TV Series End?
Differently from the film, and at the opposite price: this time Kamui is the one who does not walk away.
Madhouse returned to X for television under director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, announced on 18 October 2000. A direct-to-video primer, X: An Omen, told through the dreamgazer Kakyo's prophecies, arrived on 25 August 2001. The series itself ran on WOWOW from 3 October 2001 to 27 March 2002, twenty-four episodes, later released by Geneon in North America.
Kawajiri said he wanted Kamui and Kotori stronger than their manga versions while keeping their psychological fragility. The length lets him do it: where the film is a montage, the series is the manga's first half played at full size, character by character.
THE ENDING
Episode 24, and what it costsThe road there
Late in the series the Dragons of Heaven lose, one by one, the people they protect, and with them the power to raise barriers. Tokyo stands open. Hinoto, fighting the dark second self that has been steering her prophecies, takes her own life to break its hold.
The final battle
Kamui faces Fuma and loses: Fuma kills him. With his last strength Kamui transforms his own body into a kekkai, a barrier around the world itself, undoing the change the Dragons of Earth fought for.
The restoration
Facing what he has done inside the shelter of that barrier, Fuma returns to himself. The series ends with the world preserved, the other Kamui gone, and the friend restored too late to thank him.
THREE ENDINGS, NONE OF THEM THE MANGA’S
A collector’s comparisonThe film, 1996
Fuma dies by Kamui’s sword; everyone else is already dead; Kamui survives alone.
The series, 2002
Kamui dies by Fuma’s hand and becomes the barrier; Fuma survives, restored. The two adaptations are mirror images, which is why fans argue them as a pair.
The manga
Unfinished since 2003, five published chapters past volume 18, with the final battle joined and Kamui’s true wish still being demanded of him. Any ending a screen gives X is an adaptation’s invention, and this shelf labels them that way.