Ayato Kamina is on his way to an exam when an attack transforms his familiar Tokyo. A girl resembling someone in his drawings leads him towards the enormous RahXephon. Escaping the city means discovering that the place he called home has been sealed away from the outside world.
Outside Tokyo, twelve more years have passed than Ayato expected. The separation is therefore temporal as well as geographical: leaving home unsettles the chronology of his own life. Haruka's promise to show him the truth cannot restore the assumptions he carried into that ordinary morning.
The RahXephon can dwarf the people standing before it. Ayato and Haruka occupy a small part of the chamber beneath its armoured body, making the promised explanation feel physically remote. His encounter with Reika and Haruka's offer of escape pull him towards different guides before he can establish what to believe about Tokyo.