(L) Eureka Seven: Astral Ocean

[Blaat]

The best thing I hoped for happened: Ao used the quartz gun to retcon the series' events out of existence. Shame we can't do the same with the series itself. Still there were some good things, the animation was good at times, the openings were fantastic and the soundtrack was rather good. Besides that nothing good came from this series, nothing.

I'm also starting to realise that Zeta Gundam was a fluke, the same type of fluke that led to human ancestors walking upright, Japan cannot make a good direct mecha sequel. I don't get why though, you would think they would use Zeta Gundam as a source of inspiration on how to do a mecha sequel instead they seem to avoid it like the plague.

Speaking of mecha it really doesn't look good for the genre. A year ago I honestly thought 2012 would be the year mecha would make an awesome comeback. Instead, the exact opposite has happened. I fear that Unicorn will be the genre's last hurray and besides that you will be forced to play SRW if you want to experience a good mecha story.

[konart]

Originally Posted by Trajan

Well, that was . . . . something. Paradoxes and nonsensical plot aside, the thing that offends me the most is Ao's decision to fire the quartz gun in order to give his parents a happy ending.

Until the final moments of the last episode, Ao has refused to fire the quartz gun because it alters timelines and potentially erase his friends and loved ones from existence. In episode 23, he essentially argues that there is no "true" timeline and therefore the current timeline has as equal a right to existence as the "true" timeline. In episode 24, he tells Renton that "erasing something wrong doesn't make it right." So what does he do 5 minutes later? HE ERASES HIS TIMELINE BECAUSE IT IS "WRONG". C'mon man, really? Niwa Nagahide awards this ending zero points.

Some random thoughts:

1. So after being told by Renton that his sister died due to high concentrations of trapar, Ao dropped pregnant Eureka off on top of a scub coral without warning her of the dangers of trapar. Way to murder your sister Ao!

2. If Elena is alive, she's 56.

2. It's obvious that Ao is Gonzy. Think about it. Doesn't make any sense, you say? Then it's a perfect fit for this series.

2. If Elena was even born she could be if any age - the course of evens was altered.

[Yuuu]

What a terrible ending. Way to retcon the original. So Dewey was the good guy, Gekko State was bad. SCREW THIS!!!

[Trajan]

Originally Posted by konart

2. If Elena was even born she could be if any age - the course of evens was altered.

Well, my assumption is that once Ao stops Eureka from transporting the quartz away, hologram Eureka no longer exists to transport Elena from 1981 to 2022, so Elena remains in her own time. Maybe she dies in 1981 in a scub burst, or maybe there is never a scub burst and she lives a normal life.

Of course, this show is riddled with inconsistencies. What exactly happens when AO fires the quartz gun is given different, conflicting answers at different points in the series. Therefore, anything you want to believe happened could have happened.

[viperdk1]

Can someone please tell me how the hell this stuff gets sanctioned?

We've got a story here with more holes in it than a particularly large block of Swiss Cheese, a bunch of characters that are virtually cardboard cutouts (and subsequently people who we very rarely give a damn about bar Eureka and Renton), a load of convoluted plot threads that are brought up with only very few of them being closed (Okinawa independence, Naru, what the hell Truth was meant to be, Generation Bleu, that bleeding Quartz Gun etc. etc.) and, worst of all, next to no closure in the ending!

The staff involved in these kinds of productions cannot all have been born with buckets of spiders attached to their heads, surely? There has to at least have been one person in that mess with more than two brain cells to rub together - that could have put together a comprehensive narrative, at the very least? I mean bloody hell, there are probably people on here that could provide a better script for AO than what this lot did.

When I started watching Eureka Seven AO, I was very disappointed - because I was of the impression that it had no relation to the canon of the TV series I had watched over the course of a week or two. Now it's over, I'm still disappointed - but for the opposite reason.

They should've made it completely unrelated to the original Eureka Seven and called it, I dunno, "Baron von Teapot's F***ing Ludicrous Adventures" - because this sh*ts all over the reputation of the original like there had been a leakage in the world's largest sewage factory.

The soundtracks and OP/ED music (both OP's, first ED - second ED made no sense and was way too light for the second half of the show) are all I can really recommend from this shower of sh*te - which is all I could really recommend from Persona Trinity Soul too.

Whoever wrote this series needs to take a long and hard look at themselves - and be kept as far away from a writing desk as humanely possible, with handcuffs if necessary.

[garbage]

and all I can do is /SIGH....

guess it was really hard? impossible?for them to make a proper follow up to E7

[finalfury]

Congradulations Bones, you have successfully made a sequel that sucked worse than Aquarion Evol(mostly ending wise). And after two months, you were not able to make a decent epilogue to the story and shaft Fleur as well. The Fleur and Ao scene made me cry the first time i watched it and want to punch my computer the second. Thanks for nothing Bones and that horrible scenario/storyboard writer.

Sorry for the rant. First Zessica and now Fleur. How many more of my favorite characters does the anime industry want to screw around with?

[Haak]

Wow, with all the negativity on this thread I actually half thought it was going to be as bad as everyone said it was...

At that point I should've realised that I seem to live in a alternate reality to the rest of the people on this forum.

Personally I enjoyed this finale immensely. I can't say it's characters are as great as the original series but it's story kept me thrilled and engaged from start to finish.

Overall: 8.0/10

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Haak

Wow, with all the negativity on this thread I actually half thought it was going to be as bad as everyone said it was...

At that point I should've realised that I seem to live in a alternate reality to the rest of the people on this forum.

Personally I enjoyed this finale immensely. I can't say it's characters are as great as the original series but it's story kept me thrilled and engaged from start to finish.

Overall: 8.0/10

I don't know man the show is kind of like the shining example of an objectively bad show. It could barely stay consistent with its internal Canon, had atrociously handled characters and seemed to be actively mocking its viewers in how it all played out. It's just....bad.

@blaat: Sunrise will come in and save the mecha genre from all this slipshod stuff next year somehow, I hold fast to this belief. They just need to get through all this idol crap and sever ties with Level 5. They might not end up making the next revolutionary mecha series but I'm sure they can make something not totally insulting and with a functional cast and premise that makes some sense. Like I said earlier this is so not even remotely as hard as Bones, Satelight, I.G and Xebec are making it look of late. Its almost like they're trying to make these shows bad and utterly insulting to mecha fans.

For the record I would not put Gundam AGE in the same category as this show. It had some issues, mostly with its villains and third heroes motivations but it didn't have a totally insulting cast up and down the board, stayed consistent for the most part and wasn't launching off in random directions every episode. AGE is an example of a mediocre mecha series, Ao is just bad like EVOL.

[Haak]

Objectively...


Lol...

[konart]

Originally Posted by Haak

Objectively...


Lol...

You can laugh as much as you want, but that's a simple fact. The show was bad.

It had good background - never used.
It had no solid idea behind.
Almost no existent plot(that was completely destroyed in the end).
It had raised dozens of questions - 90% of the left unanswered.
Most of the events just were not connected - it looked like every other episode was made by completely different group of people, without even watching the previous ones or reading the script.
Script? Was there a script to begin with? Not only events were not connected - there were no logical explanation to most of them. So all in all this was one big pile of shit that just happened

[XeroFyction]

Thoughts on the ending:

Renton needed more screen time.

Spoiler for Discussion of ending not everyone has seen:

Where does AO receive that bag at the end?

Has AO been unconscious for two years or just time traveling?

If there are no scub coral then there are no secrets. If there are no secrets then Generation Bleu doesn't exist. Consequently, there are no IFO pilots so everyone lives. Elena stays in her timeline.

If the quartz gun erases all mentions of something from history then Renton's world is saved and AO's sister lives.

Renton and Eureka needed at least five minutes to survey their world.

I hope they include a 20 minute epilogue to show where everyone is doing.

Those Gekko State hippies were wrong! LOL

Thoughts on the series:

My head hurts.

There weren't enough references to E7.

Spoiler for Final thoughts on truth:

Truth as an archetype explains his obsession with AO somewhat. He was always obsessed and it was revealed he's not entirely a secret. A secret couldn't fuse with an IFO but secret could.

Where's truth now and what did he have to do?

The series must named after AO because he's the only one with any idea what happened.

That secret head is utterly useless now.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by konart

You can laugh as much as you want, but that's a simple fact. The show was bad.

It had good background - never used.
It had no solid idea behind.
Almost no existent plot(that was completely destroyed in the end).
It had raised dozens of questions - 90% of the left unanswered.
Most of the events just were not connected - it looked like every other episode was made by completely different group of people, without even watching the previous ones or reading the script.
Script? Was there a script to begin with? Not only events were not connected - there were no logical explanation to most of them. So all in all this was one big pile of shit that just happened

Needless to say I disagree with everything you just said...

[com_gwp]

Originally Posted by Haak

Needless to say I disagree with everything you just said...

He has valid points. I enjoyed AO, but it clearly needed far more time to properly expand upon the dozens of story threads it introduced. 23/24 tried its best to rush through a closure to the most important ones, but far too much is still left poorly concluded or half-explained. (Not to mention, Renton and Eureka's motivations, the sister subplot and character endings were very poorly handled. Probably the most disappointing aspect, because their actions were central to the entire AO storyline. Definitely needed more episodes for this, or otherwise introduce Renton to the story much earlier.)

I do share the sentiment that the rage here seems unwarranted, because asides from the typical Bones Ending the show has been a joy to follow for me. It touched on some very interesting themes and had Ao go through a great character arc across the series. I still get the feeling that people had certain expectations of an E7 show and that AO never met those expectations seems to be the main reason for the hate.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by com_gwp

He has valid points. I enjoyed AO, but it clearly needed far more time to properly expand upon the dozens of story threads it introduced. 23/24 tried its best to rush through a closure to the most important ones, but far too much is still left poorly concluded or half-explained. (Not to mention, Renton and Eureka motivations and character endings were very poorly handled. Definitely needed more episodes for this, or otherwise introduce Renton to the story much earlier.)

I do share the sentiment that the rage here seems unwarranted, because asides from the typical Bones Ending the show has been a joy to follow for me. I still get the feeling that people had certain expectations of an E7 show and that AO never met those expectations seems to be the main reason for the hate.

All I really asked for was a stable coherent narrative and a decent cast again something that honest to god should not really be all that hard yet seems to be eluding mecha shows of late. Aside from Ao the cast either came across as loathsome, annoying or irrelevant and played off for jokes and a show like this can't survive as a one man show.

Like you can call it by another name and even remove the sequel to a hit series factor and you still have all those issues of basic storytelling just crippling the show.

[Yuuu]

I was disappointed with a few aspects but I still think Ao was a great lead. They needed two more episodes.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by com_gwp

He has valid points. I enjoyed AO, but it clearly needed far more time to properly expand upon the dozens of story threads it introduced. 23/24 tried its best to rush through a closure to the most important ones, but far too much is still left poorly concluded or half-explained. (Not to mention, Renton and Eureka's motivations, the sister subplot and character endings were very poorly handled. Probably the most disappointing aspect, because their actions were central to the entire AO storyline. Definitely needed more episodes for this, or otherwise introduce Renton to the story much earlier.)

I agree that there are one or two loose threads it didn't explain properly and whilst the pacing of the last two episodes were pretty fast I didn't really think they were all that faster than how previous episodes have been and i don't think think there was any impact lost in the sister reveal. On the contrary, I found it exceptionally well done.

[com_gwp]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

All I really asked for was a stable coherent narrative and a decent cast again something that honest to god should not really be all that hard yet seems to be eluding mecha shows of late. Aside from Ao the cast either came across as loathsome, annoying or irrelevant and played off for jokes and a show like this can't survive as a one man show.

Like you can call it by another name and even remove the sequel to a hit series factor and you still have all those issues of basic storytelling just crippling the show.

Again, I think people are being far too critical. Stable, coherent narrative? It largely had that right up until the ending, especially where the backstory and resolution for Renton and Eureka was just a slap in the face for everyone who watched the original. And the cast had a great clash of personalities, except that they never had the screentime to expand fully on everyone and their motivations. Underdeveloped would be the word I'll use to describe the cast, and it's disappointing because the cast had a lot of personality to them.

Originally Posted by Haak

I agree that there are one or two loose threads it didn't explain properly and whilst the pacing of the last two episodes were pretty fast I didn't really think they were all that faster than how previous episodes have been and i don't think think there was any impact lost in the sister reveal. On the contrary, I found it exceptionally well done.

This I have to disagree, and it's probably the most aggravating thing about the ending. Sure, the sister's subplot was easy validation of all their actions in AO because of familial love, one of the core themes of AO and the E7 shows, but in doing so bastardized the characterization of Renton and Eureka, and negates everything the first series stood for, that theme of coexistance.

Still, had the feels when Ao acknowledged everything his parents did for him and Niji starts playing. That scene was pretty well executed, even if the idea behind it was crap.


And really people, worse than Aquarion EVOL? I know you're mad, geez, but still.

[Raincollie]

Originally Posted by konart

that's a simple fact. The show was bad.

You can't simply state that the show was bad. Well, you can, but my point is that it would be wrong to do so. Whether a show is good or bad is all a matter of opinion, not facts. I agree with most of your arguments, but deciding for other people that it was bad is kind of wrong.

[Daniel Lind]

Whether a show is good or bad is all a matter of opinion, not facts.

No, bad writing is usually pretty objective.