(L) Symphonic Poem Eureka Seven

[Haak]

I might as well dump this here for future reference:

Spoiler for my impressions:

Eureka Seven is an anime that I really enjoyed. I think there were two main things that made the show great: The characters and the sincerity. I know a lot say Renton is unlikable and whiny and cried a lot, but whilst he did have one or two really dumb moments, I generally found him an extremely sympathetic character and I hated the way he just kept on getting treated like crap. Thankfully that toned down and Renton gradually built up his respect which I think was an excellent way to go in hindsight. Often in anime you just see whiny male leads that do awesome things only when the plot demands and his qualities of good character often feel Informed. But in this case characters would rarely praise Renton and whenever they did, you know it was for a damn good reason. That said, whilst he was an enjoyable and sympathetic lead, he did have his character flaws. I remember an episode where he gets angry at Eureka for not telling him about his father sooner and uses words that he really should’ve known better not to use. The whole drama at the end felt so silly since it felt like such a contrived way to start up drama when there needn’t be one. There was also a moment near the end of the series where he injures his own arm with a rock because he’s frustrated when he sees Eureka’s arm covered in ugly green blobs. I mean really. It also took him 20 episodes to realise he was killing people to which my general reply was “Well better late than never...”. I know the message was that he only just now fully understood the implications of what he was doing, but the execution just made it feel like he was realising the complete obvious. But like I said, it was better late than never. Because sometimes some shows don’t even go into it and mooks get killed in droves with little thought. And when they do, the fact that they’re being killed only serves as plot devices to develop the character, rather than mooks being characters in their own right. I did actually feel that to be the case with Renton (because I didn’t feel Charles and Ray counted as mooks) but not with Eureka (The children were always potent reminders). And the story did show how the little people mattered in other ways, such as the Vodrac and the people we saw who were viciously attacked by the Antibody Coralians. Eureka herself turned out to be a great character as well as was evident by her gradual change throughout the show. In episode one, she’s completely expressionless but throughout the show you see her expressing more and more emotion (and now we see an almost quirky Eureka in this new series). It also parallels well with the physical changes she undergoes and I especially liked the wings she grew near the end. It would’ve been so adorable if they fluttered every time she was happy but alas. I loved watching their romance blossom and I loved moments like when Renton finally reunites with Eureka by catching her when she’s falling (It’s clichéd as hell but it’s still awesome). Unlike typical romances, theirs was a romance that went through plenty of ups and downs which was also good to see.

That I said, I did actually end up enjoying Dominic and Anemone’s romance more because when Anemone recognised Dominic’s love for her, you definitely know he deserved it, especially after all the crap he had to go through. And despite all the crap Anemone put on Dominic, she still ended up being a character I could sympathise with, partly because I just knew she’d finally recognise his feelings and partly because I knew there was a damn good reason why she was so messed up (And there was). Episode 48 was probably the most enjoyable episode for me personally.

The other characters were all excellent in their own right. Whilst I hated the way Holland kept on being an ass to Renton, it was good that he was getting called out on it, and the implications of his actions always followed through and had an effect (But damn was he awesome when he entered a fire fight with Charles wearing nothing but spandex shorts and body paint. ). All the other characters were great too and had their moments. Talho’s feelings, Stoner’s media battle, Sakuya and Norb’s romance, Jurgen’s loyalties were all compelling and had issues that they had to resolve on their own, independent of the main pair. However, I don’t understand why Hilda and Mathieu mysteriously disappear in last remaining episodes. And there were some characters that weren’t great. Dewey was a mess of different character points with little connection and I still never really understood him, nor his ridiculous child officers (The “he’s the only one who said we were beautiful” was kind of belated and superficial, not to mention pedo-ish which was probably intentional but still pretty annoying)

Like I said, the other thing I liked about Eureka Seven was its sincerity which I explained in another thread:

Originally Posted by Haak

For me sincerity is extremely important. Often times I've managed to like crappy stories like the To Aru series, ridiculous drama by Jun Maeda in Angel Beats and even dumbcrap shows like Guilty Crown because I felt a genuine sense of sincerity and an honest desire to tell a story. It’s pretty much the biggest reason why I love Toradora!, Redline and Summer Wars. All of those shows were actually pretty standard plot wise but the sincerity behind them was phenomenal. In contrast I generally hate anime where the main appeal is typical ecchi/harem/”eating cake” moe crap because there’s no real desire to tell an actual story.

Usually I don’t swallow idealistic shows and this was as idealistic as they come, but what made it easy to enjoy was its sincerity behind that idealism. It never once felt contrived and flat, even when Renton transformed Nirvash and went Ginga Bishonen at the end. The sincerity was evident in the maturity of the writing and through the symbolism and the depictions of surf culture which was fairly original. The soundtrack also did well to provide the mood. It’s not stunningly amazing but it did its job very well and there is one track that I’ve been listening to endlessly.

As for the plot, it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It starts off well by spending the first few episodes focusing on the characters and their shenanigans before moving on to the plot. I think this is a classic method of storytelling that has kind of gone down recently because so few shows get to be 50 episodes long anymore. However, I felt that the story was needlessly obfuscating key plot points when they needn’t be. Since Renton kept on narrating on how he didn’t really understand anything my general thought was, “Okay fine so for whatever reason I’m not supposed to know so I’ll be patient and wait”. I didn’t mind being patient since it was a 50 episode series and I knew the sincerity was there so I trusted them to deliver. They did but I still felt it was pointless. Obfuscating key plot points only serves to prevent you forming the right amount of context needed to be fully engaged with the plot and enjoy the twists and turns. And in the end there were plenty of plot points that went unanswered, like the desperation disease and the zone and the existence of TypeTheEnd. But it was a 50 episode series and there was plenty of development which was great. There wasn't a single episode that felt wasted (Well except for the football one).

As far as Aesops go, some were hits and the others were misses. The Green Aesop was the fairy typical “be nice to the earth or it will violently kill you” but the sincerity was there since it was tied in well with the surf culture that was depicted with charm and personality. It also did well to emphasise the need for coexistence with plot points like the “Limit of Life” that added another layer of depth. The religious tolerance bit was interesting but too superficial and the Vodrac terrorists weren’t given the focus that they deserved. The Aesop is a fairly typical, “terrorism is wrong but don’t discriminate against people just because some are terrorists”, but in reality it’s become far more complicated than that and people nowadays rarely ever outright discriminate and are more subtle about it. Recently what with the War on Terror and all, discrimination against Muslims has evolved to attacking their faith and arguing it supports terrorism, which is a much greyer issue. And the line between moderates and terrorists (and freedom fighters) isn’t always that clear cut either. But unfortunately reality is far far far far far far more cynical than Eureka Seven was ever going to be, what with its strong idealism and all. There could be a bit of Values Dissonance though. However, there was one aspect that I think it did excellent on and that was the clever PR Dewey used to get public support. Dewey took advantage of the extreme dissatisfaction the public held toward the current strongly unrepresentative dictatorship and sought to solidify his base as the “Protest Vote” (Imo, this is one the biggest reasons why Islamism emerged from Secular dictatorships like in 1979 Iran and more recently Egypt). He made effective use of the “Us vs Them” mentality and created an enemy that everyone could hate very easily, since the people’s only experience of the Scub Coral were the Antibody Coralians which were vicious monsters. He made sure the people realised he was the only one who could defend them. He also very cleverly invoked the image of cultural heroes like Adrock Thurston which he associated himself with (something politicians do a lot, like how the Republican Party in America always invokes the Founding Fathers, regardless of how accurate they are). The media battle was one aspect of the plot that I think it really nailed. It’s kind of unfortunate that it still followed typical conventions in war anime and made diplomacy almost non-existent, even when though diplomacy is extremely important in reality.

In short: Great characters and an enjoyable but flawed plot.

Overall: 8/10.