Anime Eureka 7

kiddo7 · Jun 28, 2007

Eureka Seven, Neon Genesis Evangelion for a new generation
A rant by kiddo7

Once again I have come to a point in life where I cannot keep my thoughts to myself. And once again I turn to the written word as an outlet for, and an aid in organizing my thoughts. This time however a few things have changed;

I have actually completed the anime before starting this... "opinion thread" (I don't want to call it a review)
I have already spent two days planning this post so my writing should not be nearly as confusing this time around (here's to hoping)
The topic is less controversial, and this time I actually know what my opinion on it is.

Once again, however, there will most likely (pronounced: definitely) be a whole lot of spoilers ranging

from trivial and inconsequential to "OMG why did she say that now I have no more reason to finish watching the show."

By the way if you are reading this and you have not yet watched or at the very least started watching the show then you should kick yourself in the tush until you finally decide to do yourself the favor of watching this amazing anime! Yes, it's that good! At least that is how I feel about it.

Ok, what was I about to say??? (as you can see I am still prone to digress. :tem

)
Spoilers right, I will try to be considerate though, I shall create a table of contents where each item on the list is a spoiler tag hiding that section of my spiel (how this will help you avoid spoilers I am not entirely sure, but it sounded like a genius Idea at the time). This way you can read the parts that you want to without reading the parts that will most likely spoil you. On that note I am still rather long winded so I might not finish this today.

Alright so let us get on with it...
//Creating T.O.C.//
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... ...
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Table of Contents

[spoiler="Opinion" on anime as a whole (sorta like a review). I also explain the title of this thread...
little to no spoilers]
If incase you have not figured it out yet, I loved Eureka seveN!
It took me forever to get myself to watch it. I still don't understand what kept me away from it, but I have known about it for, at least, two years before attempting to watch it.
I know, shame on me!
Anyway, somewhere between episode 20 and 30 I began to realize that there are a slew of subtle parallels to Neon Genesis Evangelion in this show. So much so that for almost each significant NGE character you can find a corresponding E7 character(or two). Now I am not trying to say that if you have seen one show you have seen the other. NO! That is just wrong. They are two distinct stories with distinct story lines, characters and atmospheres. At the same time, Eureka seveN has the all the ingredients to become for the current generation what NGE was for it's own generation (if not for the flood of clones, cheap imitations and even halfway decent attempts at recreating the experience and success of Eva) Evangelion is darker, more of a "mind trip", and just weird, to name a few differences also the characters of Eureka 7 do not all need to urgently see a therapist. In fact, I might even be as bold as to say that none of them have "issues". . .
Ok ok ok, so that is a blatant lie. Some of them do have issues but not like in NGE where i thought "Whoa, these people are all Messed Up!" In short, if someone wanted to write a story that would leave you with the same impact that Neon Genesis Evangelion left you with, minus the whole producers-must-be-smoking-some-powerful-shit impression, only with a more current feel, they most likely would have written this story.

So about the show itself...
Lets start with the basics;

Art:

The first thing I noticed is that The art style is somewhat reminiscent of Samurai Champloo without the random deformations during action scenes. So if you have seen that show (and once more, if you haven't, you probably live under a rock, no offense) then I do need to give any more explanation of the art, makes things a lot easier.

Music:

Magnificent!!!
All four openings are memorable and will most likely become instant favorites. Note that the second opening is preformed by Home Made KAZOKU!!! Same dudes who did the second ending to bleach "thank you" and the current ending for Naruto. Anyway the last ending is my favorite and It has been inside of my head ever since I could recognize the melody and I have been humming, whistling, and singing (trying to sing rather) it on and off every day. And No, I am still not bored of it not one bit! its that good.
The endings are the same if not better, sometimes they even seem to fit together as a pair. The most memorable of these would be tip taps tip by HALCALI don't know why but this song just took a hold of me, it was love at first sight, or hearing that is.
The insert song are fantastic too Story Writer which you will gett to hear as early as the first episode, I think, and then countless times again is an amazing piece of work. It just really gets you pumped up and ready to witness some amazing action. you will recognize this song because it is played every time the show hits a peak moment. lots of great guitar, piano and drums make this an easily recognizable tune.
Another genius composition is Niji it is the very last insert song in the series and for all I know, it is only played once. But don't worry, you wont miss it, It is ten plus glorious minutes of beauty.mostly electronic and synth music but it creates such an atmosphere... I am just telling you now because by the time it plays you will be so touched by the scene that is playing out before you that you might forget to take notice of the music.

Oh what the heck, I can never make you understand the greatness of this music with words alone. BUt never fearthis guy(or gal), midnight7, on youtube, has made a playlist with all the openings and endings and some of the insert songs. you can check it out for yourselves if you want,but be warned, these should be considered as intermediate spoilers as some of the openings show a whole lot of scenes from the actual anime.

Character development:

This is basically, what the show is about. Well not really but you get the picture. It all starts out with renton being just your average 14 year old, he himself admits that he has little to no knowledge of the world. And then we follow him on his incredible journey, witnessing all the changes he goes through with each new person he makes a connection with. Starting with eureka (this one is the most significant and develops throughout the story), holland, Talho, the kids, the rest of gekko state, tipptree, dominic, his uncle(forgot his name), Ray & Charles, Will, the research team at tresor, norbu, and finaly the scab coral itself. Each of these encounters nudge him, little by little, towards the person he ends up being at the end of the show. And honestly I love watching characters grow.
If you read my simoun rant you will know that interesting dynamic characters coupled with good music and decent art are enough to keep me interested in an anime. //end offtopic
But renton is not the only dynamic character, pretty much every main character and even some of the minor/supporting characters show a similar growth throughout the show.

Story:

Everyone digs giant robot cars! (If you have watched MegasXLR you know where I am coming from) BUt Eureka seveN is not just about giant robots, there is a little bit of everything in it. Lets see
surfing/skating
planes
spaceflight
guys
bishies
girls
guns
soccer
religion
philosophy
weird technological jargon
politics
humor
tragedy
love
families
people with really messed up minds
and more
Basically the makings of any good anime. But as is usual, the gems are in the details.

The story of E7 is what I would call very plausible, and it is one of only very few(if not the only) animes I have seen thus far that qualify for this description. Here is what I mean, no person is inherently evil! Often times the bad guys on a show like this are portrayed as being all evil and having always been that way and having always wanted to be that way. As long as we are talking about human beings this is a slightly distorted image, no one is born with the desire to be evil.
Eureka7 levels this playing field just a little, as most of the bad guys turn out to have next to nothing evil about them at all. It is just the point of view that we are given and the situation they are in. Then there are the special cases who have had some very traumatic experience in the past that has driven them mad. They do seem genuinely evil at first but upon hearing their full story you can easily find it in yourself to feel sympathy for them except maybe for Dewy.

I could write a few more thoughts about the story here but I will over that when I talk about the individual characters.
[/spoiler]
Defining quote: "I will/want to/promised to protect Eureka"

Renton would be, in keeping with the tittle of this thread, the equivalent of Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion. This should really not come as much of a surprise to anyone, they are both the main characters after all. One big difference between them is that I like Renton, while Shinji... not so much. You see Shinji is emo, he is chronically depressed, has no motivation, totally insecure, has no goals in life and is simply a boring character. Renton on the other hand, while exhibiting most of these same characteristics at times is not what I call emo. (see my reply to the first reply) Renton is motivated and driven he is a go getter and he wants to live and do things with his life. he gets depressed, frustrated and bored often as a direct result of this when things do not happen at the pace he would like or in the way he imagined. But he shakes it off quickly and turns everything into a learning experience.

When we first meet him he is your average kid with big dreams and little chance of them ever coming true. He lives with and works for his grandfather, goes to school where he is not very popular(despite being the son of a great hero), and spends his free time reefing (no that is not smoking the reefer, why do you always have to twist my words? ), a sport that evolved from a cross between surfing, but reminds me more of skateboarding, and is done in the air though the aid of trapar waves (TRAnsparent light PARticle waves). These waves also happen to be the base of all their powered flight technology, although now I have gone completely off topic.

Anyway, Renton just like shinji grew up not knowing his father, who left the family to pursue military research (dejavue huh).
Back to renton, in his case it is not his father who summons the kid to himself, but rather Holland, a rebel of sorts and world renown reefboard prodigy who also happens to be Rentons greatest Idol at the time, who sends eureka to "mistakenly drop in on the workshop". Renton falls for eureka right away, and is even more flabbergasted when he finds out that Holland wants him to come with him. and that is how the whole adventure starts. Pretty much a synopsis of the first three episodes without the action scenes)

The first thing I liked about renton, next to his innocent, childlike naivety, was the fact that he was 14 and looked and acted 14. Pretty insignificant, I know, but sometimes it's the little things that count. By the way, pretty much every one looks their age in this anime, unlike in bleach or even naruto.
Another thing i liked at first is that he did not appear to suffer from main-shounen-anime-character-disease. He was not instantly best at fighting and he was not at all unbeatable, he was not the one coming in to save other peoples asses even when it seemed like there was no one else around to do the saving. Eureka and Holland where the ace pilots. Now it is true that he was the only one able to trigger the seven swell phenomenon and awaken the nirvash's true powers but he still needed Eureka to be present for this. I cannot express in words or otherwise how satisfying it was for me to see that Renton was pretty much useless in combat except to enhance Eureka's skills. but like all good things, this too came to an end somewhere between episode twenty and thirty or so.

Oh well! big deal, I guess there will never be an anime or any other show for that matter where the main character is not the top gun.

But that was not his only redeeming quality, if you will. Another thing i liked about him and simultaneously another way he differs from shinji is that he only has one girl he is interested in and there is only one girl interested in him (his classmates do not count as they only became his fans after he was featured in ray=out).
Shinji had Rei, Asuka, and to some degree Misato who could where vying for his attention, he of course was too busy being insecure to react in any constructive way.
Renton, however, is focused and pretty intent. He has eyes only for eureka and he keeps at her even through rough stages and finally is rewarded, true love story style. But it goes even further than that! Often times when a young couple is depicted the relation ship becomes very exclusive. You know the situation, girl has to chose between her family and her love, guy has to chose between his buddies/old habits and his love. While it is true that most sacrifices are worth it for true love, this still seems a little selfish when put in perspective.
Renton's love story, while it does include a lot of sacrifice does not ask eureka to part from her children. Rather, Renton begins to think of them as his own, and they in turn, learn to accept him as well (though this takes quite a long time).
Defining quote: "I belive in you"

Eureka is your typical mysterious miracle child type character. Thought I personally like Rei more, rei has red eyes!
Anyway, right from the start she is exactly what you expect her to be... weird!
Let's see;

She crashes her giant robot (which she reffers to as "this kid") into the house, and acts as if that is the customary mode of entry,

She has what she calls a funeral for the debris from her crash by incinerating pretty much everything that was left of the crash with a blowtorch.

She can talk to machines and does this often (even thought you never hear them answer her)

her giant robot works without a compac drive (a nifty little piece of technology, sort of like an ignition key, invented by renton's father that is necessary for all interaction between man and heavy machinery in this world)

She can "read the [trapar]waves" (and you get this eerie feeling that she actually can summon them as well

But these are just first impressions and at least half of them are explained as the show goes on. You see the big secret is that she is not human. She is actually a human form coralian, suffice it to say that it is another type of life form that is living in a symbiotic relationship with the planet. She was unearthed by a bunch of scientists and tought how to walk talk and pilot the nirvash from rentons father. She also became trained as a member of a highly specialized strike force and committed mass murder while acting under orders, which she never questioned. She was known to never smile or show much emotion and she talked very little (to humans at least, she was always having conversations with all kinds of machinery). She was entirely devoted to hear squad leader and would follow him anywhere and do his bidding without the blink of an eye. She also is not entirely familiar with a lot of human terminology and habits, like the meaning of ones family, what is love, women can get pregnant, how to discipline children, what does cool mean... and other things like that
Sound familiar?
All this changes after she crashes into renton's house. He is the first person to get her to smile, I personally think she was very intrigued by renton's 'unusual' (read: really childish, pronounce:typical 14 year old) behavior. In a similar way how we are intrigued the first time we see exotic animals at the zoo. Never mind that, Renton goes on to confuse her even more my telling her he is in love with her (this one totally goes over her head, she gives him a blank stare I thought it was hilarious).

From this point onwards we gradually see little changes in her as she interacts with renton. At first they seem to be getting to like each other more. But as Renton gets better and better at piloting the Nirvash, the nirvash (who up till then was pretty much her best and only friend) keps refusing to respond to her more and more. (I will elaborate on this more in the section on the typeZERO.) This leaves Eureka lonely and confused, she does not know how to think about renton anymore, and alienates herself from him. With time, confusion, and loneliness lead her to depression, that and she is also battling some unknown sickness that gives her head aches and makes her constantly sleepy. This goes on until she seems to lose all purpose in life and tries to remerge with the scab coral, which she came from.
Her mission originally was to make contact with human beings, communicate with them and get an understanding of what they are like. but it seems like the combined emotions of loneliness, jealousy, the confusion that comes with love, and the resulting depression where too much for her to deal with.
but renton stops her at the very last moment and brings her back to the "human world" only now she is entirely covered in a hardened wax like... gunk. She is still giving off life signs but she is practically a mummy.

Once she finally awakens, she is a very different person. For one thing her looks have changed, that is to say she has become slightly disfigured from her contact with the coral. Her hair is also a mess now and much shorter and her skin is wrinkled and looks rubbery mostly on the left side of her face and body.
But not only her appearance has changed. She is now no longer the ace pilot/warrior she once was. Nor is she as inorganic as she used to be, or as confident. From the time she returned form the coral she seems to have one thing driving her, the need to understand. She wants to learn about all kinds of things, including love, makeup, childbirth and fathers, among others. Needles to say this does not go too smoothly for her either.

to be continued
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Finally, just like last time, I probably do not expect an overwhelming response from this thread, but aside from finding an outlet for my thoughts I write this mainly so that it will be read by others. Like the scab coral I wish to communicate with others that have, like me, seen and enjoyed Eureka and the gang and maybe have their own opinions bottled up inside. The main purpose of this thread is just to be read, but getting responses is the only way I can tell how the webberneters received my words. Alternatively I can check the view count but that will increase even if you give up reading halfway through the intro so that is not too accurate a measure of how many people I have struck a chord with.
I simple layman's terms:
:wtf

if you enjoyed this thread, agree with what I posted, disagree with what I posted or have something to say that i did not touch on, please reply, :wtf

it will make me so happy! :occa