Ranked #405

Eureka Seven AO

It may be early days yet, but the refreshed and reinvigorated Eureka Seven franchise holds great promise. Earmarked as it's spiritual sequel, Eureka 7 AO appears to not only match its predecessor in beauty and story, but does create firm groundwork to better it.

Story

By the end of the first episode, I was hooked. The whole progression is well-built, where E7-AO dips its toes pretty evenly between character dialogue and fast-paced action scenes. Just when you think the action has outstripped its relevance, the plot yanks you back, to cover any gaps you may have missed. This to and fro between action and deep & moving storytelling creates means each is that much more compelling, as it is contrasted with one another. Episode four typifies this, where one half is pure mind-melting action, and the other half delving into the deeper mysteries of Ao and his mother.

More interestingly, the story feels darker than the original E7. This comes out in the open depictions of violence by the "G-Monsters" to the open yet diverse political opinion voiced between the main characters. Yes, politics and divided issues do form a subtle undertone here. Themes such as racism, nationalism, political identity and independence, and even government corruption are bandied about from character to character. Pippo's snide reply to Giselle's remark that the Nirvash being part French, US and theirs springs to mind ("it’s fat, wants to surrender and has bad teeth").

It reminds me A LOT of X'amd in a way, which also grappled with these issues, and as such, really makes the story feel real and visceral. More importantly, it feels like the story has aged with the viewer. Whereas E7 placed the viewer squarely in the sheltered and naive hands of Renton; here in AO, Bones does away with the protection and says: "Here's the real world - its not a fluffy fantasy - it's real, gritty and desperate." Nothing evokes better emotional responses than that.


Art & Sound

Please. It's Bones we're talking about here. There should be no question over this stuff. The artwork is BEAUTIFUL (as usual) and the voice-acting is top notch. More interestingly, the music really sounds like an improvement on E7, which did feel a tad repetitive. Here the music, especially the track concluding episode one, is swelling and moving.

Characters

This for me, is the biggest improvement from E7, its predecessor. I'm sorry, but I honestly wanted to punch Renton for the ridiculous amount of whinging and whining he did, and his voice actor did irk me (in both Japanese and English). Here, Ao just FEELS more realistic. By that I mean, he doesn't sit down and cry every second minute. Sure, there are times he is shocked or saddened, but several times, he shows this tough resilient attitude, such as the end of episode one. At other times, he acts entrenched and guarded of his secrets (like A REAL PERSON - looking at you Renton), such as his first interactions with Flair Blanc. Finally, Ao just seems to be less naive to Renton.

This is really the same for all the main characters in general. Naru, the vulnerable romantic interest, Elena and Fleur combining to make tenacious yet comical Generation Bleu team to the rough and rebellious Giselle and his crew (much like Holland and his). By the end of the four episode, each of these characters (and more) are memorable and provide their own watermark on the story. This most of all shows fantastic storytelling and writing, that it has only taken FOUR EPISODES, to flesh out stories, that take some animes triple the time to get to.

OH - and how could I forget NOAH. Easily the best pet-sloth-thingy ever. It's like Bones stole the "cuteness" potion from the Powderpuff Dolls and smeared it all over the one animal. Awesomesauce.

Conclusion

One analogy springs to mind when summing up E7:AO so far. One of my best mates produces electronic music, which is a time-consuming and hair-tearing process. By the end of writing and recording the track, the track must undergo "mastering." What mastering does, is basically it crams as much synth, bass, treble, percussion and general loudness into the smallest capacity. This process is often rife with error, and as such, the perfect final sound is hard to come by, yet sought endlessly by my friend.

Eureka Seven AO is really beginning to feel like that perfect mastering. To bring back to the topic at hand, it just feels like the writers have managed to craft episode after episode crammed with great storytelling - such that by the time the 22min (or so) disappears, you feel like you've watched an hour of story in 5 minutes. Every second is utilised. No unnecessary fat here.

E7:AO has set high expectations from its great opening episodes. As such, many commentators preach that like most anime, there will come the inevitable dip, when the studio needs to pad out the script. However, judging from the past episodes, I feel quietly confident that AO is quite safe in the mastered hands of Bones.

This by no means ensures that the rest of thIn essence, this really does feel promising. I'm even going to put myself in potential harms way, but, I think this will match and better E7. Fingers crossed!!!
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So I just saw the first episode and I was truly drawn in to the entire episode. The artwork is new and definitely fresh and at moments has some almost 3D aspects but it still has the Eureka 7 feel to it. The manga and the anime have a few different ambiguities that are slight. I have yet to identify the sound tracks that will be used or were used in the first episode, but hopefully they are correlated just as well as Sato Naoki's from the first series where you could literally hear the emotion in his music. Character development is good for the first episode... I mean many things have been left for later to be summed up such as Eureka being Ao's mom and where Renton was when all of Ao's childhood and such. Surely to be covered as the anime progresses. Story is a little undefined as to what G-monsters are as well as FP's and other acronyms that aren't drawn out...yet.

Surely this will be a great anime. The only thing to do is to wait and see if it lives up to its predecessor. read more