If you fancy settings where great robots surf the skies in epic battles, rebels fight the government without knowing why, the underground magazine they publish is a popularity hit and military engineers help them because they're engineers first, soldiers second, then Eureka Seven might be your cup of tea. If not, consider skipping it.
This anime has a couple of interesting ideas and moments, and it has some battle animations and a good soundtrack. It is, however, mostly riddled with problems, the first of which is its length. Running at 50 episodes you'd expect it would have a lot to tell. Well, it doesn't. For the
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first 10 episodes, after introducing the rebel force, Gekkostate, their ship and Renton, the kid who joins them, it goes about aimlessly, showing everyday situations of life aboard the ship. I suppose the point was to introduce the crew and establish character but the fact is that by the end of this part we still don't even know the names of most of them. Actually, the same could be said upon finishing episode 50; that's how fleshed out crew members other than Renton, Eureka, Holland and Talho are. Furthermore, the episodes from this arc definitely fail to realise what the first two promise. The introduction of the series presents us with LFOs, giant humanoid robots that both the rebels and the army use to fight and surf the sky (ok, technically the military use KLFs instead of LFOs), and Eureka, the strange girl piloting a rebel LFO, who doesn't seem very aware of social norms but somehow establishes a connection with Renton. Well, for the following 10 episodes all of that is thrown out of the window: battles are scarce and dull, and Eureka barely interacts with Renton (or shows up at all). During the middle chunk of the series stuff starts to happen but the presentation of things is mostly regarding inner conflicts and personal growth and the sorts, without an actual overarching plot gluing things together. Lastly, around the final 15 episodes, Eureka Seven does get a plot but, honestly, who still cares by then?
But the length isn't the beginning and the end of Eureka's problems; many are there to be found. Like many mecha series, Eureka Seven draws a lot from Evangelion, and pretty much fails at it. This is not to say EVA is perfect or should be the benchmark for mecha series, but the fact is that Eureka Seven invites the comparison rather clearly. So, we have kids (but not only) driving some huge robots that are used for battle. Like in EVA these robots are not really man made: here they produced by the land and found in caves, almost like diamonds in mines. Interesting as this idea may be, it is never really explored much, which makes it little more than one of the weirdest super technology sources I've seen in science fiction. Some of these robots, the ones that are legendary and all that, seem to have some degree of sentience. That is, sometimes they go into a berserk mode of sorts and act on their own to protect the drivers. Unfortunately this is never really explained or explored; you're just left to accept that these machines move without input when they feel like it and no one worries about it. If this seems terribly similar to EVAs, that's because it is. But, if that's the source of the idea, I get the impression that the author didn't really realise what was happening in Evangelion. Furthermore, the LFOs need to have a thing called the Compac drive plugged in to work, but the berserk mode can stand on its own. Once again an EVA parallel, but the problem with this one comes from Eureka Seven doing too much rather than too little. At the beginning we're given the impression that Compac drives are very important objects, possibly even containing the key to the mysteries that the characters are later to face. Well, not really; they are just tools for the rest of the series. As for LFOs going berserk without the Compac drive, there's an egregious example when it happens as a result of the drive actually being pulled out from the Nirvash, Renton and Eureka's LFO. Basically, as the power source is cut the robot decides to get a mind of his own and walk away, and no one ever cares about why that happened or gives it five minutes of thought. As a last parallel, the Seventh Swell power that the Nirvash holds is deeply reminiscing of the Second Impact from EVA. At the beginning it is supposed to be a very big deal but after that, as usual, it is left on a shelf gathering dust.
The previous exposition might give the impression of some underlying inconsistencies but, to tell the truth, they are much more widespread, and they show up almost as soon as the show begins. On the first episode Renton is told to deliver the Amita drive, which is a sort of expansion pack for the Compac drive, to Eureka because the Nirvash is not performing properly without it. This Amita drive was a one off thing made by Renton's father specifically for the Nirvash and seems to hold some deep significance. In this first instance it unlocks Nirvash's hidden powers and lets Eureka win the battle; after that it's all but forgotten and it's meaning and purpose never explain (at least they don't forget to draw it). Speaking of Renton's father, Adroc, he is another source of trouble. According to what we're told, he is some sort of hero that saved the world. Now, obviously, governments always make use of such martyrs for their own purposes and so they "adapted" his story to fit they view they wanted to convene. Problem: we're never told what was that the government made up about it. We do see, however, that Dewey, the generic big bad guy, uses this to great effect in controlling the masses and overthrowing the ruling Council of Sages. In fact the whole relationship between Dewey and the sages is odd at best. He is a former military leader that had been imprisoned for reasons never quite explained. The sages feared what he might do if he was free but decide to reinstate him in a top position of the army. From this point on, even if he was supposed to confront Gekkostate, all we see him doing basically amounts to plotting to overthrow the sages. This culminates with him giving a public speech that can be more or less summarised as: "People of the world, you don't know but we are being attacked by these things called coralians! But fear not, I, Dewey, will protect you. And for that I will overthrow the sages, who have been lying to us." And that's it, coup d'état done. Two sages die, one accepts Dewey as a leader. Obviously this one is quickly dusted under the carpet and forgotten. He also takes the chance during the speech to let people know on which planet they are living. Apparently the whole of humanity had relocated planets more than once in the last ten thousand years but forgot about it in the meantime. Dewey is as unconvincing a speaker as you get one, but then again the facts on which he is reporting aren't that convincing either.
And, if inconsistencies plague the bad guys, they're also on the Gekkostate's main menu. Firstly, for a one ship rebel force they sure are eager to seek pointless battles. This just isn't a problem because they are the good guys and so they obviously always win. They win battles where they are ridiculously outnumbered and even if their LFOs are destroyed they are lucky and don't really die, and happen to have a spare, older robot for replacement. Sure, sometimes they suffer some damage, but when a single ship can blast through the imperial capital's defences, holding it's own against everyone and everything, to "buy time" for some crew members to go on a rescue mission that lasts from noon to dusk you know something is wrong. Given the sheer insanity of such mission it would appear that its necessity was beyond the obvious. Well, the rescued character, Norb, a high priest of the conveniently oppressed Vodarac religion, did become a major plot driver from that point on, but until then he had never even been mentioned and the reason given for the need of the rescue was something akin to "we must do it".
From the rescue onwards the series does seem to get a plot, but it is as inconsistent as everything else. Discussions with Norb lead to the conclusion that the world is about to self-destruct because the number of sentient beings living on it has passed a certain limit. Why this limit exists is, naturally, never given much thought. However, it is explained that to avoid this Renton and Eureka will have to cross the Great Wall and enter the Zone and that to, in order to do this, they will have to meet Sakuya-sama. Lots of names, little explanations: the purpose of all of this is never given and everything is done in a "you must do it" basis. Though, to be fair to Norb, the rest of the cast was already aware of the importance of the Zone. They had seen an opening to it when they first contacted with a coralian and it was revealed that their grudge with the authorities had to do with the coralians. And revealed really is the right word, as most of the crew had no idea of what a coralian even was. As for the significance of the Zone, just because it was described as important it doesn't mean it was properly explained. The same goes for the dream sequence the coralian encounter triggered and that seemed to hint that Renton and Eureka's minds were somehow connected but that was, to retain the pattern, merrily ignored. Lastly, as the plot is finally about to take off after 40 episodes Norb insists that they take a day off to play football, in which is probably one of the lamest fillers ever.
So, Eureka Seven's world is not very well designed and the plot doesn't add up. Is there any remission by looking at it as a character driven story? Not really, as most characters are both not very likeable and not very good characters anyway, of which Renton is a prime example. The whole series revolved around his development and learning and growth, a coming of age story. The issue is that he never really gets anywhere: he starts as an idiotic kid who acts without thinking, goes through many internal conflict and character development stages, where his supposed improvement is stressed by the storytelling, and after each of them manages to go back to square one and make an ill-considered move that hurts someone else. I don't know, but I believe that shouting "Any normal human would know that!" to a character that is not quite normal is not an episode 40 mark of a grown and mature character. Nor is hurting yourself in order to be "closer" to someone who is hurt. In this particular sequence his wounds got infected and he got seriously ill, almost dying; I just found myself hoping that he did (even if knowing he wouldn't). As for the rest of the cast, they are not much better. Eureka starts girl who is a little off but a distinguished fighter. After that her character development basically consists in making her a meek girl who is there almost solely to support Renton. It's true that her back story drives part of the events but she herself has little to offer. Even in fights, despite the fact that the Nirvash is supposedly a dual pilot unit (the workings are never explained), we never really see much of a team action. She simply gradually cedes her place as driver to Renton and starts supporting him the way he supported her before. Concerning other less prominent character development aspects, she also falls for the old cliché of trying to put on make-up to look prettier for Renton and ending horrible. That episode has such a predictable and beaten structure that it just triggers feelings of "Can we please skip this?". From the remaining characters, Talho seems to be the only half reasonable and likeable one. Holland behaves like a spoiled brat most of the time and is a major source of conflict, often taking out his frustrations on Renton, (though that's just a facade because he is oh so troubled deep inside) and the others are just stock characters with just one or two defining traits, or none at all. The only exception worthy of mention, but not for the best reasons, are the little kids to whom Eureka acts as guardian. They are probably one of the most annoying trios to ever have gone on screen, and putting up with them for 50 episodes is a real challenge. Straight of the bat they take a disliking of Renton and decided they are going to make his life hell. Kids as they are, they are very good at this, bullying him to no end. I guess the idea was to allow for them to grow fond of him during the course of the series but, even if they do so in words, their actions remain consistently annoying and dislikeable until the end, not to say actually dangerous to them and others. They also prompt what is probably the best example of Renton's inability to grow: in one of the first episodes he flies with them on Nirvash during a risky mission and gets a serious reprimand for endangering them; come the end of the series and he goes full circle, taking them with him and Eureka on an even more dangerous flight. It would be laughable if it weren't so pitiful.
Adding it all up, Eureka Seven is a series with a few good ideas and lots of promise but that ultimately fails to live up to the expectations and instead just becomes painful to watch as it drags on and on. After all this only one question remains to ask: seven? Why seven? The series is called Eureka Seven but the number seven doesn't play a special role anywhere on the story. Was it introduced in the title without thought because it sounded cool? Quite likely it was, as that seems to have been the pattern for most of the elements anyway.
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Dec 11, 2012
Koukyoushihen Eureka Seven
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If you fancy settings where great robots surf the skies in epic battles, rebels fight the government without knowing why, the underground magazine they publish is a popularity hit and military engineers help them because they're engineers first, soldiers second, then Eureka Seven might be your cup of tea. If not, consider skipping it.
This anime has a couple of interesting ideas and moments, and it has some battle animations and a good soundtrack. It is, however, mostly riddled with problems, the first of which is its length. Running at 50 episodes you'd expect it would have a lot to tell. Well, it doesn't. For the ... |
