Koukyoushihen Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution 1

I wrote in my review for the TV show that Eureka Seven did the recap clip show in a way no other show has done before or since: The edited clips were recut as though they were written as reports from 2 perspectives, one from the eyes of a counterculture magazine writer, the other as a military report by a young officer doing what he thought was the right thing. So it might be natural to think that Bones would introduce some new material and bring the old series new life with the same technique, right?

Yeah, about that...

I think they were trying to be a ... little too clever. They planned a movie, they got some sponsors together, they sketched out a story, they decided to add a bunch of prequel scenes, cool, cool cool cool. Then something threw a wrench in the works. Maybe the higher-ups didn't like the direction. Maybe they ran out of animator resources. Whatever the reason, there is only about 25 to 30 minutes of new content in a 90-minute film. Not nearly as atrocious as Macross Fb7, but still pretty bad.

Fans of the show will no doubt be delighted to watch the new prequel sequence, and anime fans will also enjoy the performance of voice acting legend Toru Furuta, AKA Amuro Ray from Gundam. Honestly, if they packaged this on a Blu-ray as an OVA it would sell like hotcakes: It gives us some perspective of Holland and Dewey when they were inseparable brothers, it shows us Eureka not long after she was discovered, and it shows us just what transpired in the show's past to catapult Adroc Thurston to the "hero of humanity". Unfortunately Diane, Renton's sister, doesn't make an appearance, even though she was a persistent, distant goal for Renton in the TV show, nor does his grandfather Axel (though this is understandable as his actor died years before the film's release). It's not a reinterpretation like the first film, it doesn't throw the show's lore and history into a blender like AO did (though there was a weird ding by changing Renton's surname and backstory by using subtitles), it's a solid addition to the canon.

But it's only solid if they left it at those 25 to 30 minutes of new content.

I get it. They needed to pad out the remaining hour, they needed to capture new fans, they were probably butting heads with the other studios working on the film, and they were probably running over budget, so even though fans of the TV show will be fast-forwarding through the latter two-thirds of the film, maybe there's someone new to the franchise who could see something they like about the heavily truncated, shoddily edited synopsis of the TV show up to episode 24-ish? Well, that's the thing, the first half of the TV show is a bit of a slog, and even if we cut it down to an hour like this, there is a significant amount of lost content that helped shape the world and the characters. I don't think a new viewer would get a very good grasp of the show, it's almost like trying to get the full experience of a nice cup of hot cocoa by pouring a packet of cocoa mix down one's throat. Also, there was probably nothing wrong with keeping the existing content chronological; I'm used to Japanese shows frequently flashing back and forth, but seemingly doing it every 3 to 5 minutes, even with the "flash back/forward" cards, is honestly exhausting to watch.

Naoki Sato, by this time a music powerhouse in his own right, wrote the score, and while I miss his soaring and dramatic tracks from the TV show, the music of the prequel was fittingly epic.

I remember the "alternate script" the cast performed well after the TV show wrapped, it was as though the writers/directors had hundreds of stories they wanted to tell with this cast of characters and this world, but they couldn't for fear of creating a monstrosity instead of the "symphonic psalms of planets" they were aiming for, and with the film and sequel series they picked up the pieces from the cutting room floor without much of a plan to tie them together. This film represents a sort of return to basics, but it feels like Bones is jumping on the "remake bandwagon" that Hollywood and Gainax are infamous for by now. Had they kept it to the prequel and the chase scene, I think it would've been a tighter, more solid production overall. Unfortunately, that's not what we got here.

I'll try to be brief because I'm not great at articulating my thoughts. And some *SPOILERS* for those that want to see this still. This "movie" starts out promising enough with Adroc Thurston trying to save the world...even though, from the sounds of it, he was at fault for it all in the first place. New animation, new music, and we hadn't seen this story in all of Eureka Seven before. (At least that I can recall, it has been a while since I had watched the series in its entirety.) So Hi-Evolution takes a step in the right direction and then takes a huge ... step backward to tell its incomplete story of Renton Thurston (Beams?).

The story after the introduction (and death) of Adroc focuses entirely on Renton and his relationship with Ray and Charles. It briefly touches about the weight that Renton has to deal with being the son of Adroc, but nothing in depth. His sister and his grandfather are nowhere to be seen or heard. It hardly scratches the surface of Renton's time with Gekkostate, and worse yet barely covers Renton and Eureka's relationship. Holland is still an asshat, but for some reason this is part of his charm...newcomers will have no idea why though. They hint how Dewey become the Dewey Novak we know from the series. The movie is not quite clear if it is telling a brand new story or if it is telling a jumbled version of the series.

As someone who fell in love with the series, I followed this as well as I think any fan would but it jumps back and forth in time far too much. And why is there so much text on the screen?! I fail to imagine that many non-fans went to see this, and good Lord if you didn't see three lines of text on every scene change. This movie over explains every little detail with the text and almost tries to distract you from what is going on screen. Another thing that disappointed me, but bears no weight on the overall product, was that JYB forgot how to Renton. There are flashes of the voice still being there but after 10+ years after the fact I think JYB can be forgiven for not being able to replicate the voice like he did in the series and Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers. (I'd mention Stephanie Sheh's Eureka if she was in the movie for more than a handful of scenes.) Still, to repeat, that did break my heart a little.

To me I feel like Tomoki Kyoda and Dai Sato maybe didn't quite understand what made Eureka Seven resonate with us. Aside from the pretty good opening, this movie is a jumbled mess. And while I was happy to see it focus on two characters that deserved a better fate in the series it disregards and jumps around way too much to be enjoyable and, better yet, comprehensible. I almost feel too nice to be giving this movie the score I'm giving it. But there are some nice moments in between it all, you just might not be able to make sense it when it happens.

The movie starts with an all new scenes from the past, around 35 minutes, which is one third of the movie, and all else is a puzzle comprised of the old episodes, and I really mean that: a puzzle. It takes effort to blew nostalgia away, and this movie did come out of his way to dirt my love for the series, but this movie did it.

Who is this movie for? Newcommers are totally out of question, since the story is totally incomprehensible and even old time fans might be lost by the change of facts and overabundance of text exposition, which many many times ... it doesn't even provide important information or something to make sense out of anything. Ok, how about we add another layer of crap on top of all this? The movie scrambles the timeline of scenes at a screeching pace. Goes back and fort for completely no reasonable motives: just take for example episode 1 is cut to pieces and spit back in clips that show the last scenes first and the first scenes later, like the movie Memento, but way crappier and with out any of the music you'll love from the original series.

I thought hey learned something from, the also crappy, pocketful of rainbows movie...