You're greeted by a boy named Renton, who likes to say how things are the worst. He hates his town, hates this, hates that, etc. But one thing he likes is a sport called Reffing. A futuristic equivalent to surfing which sounds like it has no relevance at all. His hero is a man named Holland, leader of a group called Gekko State.
It starts off with showing us how ambitious Renton is, how he wants to get out of the town and be a professional Reffer like Holland, etc. We're subtly introduced to his family history and how his dad was a hero, etc. Then something literally crashes, and he's presented an opportunity to leave home. There wasn't anything particularly spectacular with the shows beginning so much other than some really great action sequences and a really cool introduction into one of the main plot points. What this show evolves into is much more important. A show based on robots and futuristic surfing wouldn't be very good, would it?
What I liked about this show was all the connections people had to Renton, past and present, and watching Renton being forced into making decisions he probably wasn't even equipped to mentally handle. The show is quick to show you what he can do, but later explores the moment where he suddenly realizes what he's actually doing, and that the world isn't how he percieved it to be. Of course his actions reflect on his fellow crew-members, and the show explores their side a bit as well. As far as characters go, this show did very well.
What's a mecha without a good soundtrack? Bad. Thankfully Eureka Seven had an amazing soundtrack (sans the third opening song, I'm not so sure on that one). Every moment has a really great background track to it, which helped support the emotion behind each scene. Along with characters, I enjoyed this aspect quite a lot.
The overall story was really good. It had some very interesting elements to it, but I can't say that I was blown away, or that some scenes had me thinking "Oh, that makes sense", I just kind of took it for what it was, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It had a lot going for it, and they ended it very well. A few aspects didn't make sense and were never explained, but nothing major. The overall message was sent, and it was a good one.
I'm not going to say "If you haven't seen this, watch it NOW", but definitely put it on your 'to-watch' list and don't forget about it. You'll be happy with what you see, it's definitely going to be a favorite of mine.
