It still involves the universe of Eureka Seven, however, it seems that not many people are paying attention to the date of the events.
This movie tells the story of how everything came to be before the events of the anime series. This movie is set in the 21st century while the anime series takes place many, many years later.
Instead of introducing new characters just for just one movie, BONES used the original cast to tell the story before Psalms of the Planets. That's why we see old characters filling weird roles like Renton's sensei Dominic.
The story itself its very interesting because not only shows how the coralians came in contact with humanity but also alters the personalities of some of the characters, like Eureka for example, where she is not as shy and soul-less as she was portrayed at the beginning of the anime series. She is more friendly and caring towards Renton and at some points, scared of everything that's going on around her. Overall, she feels more open-hearted.
In my opinion, they could have easily extended the whole thing into a 12 episode series, but I can see that having two time settings in the same universe with the same characters would create even more confusion than what it already is going on.
There is not much to review about the art since it's everything you come to expect from BONES, high quality animation and special effects.
The sound is not as good compared to the anime series mainly because its always too serious (even for the battle scenes) for a plot that involves the romantic encounter of a human and a 'robot.' It makes it feel more melancholic and almost sad. At the very end of the movie, we heard a familiar tune courtesy of the original series, what you expected to hear when the Nirvash is battling another mecha unit.
The characters, as already explained, have been given different roles so reviewing their looks at this point is utterly pointless. However, their personalities have changed greatly. Perhaps the one who changed the most is Anemone and you'll see why if you have already seen the anime series. One thing that really bothered me is the fact that they did not included Charles and his wife (sorry forgot her name) as part of the cast since you can see almost everyone from the original series make a kameo appearance every now and then.
The movie is fully enjoyable if you understand the fact that the time period is the one that was changed and not the universe of Eureka Seven.
As a closing comment, it was nice and refreshing to see Renton and Eureka express their feelings towards each other more openly.
