There are major spoilers in the following post. Please tread lightly if you don't want to totally ruin your Eureka Seven enjoyment.
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Oh my fucking God did I love this series. Throughout the twenty-one hour marathon I lost track of the number of times I cried. It's tragic and brutal and sweet and totally tugs at your heart and makes you want to be a better person. In places it's so intense that it's very hard to watch.
Of course it's also everything else. Thoughtful and philosophical. Action packed. Absurd, farcical and infantile. The very highest standards of characterisation. Beautifully designed and cleverly plotted. Unreserved and unashamed in execution. Packed with references to a ton of TV shows, films and music you've loved for years. Please tick all your standard boxes for great anime.
Fat Lee vs Magnet Kitchen Guy has already covered the premise and the cool pop culture references, so I'll offload a bucketload on exactly what this show has done to me over the last day. The following can't hope to do it justice (there's just too much in this vast, vast show to write up adequately in a short review), but it's an attempt at a start at least.
First of all FLvsMKG's reference to The Invisibles is bang on the money, not only in the ways ze has mentioned but also in that a primary story thread concerns Renton's crushing personal guilt and disillusionment with GekkoState when he belatedly realises the implications of what they are involved in. To begin with he's hopelessly enamoured by the celebrity sheen of the ref boarders he's admired all his life through their self-published Ray=Out counter culture magazine. He never questions the fights he's in. Every enemy he faces is wearing mech armour and is thus totally depersonalised, and it's only in the episode in which he totally *does a Shinji* that he properly allows himself realise the truth.
In his berserker rage Renton tears an enemy KLF limb from limb before pulverising its head and finally tearing apart its torso, only to slam sickeningly to a halt as he sees a crudely severed human forearm amidst the debris. The 'camera' closes in on its lifeless hand to clearly show the wedding ring. With the marked lack of on-screen bloodshed up to this point the sudden graphic violence drives the point home with shocking economy, Last Man Falls in a single image.
If that weren't enough it's also a particularly effective piece of foreshadowing in a series in which relationships and marriages are central.
This is one of a number of key turning points in the series. The effects of Renton's belated realisation that he has already killed many more people than he can count changes everything, not only for him but also the entire world. It's a wonderfully executed about face from most anime, driven home all the more when you realise that although Renton has only killed in battles his beloved and her minder have a far darker past as genuine mass-murderers.
One of the major themes of the series is redemption and atonement. It's played out in Renton as he runs away and gets a quick and rough education in how to love and be loved and what it means to live your life for someone else. That he takes everything he's learned and figures out ways to change the world without killing place him firmly into the Dane McGowan camp (only without the lame GM sloganeering). And it's played out in spades in Eureka, the young woman with whom Renton is deeply in love. From cold blooded killer of women and children she becomes a loving single parent (a total rarity for this type of series, can't think of another example in fact), close friend and devoted girlfriend to her equally devoted young man.
In fact these themes are played out in some form in virtually every character. More on this below.
I also completely agree with the Blakes 7 observation, and would add Firefly/Serenity to the mix. Possibly the latter more so in the motley crew of outlaws form a dysfunctional family department (family is not a word I'd easily apply to Avon, Blake and Villa). I thought about Cowboy Bebop as potentially another example of this, but Eureka Seven runs rings around that series in every department. CB has never managed to be a shining example of anything much.
I also had strong shades of His Dark Materials throughout. Renton and Eureka's relationship is clearly intended to be sexual in nature, what with all the references to the two of them becoming one and what their offspring might be like and how their child will change the world. That they don't even kiss until the closing minutes of the closing episode is irrelevant, because the *one year later* device employed in the affectionate Gunbuster homage ending seems to make the clear implication that Eureka is pregnant upon her return Bellforest. Of course it can't be shown because of the ambiguities concerning the character's age (we know that Renton is fourteen at the start of the series, but not how much time has passed).
I'd also site HDM as a nice reference point for the strength of Renton and Eureka's relationship. More on that later.
Also with regards references to other anime series referenced in the ending, consider how Eureka Seven operates as an inverse Evangelion, with loved ones found rather than lost on the beach and love letters scrawled across the moon instead of arterial spray. E7 owes a great debt to Anno's show but its writers are on the polar opposite trajectory.
Briefly have to give massive props to whoever put together the soundtrack to this. The recurring themes in the episodes moved between wonderfully over the top and nicely understated at just the right moments. If you were ever in any doubt about this being an epic story then those thoughts would soon be squashed as the strings go stratospheric. The opening/closing themes generally left me cold apart from the first closing theme (beautiful, I'm a sucker for sappy closing themes in anime) and the oh-my-fucking-god-this-is-the-best-series-ever fourth opening theme. Seriously. After around forty hard, hard, hard earned episodes if the fourth theme music doesn't make you spontaneously weep like your heart's just been torn out, go totally meta by bringing back a frightening flood of references to that other show, cause you to punch your fist in the air and scream "YES!" while simultaneously laughing like a tit at the sheer unselfconscious audacity of it all then you're no friend of mine and chances are never will be. This is what the best anime does better than almost any other televisual medium: it overloads you with conflicting emotions and dares you to easily untangle them with any kind of simple critique. Most film and TV manipulates you into feeling one particular thing at one particular time. Decent anime studios know those tricks too but for them its only part of their repertoire, and if they want to burn the unknowable into your memory so that you need to return to it in multiple rewatches then they damn well will and there's not a lot you can do about it.
On first viewing, after having missed an entire night's sleep through being enthralled by this wonderful program, I have two main points with which I'd like to close.
I harp on about the importance of characterisation a lot, but Eureka Seven really is an absolute fucking masterclass. In a series in which there are dozens of characters practically everyone has their own arc and develops significantly from where they started, in some cases to being practically a different person.
Holland is the Malcolm Reynolds/King Mob character, if Mal was a completely despicable cock of a man. From psychologically scarred military boy mass murderer he becomes a slacker cod-revolutionary leader, total stranger to self awareness, vile bully, stubborn ego freak, controlling tantrum thrower and heavily burdened world saviour before finally coming to the end of himself and becoming the kind of brave, bold and compassionate and leader you'd willingly follow into hell.
Talho is the ship's pilot, fellow war veteran and is she/isn't she love interest for Holland. She starts the series as a juvenile, obnoxious and self-centred tormentor of poor Renton, taking little seriously and prone to cruel outbursts and attempts to tear down any changes she sees about herself, burning with jealousy for Holland's complex and intense relationship with Eureka. From the halfway point she turns herself around completely to become Holland's sole support and emotional anchor, a role she also applies to her position as first officer on the crew. Dependable, loving and wise, much of the series' hope for a better future rests in her.
Anemone and Dominic are simply wonderful, two of the supposed *villains* of the piece. The former is insane, uncontrollable without regular drug injections, spiteful, vengeful and bitter the core. Dominic is a good but gutless young man in a horrendous position, always at odds with his situation and slowly coming apart at the seams. Ending the show in each other's arms when they can finally admit that they're desperately in love with each other, they are responsible for most of the tear jerking moments of the third-to-last episode as they face each other, stripped raw in each other's sight and hopelessly smitten.
Renton is marvellous. A true hero. Starting as a clueless and gullible punk kid without a clue as to how the world really works he soon grows too big for his britches and is horrifically humbled before he goes it alone and learns what it truly takes to be a man. When he returns and takes the initiative in later episodes he has a run of you-fucking-go-Renton-my-son moments, most particularly his refusal to use violent means and his without hesitation blood donation to a man he hates.
But the real character study, as the name of the series would suggest, is Eureka. Piecing each revelation about her into chronological order, she begins as the worst kind of anime female stereotype, a blank and empty near automaton, Rei Ayanami retooled as an unthinking killer and directed and controlled solely by the men in her life. From these problematic beginnings the progression in her character is slow, painful and bumpy, as though her heart is slowly being thawed from a block of ice. Unexpectedly adopting three children whose parents she has slain, falling in love with Renton and gradually opening up about herself and what she wants, coming to terms with who she is, dealing with her scars and a near bottomless pit of guilt and inadequacy: all of it is portrayed with such delicate nuances of animation, body language, almost imperceptible shifts in facial expression and one of those immediate genre-best voice actor performances.
The second point, that seems to be the point of the entire show, is this: true love conquers all. And no, this isn't some wishy-washy Hollywood love, a magic trick or a wish fulfilment that makes all the bad things go away. This is that other kind of love, and it belongs entirely to Renton and Eureka and how they treat each other when they are finally reunited.
It's their love for each other that changes everything, and it's through purely practical means. They demonstrate it for each other at every turn. At times it's a deeply protective love so that one is strong when the other is weak. At other times it's a crucible in which their imperfections are bought the surface and skimmed away. It goes from passionate to thoughtful, intimate to inclusive of everyone, painfully raw to tender and gentle. They always do their best to talk through their issues and see things from each other's point of view. They're often painfully honest with each other. They apologise quickly and never let the sun go down on their anger. They're very physical, opening to each other quickly with their bodies. They accept each other for who they are and grow together, always believing in each other, each attempting to push the other to greater heights.
The love they show for each other nearly tears the crew apart in its purity and strength. Jealousies mount, misunderstandings abound, people are suspicious of them and this pulsing, living force they have between each other that directs all their actions. But it soon becomes infectious. As the intensity of their love burns and hurts the other characters, so too are their imperfections drawn out by it. Simple activities like taking on cleaning and cooking tasks become a way of uniting the damaged and fractured personalities on the GekkoGo, as these wounded people realise they have to find ways of dealing with their baggage and opening up to each other. It is ultimately their union that saves the day and them together on the cover of Ray=Out that changes the minds of millions.
It's an absolute inspiration to watch, one of the finest depictions of a healthy, loving relationship between two deeply hurting people I've ever witnessed in popular entertainment, and if in the final episodes love saving the day seems like some kind of convenient magic assisted by technobabble then you can at least rest assured that it is a deeply satisfying work of magic, hard earned by painful hard work and sacrifice, justified by all that has come before, and that these two young lovers truly deserve to be together and be happy.
To summarise it's like a cross between Firefly/Serenity, The Invisibles, Romeo and Juliet, His Dark Materials, Evangelion/Gunbuster (1 & 2), Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind and Point Break How could you go wrong with that formula? |
