As I said in my Kokoro Connect review: I don’t include dvd specials in my reviews, simply because it takes too long to wait for them. With Eureka Seven’s final two episodes scheduled in November though, I can wait. My memory will still be fresh. And with such a cliff-hanger, I really want to include those final two episodes, because they are promising to be awesome. YES! Renton finally made his appearance!
Beyond that, this episode also offered a lot of answers, which is quite good. Naru and Ao also finally got a chance to talk again, and overall this was very fitting as the episode before the big climax, especially considering how it has been building up to give a major role to Renton and Eureka in the final two episodes.
Finally, I want to comment a bit on why I ended up really liking this series, even though I also dislike other series that also pulled questionable plot twists. First of all I want to get things clear: there is no formula in rating anime. With these things, not explaining everything or pulling plotholes, it’s not like there is one rule that says if there are plotholes, it’s bad. Instead, I care all about the context in which it happens: does it have things to make up for it? For example, I pay much more attention to the things I don’t like in Sword Art Online because I dislike that it wastes its potential with its setting. With Eureka Seven Ao however, I am for one a very satisfied Eureka Seven fan, so it can pull off a bit more, and it all just works together. The plot twists that it keeps pulling are all true to its themes and allow it to get the best out of its characters and have them show themselves off.
As for the characters, I honestly don’t mind them, and actually quite like their charms. This episode for example had some good comedy, their chemistry is good and it was all well built up in the first half. It’s not like in Guilty Crown where the characters just changed their personalities for no other reason than raise drama. This is a line that may seem small on first sight, but it makes such a world of difference. Or at least it does to me.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)
I guess the main problem is AO. His character can be summed up as… Angsty wimp.
90% of his dialogue is “what is this? what am I doing? what should I do? what are you? is this the right thing? what is going on? I don’t understand? WAAAAAAAAAHHH!”
Remember how in the first couple of episode he seemed really decisive, and a lot of us happily declared that he is a more interesting character than Renton because of that? That was basically thrown out of the window in the next episodes.
Having a character like that is fine, I guess, because it promises to develop… AO has had zero development and growth. Like he said to Naru in this episode “I haven’t changed”.
AO is a cliched character that is really missing a soul.
Other than that, this episode took a bit of time to address some of its numerous plots and that’s good I guess.
which character from this show actually have a soul? freakin’ elena is there just to milk money from moe-addicted otakus
Uhhh…. Ivica maybe?… At least for the air-time devoted to him he is kind of a decent character?…
I find the rest of the cast not having a soul is less offensive because they get less airtime.
Also, yeah it’s not like Guilty Crown. In Guilty Crown the characters did have a… “character”, it just changed in every episode. The development was very inconsistent.
In Eureka Seven AO the development in consistent because…. There isn’t any! 🙂
It makes Eureka Seven AO’s cast less hate-able, but it also makes it boring.
Eureka Seven AO is weird… It has a messy plot that likes to pull twists for no reason, which reminds me of Code Geass. I didn’t like Code Geass, but watching that had more emotional response from me (even if it was a negative one). At the end of the day, Code Geass had plenty of memorable moments (even if those are: “remember that scene? that was so bad and ridiculous”, or “that character was really annoying”). Now I’m trying to remember scenes that made an impression on me from Eureka Seven AO and …. I don’t find any? Maybe from the first two episodes? At this point, even Gekko-state appearing seems like a meh moment to me.
Finally got a chance to see it. Was impressed, especially with the ending, although I’m a little shocked that they got Holland’s VA to play grown-up Renton. I mean, I love Holland but I’m having a hard time buying Renton sounding like him grown up. ^^;
Not sure what to make of the producers trying to tie up Ao and Naru now. The scene looked like it was trying to be cute but came off kind of awkward. A development out of nowhere for me. Also not sure why Naru compared Ao to Truth. I get that both could be called hybrids in the sense that both are half-Corallian. Truth is half-Secret while Ao is half-human.
Which leads to like the biggest loose end yet. What are these Secrets anyway? It’s never answered and perhaps never will be now that it looks like the “talking” Secret got destroyed by Truth. They’re described as a planetary antibody but they’re sentient and it looks like they come from somewhere other than the planet itself since it needed to learn about humanity after arriving instead of being aware of it all the time. Strange that it had to kill some new incoming new Secrets instead of simply calling them off. At one point, the talking Secret said no new attacks would occur so it does have some say in how Secrets get deployed, I think.
I’m also not sure what Archtypes are. Perhaps it’s something out of E7 but I don’t remember. I’m not sure if it means sentience cos it looks like Ao’s Nirvash is sentient – at least more sentient than the rest of Pied Piper’s LFOs.
Still kinda confused.
Finally watched this. This episode restored my faith as a Eureka fan. Fucking Renton! woo! you sound weird though.
em.. he sounds exactly like Holland, because it’s Holland’s voice
Finally got around to watching this… When Renton/Holland/Leorio kicked down the door in the end, I couldn’t help quoting Yupa from Nausicaa, “Another village destroyed,” complete with giant insect noises GNAANAAANAAAA, and then the crumpling of the toy. haha, that was fun.