Alright, time for some Eureka Seven! It’s been a while since I watched any of this one, so I’m very ready for some surfing robots. Once I’ve cleared up Brotherhood, Eureka Seven will probably be the biggest of the semi-modern gateway anime I really have to commit to, just to see one more big piece of anime history. So let’s get right to it!

Episode 5

Renton still in training, sharing the cockpit with Eureka. This show’s lengthy runtime lets Renton actually act like an amateur for a believably long period of time, a luxury we don’t often get in these days of consistently shorter productions

The waves of energy created by the robot are gorgeous. They’re also probably one of the smartest ways this show could convey the sensation of weight and momentum in the robot’s actions – it’s not surfing on actual water, so unless it wanted to ride the edges of clouds, you gotta create your own frame of movement

I’m not a big robot fan, but this show sure does make me miss beautiful mechanical animation. Friggin’ CG

Renton is pretty damn expressive himself

This show has a pretty iconic orchestral soundtrack

“Of all people, I had to embarrass myself in front of her.” Eureka is still far too Rei for me to really buy any chemistry between the two of them

Early 00s FMA-style comedy. I certainly don’t miss this

Compelling layouts all through this show. Renton staring at his reflection

Talho has an extremely strong ojou laugh for not really being an ojou character

Renton makes for a decent slave

“Why do you have to go with Eureka, Holland?” Setting up Holland as some kind of romantic rival here seems pretty misguided, but I guess it plays into the show’s somewhat classically shounen framing of having basically everyone be an equal member of the party. Still, he’s an adult, Eureka’s a kid

The show’s character animation is strong enough that it can get away with extended cuts of just changing expressions. It’s not fluid, but it’s very expressive

“Oh, so I’m not attractive?” And Talho is framed at about the maturity level of the rest of the cast

A new setting, though it echoes the stark, cliff-heavy bluffs of Renton’s hometown

The city architecture seems slightly European-influenced but extremely vertical, like Tokyo

Eureka can talk to the dang machine parts. She’s still pretty Magical Girlfriend, and I get the feeling that won’t change so much – this is unabashedly a boy’s story, like many shounen

Talho screwing with Renton in the underwear shop

Talho reminding Renton of his big sister. That seems like a fair baseline for their relationship

I like that Renton was so easily convinced to kiss Talho. His feelings are childish, his hormones supreme

Talho is kinda sitting in the Misato position, but she is so much less of an adult than Misato

Talho gets Anime Drunk – one beer and she’s collapsed on the table

“It looks like Miss Talho will have to use her body to pay for the camera.” Ah good, rapey hooligans

The enemy robot crushed Holland’s present for Talho!

“Don’t you feel suffocated just watching this sunset through a monitor?” The show is definitely trying to riff on the ideals of freedom tied up in its hippy surfer aesthetic

I like that Renton’s feelings aren’t a secret in the slightest. I also like that the characters being established as his role models are clearly depicted as still muddling through in their own ways

Episode 6

Oh no, an episode focused on those fucking kids

Poor Renton, still living in a tent in the garage

I like how the ship still has all these regular characters with unclear roles in the group. Confident worldbuilding

“If you keep up with these pranks, I can’t be a cool adult forever.” ‘What defines children and adults’ is a very prominent running thread here, from the relative positioning of last episode to the third generation of Eureka’s kids

A lot of the conflicts here seem to rely on Eureka’s lack of comprehension of many human interactions. The whole crew wouldn’t be able to know about Renton’s feelings if Eureka wasn’t uniquely oblivious, and this stuff with the kids demands an inability to see the things going on in front of her

And this episode’s outright called “Childhood.” Welp

And again, Renton’s slowly integrating into the ship life in a pretty natural way. Discussing cargo with the main crew. The show’s doing a good job of creating a platform for serious investment in this whole organization later on

Heading into military territory again

The whole crew’s just kind of lounging around on a carpet. They’re living a believable pirate life – lots of downtime in between jobs

The adults are rightly wise to how silly Renton trying to please the kids just so Eureka won’t get mad is

Renton just telling Eureka what he thinks she wants to hear. Unfortunate and very in-character

“I’m doing what everyone told me to do.” Lessons in parenting passed down

A nice shot presenting Renton’s sister as this massive presence, appropriate for his memories of her

Vague political hints, though we still seem far from that conflict

Ah good, the kids unplugged the ship’s radar jamming device. Letting a bunch of awful children run around your rogue vessel is definitely a great idea!

If the moral of this episode isn’t “kids are awful, dump them overboard,” I will be very disappointed

“We can’t tell them what we did! They’ll kick us off the Gekko!” DAMN RIGHT. GOOD RIDDANCE

They’re worried about Renton “stealing” Eureka, predictably

Fortunately, Renton is fundamentally the kind of guy who’d actually be good with kids. Upbeat, kinda goofy and immature, legitimately excited to entertain their interests

“I’ll show you how to pull off a bigger prank than that!” Yep. He can speak their language, and it feels very in-character for him to do so

Renton’s actually piloting the Nirvash very well here. An offhand reveal that he’s improving in an unrelated episode

THE INNOCENT LAUGHTER OF A CHILD

Eureka successfully drops eighty feet from one cockpit to another

A bunch of lovely cuts here. I really like how the robots here pilot enough like cars that you can get a tactile sense of the consequence of the pilots’ various actions

And more of this show’s very diverse soundtrack – orchestral now, but this episode also had major sequences using alt-rock and electronica

“He’s never had an adult to properly scold him. That’s why we need to do it.” Holland as well, taking on the unwanted role of father

“Why didn’t you tell them? Because you’re an adult? Because you’re a guy?” A really sharp line, much sharper than the rest of this episode’s material. Actually challenging this simplistic paradigm of adult/child responsibility seems like a very good role for Eureka, who doesn’t understand our arbitrary systems in the first place

Ooh, I really like this extended sequence focusing on their body language as they apologize in turn. Yamada as heck

And Done!

That second episode was actually a lot better than I expected! It used both Renton and Eureka’s characters in compelling ways to make for a graceful shift in Renton’s relationship with the kids. The parents/children stuff is still a little vague, but hey, this show has basically infinite episodes to figure that stuff out. Until next time!

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