Psalms of Planets: Eureka Seven
Anime Review
Synopsis & Opening Comments
“Renton Thurston is a 14-year-old boy who lived with his mechanic grandfather in a backwater town. Every day he dreamed of being with the mercenary “Light Finding Operation (LFO)” aircraft pilot group “Gekkostate” and riding “Trapar” particle waves– a sport called “reffing”– with their charismatic leader Holland, especially when faced with his father’s acclaimed past or his grandfather’s desire to protect him. When a young girl named Eureka riding the original LFO, the “Nirvash typeZERO”, asks his grandfather for a tune-up, she inadvertently brings the attention of the military to the garage; as a result, the garage is destroyed and Renton is forced to deliver a new type of interface– the “Amita Drive”– to the Nirvash. After a heated fight in which the Nirvash destroys the military LFOs by unleashing an immense amount of power, Renton is invited into Gekkostate. However, he quickly realizes that behind the facade of a traveling group of mercenaries is a very bitter reality.”
Eureka Seven is a franchise that I have grown to love over the past few weeks, having watched the original series, AO and the Movie. This is an anime that I have only found a few flaws with, it is literally perfect in almost every way. With a cracking cast of characters that bring the story down to a personal level, you will never feel like you do not know every single crew member towards the Gekko Crew.
Gekkostate, a crew of Mercenaries but also the closest family there is!
Where to start? This is really a hard anime to review because of the sheer amount of brilliant points, but I guess everything has its negative points. The show starts off with Renton Thurston, a young boy who lives with his Grandfather. Renton lives an ordinary life wishing for something amazing to happen. He is bored with school because he wants an adventure, whereas his Grandfather just wants the best for him. Renton is the son of Adroc Thurston, a military hero who disappeared ten years prior to the series during “The Summer of Love”, where Adroc became a hero and was believed to prevent the “Limit of Questions”. Renton lives his life loving the sport “Reffing”, a sport which utilizes the particles in the air, allowing the rider to “Surf” the waves of the sky. His journey really begins when a pilot named Eureka from the Gekkostate (Mercenary Group) crashes into his Grandpa’s garage looking for Axel (Grandpa) for a tune-up on the NirvashType-Zero, the original LFO.
Renton immediately falls for Eureka from the first sight of her. What I have found is that the main part of this anime is the relationship between these two characters. First off their relationship starts as an unrequited-love, with Renton falling madly in-love and just wanting to protect Eureka with the help of the Nirvash. It wasn’t until the second series where Eureka suddenly realizes her feelings for Renton, although it still takes a long time for them both to express these to each other. As Renton only wants to live protecting Eureka, he is often seen making irrational decisions to go and find her, as she has chosen him to be her partner, meaning that only those two can save the world. Even so, Renton is not the only one making irrational decisions for the sake of Eureka. Holland is the captain of Gekkostate, who claims to of started Gekkostate in an attempt to save Eureka.
The story takes a while to unfold, but when it does it really does deliver. I felt like it could go on for a long time but in the end I realized that the 50 episode mark was perfect for this beautiful story. I cannot go into the story in too much detail without spoiling it but i’ll say what I can. The story is all about Eureka, it wouldn’t be “Eureka Seven” without her, and quite frankly it wouldn’t be as strong. At first it seems that Eureka is a girl who is just weird in the eyes of Renton, despite that he still loves her. As the story opens up there is a lot of people who wish to harm Eureka in order to get to “The Zone”, which is where they must go to prevent the Second Summer of Love.
Anemone, one of my all time favourite characters to date.
There is a substance on the planet known as Scub Coral, some believe it to be harmless but others believe it to be a intelligent life-form, but one thing is for certain, they have a history with the human race. For all of you who do not know, Eureka Seven is set on an unknown planet for the majority of the show. This is because the Scub Coral first invaded earth years back and forced the human race to leave the planet. Little did the humans know, the Scub Coral followed them for reasons unknown until later in the anime. It is believed that the Scub Coral wanted to exist along side humans, fusing with them mind and soul. Many humans (Including Adroc Thurston) believed that this was necessary to prevent the apocalypse from happening. There is a lot of mystery revolving around the planet and how they got there but you find a hell of a lot more about them towards the end of the anime.
If you look above you can see Anemone and she is one of my favourite characters in the series. When the military lost possession of Eureka they decided that the only thing they could do was to try make a replacement, after countless failures the first success was Anemone. She is a major supporting character of the series, often getting into fights with Eureka and Nirvash in her model, the NirvashType-The End. She is attached to Dewey, who is the colonel and eventually the leader of the military. She literally does anything he says and this is because she longs for him to become her partner because in order to get into The Zone, you must have a partner. Dewey assigns Dominic to become her caretaker and all though it seems that she treats him as garbage, he is always there looking out for her in every way possible. Dominic quickly falls in love with Anemone and he wants to do whatever he can to save her from the painful headaches. As time progresses she begins to feel lost without him, and towards the end of the show when she loses him, she realises how much he meant to her, only to be saved by him moments later. Also if you want to know why she is my favourite and not Eureka, its the name. “Anemone” is named after a flower of the same name, a beautiful flower which resembles a loss of hope, not that I am a depressing guy but they went that far to put all of that thought into it.
This was one of the final pictures on the cover of Ray=Out, which serves as Gekkostates hope towards a new future.
Closing Comments
This anime really did mean a lot to me, there were so many great moments and not really any bad moments. The only thing I can consider bad was the fact that there were a few pointless filler episodes, but even that had its good side because it helped split up the action and made it last longer.
If I had to do a top 10 anime list right now this would easily make it into the top 3, after thinking about it I will redo my previous list and make it a hell of a lot better. I would really recommend this anime to anyone, the emotion that pulls this together is perfect, it is a great example of Bones brilliant works.