Monthly Archives: July 2009

Doing it right: E7 Pocketful of Rainbows

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When the Eureka Seven movie was announced, I was pretty skeptical. Do we really need a movie for a story that’s finished? I was a bit more excited when it was revealed that the movie would be a “new mythos” that only reused the characters and a few other pieces. As was expected, a lot of people weren’t as excited and wanted the old E7 that we loved.

Regardless of whether the new concept would be any good, I felt that shoehorning in a sequel would be doomed to failure. People who claimed that the story in E7 was open ended either don’t understand the themes in E7 or don’t understand writing. Renton and Eureka going MIA does not mean the story is still open if the development of their relationship is finished, all the antagonists are gone, and there are no more sources of conflict. A true sequel would have involved the invention of a new conflict and have it be resolved within two or three hours. Compared to the heavy development in the TV anime, this would be noticeably lacking.

What this movie avoids by not being a sequel is having to work within the framework that was developed over 50 episodes of the anime. All it takes from the anime are the themes of the show and the character and mechanical designs. You’ll be surprised if you think that a character you know will act like they have before.

The resulting movie is something that can be called Eureka Seven while at the same time being something completely unique and original. It lives up to the legacy of the anime and can stand alongside it as a great anime. At the same time, it is a fantasic movie in it’s own right.

Obviously, a two hour movie can’t develop every Side character like the anime did. The movie is focused solely on Renton and Eureka. What I enjoyed most about the movie was that there was no chance for any annoying characters to be annoying and no long stretches of slow pacing. Everything happened at a decent pace and I liked everyone. Actually, that’s not entirely true. The best addition to the E7 world is most definitely Baby Nirvash and Baby theEND.

You should watch this. It’s a chance for more E7 if you’re a fan and a good movie if you’re not. Also, baby mecha are pretty awesome. Can you say plush Baby Nirvash?

Summer 09 anime cover judging 1

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The seasonal ritual where I extrapolate broad generalizations about a show based only on its first episode begins today.

Umi Monogatari

Some mermaids find a ring that some girl threw into the ocean. They venture to the scary surface and try and give it back. In the process, they release some sort of dark evil. It looks like this is going to have an actual plot, which was kind of disappointing. I’d heard that this had Aria’s director on it and that sort of gave me this false impression that this was going to be Aria with mermaids. Oh well, I guess I’ll see if it continues to capture my interest.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni

So far, everything has been pretty good. The pacing is a little lightspeed, but it would have taken about a month to get to where we are right now if they’d followed the game. Good production all around in terms of animation, music, and voice acting. There were a few casting choices that had me worried when I read them, but they sure proved me wrong. And though the OP, 「片翼の鳥」, and ED, 「la divina tragedia〜魔曲〜」, aren’t from the game, they, together with their animations, are pretty good. Very much looking forward to when things start rolling at the first twilight.

Aoi Hana

This is some sort of yuri romance thing. I took a look because I heard it was worthwhile. I feel like the OP will tell you everything you need to know about this show: flowers and girls holding hands and slow music. I’ll probably watch another episode or two, at which point, I will get bored and drop it.