I just finished watching this the other day. What an amazing, amazing series.
Everything starts simply enough - Renton, a young teenager, finds himself pulled into crazy mecha battles involving a mysterious girl around the same age as himself, along with the equally mysterious mech that she pilots. Throughout the course of his adventures he finds love, courage, and grows up. Oh, and there are dire threats to the planet and humanity that must be stopped at all costs, along with mysterious life forms that just might be the key to everything going on. Yadda yadda yadda you've seen it a thousand times before.
Except you haven't seen it done like this.
Eureka Seven is remarkable in the ways in which it breaks traditional anime conventions. Perhaps most obvious is the diversity of the cast and setting. The world that this show takes place in is quite unlike our own - but you wouldn't know it at first. This is because the characters take the world they are in for granted, and as the viewer you are expected to do the same. The show wastes no time with exposition to explain things that seem odd or foreign, instead relying on the viewer's ability to piece together for themselves the way in which this world works. One of the first things that will bug you will be the sport of reffing, which is kind of like air surfing. How does it work? Why is it possible? While you will eventually get answers to these questions, initially you are in the same position as any regular inhabitant of this world – you have no real idea why it works, but it does, so you take it for granted and go with it.
To further this sense of world immersion, the cast of this show is incredibly varied and of a diverse range of ethnicities unlike anything else I have ever seen in anime. This creates a truly rich world as the setting of the series, one that really resonates as something that could be real. But at the same time, these characters aren't tokens, and don't exist simply to represent their race. Their race is simply an aspect of their character that is given no special thought by the other members of the cast.
Which brings me to another remarkable thing this series pulls off - it has a HUGE cast. Yet everyone is superbly written, and has a reason for existence and why they are where they are outside of aiding main character development or plot necessities. No one is around simply to root for the hero - they are far too busy worrying about themselves and their own relationships to do that. Speaking of which, the relationship development in this series is simply unmatched. Throughout the course of the series we see relationships that spark in an instant, or slowly develop over years, or have always been taken for granted by everyone, or are destroyed in horrible, gut wrenching moments. Nearly every important character in this show is involved in a relationship of some sort, and watching the passage they take through them is one of the most rewarding parts of the show. Finally, and most importantly, the characters simply rock – indeed, without this, none of the careful writing and character development I just ranted about would mean anything. Every character's traits and quirks are delicately balanced, resulting in an incredibly compelling and likable cast. Thanks to the strength of the writing, each character is able to exhibit a full range of human emotion, from utter despair to complete badassary to total vunerability, adding layers of complexity to what could have been simple, stock archetypes.
Aiding all of this, and allowing it to come fully to fruition, is some of the best directing I have seen in a long, long time. The mech battles are incredibly well animated and choreographed, and are brimming with excitement, energy, and tension. The relationship aspects of the show are set with the perfect mood and tone by the music, the timing of the animation, and the direction of the art. And when these forces combine, the series produces scenes, entire episodes, that are simply beautiful - in fact, I would not be exaggerating at all in saying that I can pick out one particular episode that I would place in the running for the greatest single episode of anime ever made, along with several others that would probably get into my top 10. This is where the real meat of the show is. The style of stength of the setting and character development I mentioned above make these scenes possible, while the scenes themselves deliver the true knock out punches of the series.
Of course, Eureka Seven is not without its faults. Often times its pacing is quite slow. Throughout the first half of the series, there are several instances where the show stagnates for several episodes at a time. While time passes through these episodes, and relationships slowly develop, nothing major happens to keep the momentum going. Luckily, this problem largely disappears in the second half of the show, although there is still a slow episode here or there.
Another possible weakness of this show is that it tends to overload the viewer with information. As I said earlier, it expects the viewer to be able to take things for granted until they have enough information to piece together the nature of this world themselve's. Although I enjoy this type of storytelling, this could make the show very difficult to follow for some people.
But in the end, these are minor weaknesses. Unlike a lot of longish series I have seen (Full Metal Alchemist comes to mind), this show truly delivers in the end. And quite simply, I can't do the end of the series justice with words. You will just have to watch it yourself.
As a final note, you may have noticed that I have changed my avatar and sig recently, and you would be correct if you think that my avatar is a character from this show. If you know how much I love F/SN, and particularly Sakura, then you might realize how much I utterly loved Eureka Seven.
So what are you waiting for? Gekko-Gogogogo.
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