Eureka Seven 24
This is the moment where I at last admitted that I had been entirely incorrect about this anime, which makes this episode pretty special to me. It'll be just a bit more before this arc comes to its conclusion, but I feel like the show does an amazing job of building up to this point.
The previous arc is probably one that wasn't a lot of fun to watch one week at a time. It's a very slow arc in which a large amount of time is spent in a dreary mine doing little of immediate importance or weight. And when the cast does leave the mine, its for things that are fairly inconsequential, like fixing up the life of Kengo's friend. What that arc does brilliantly, though, is set the mood for this arc, and plant plot seeds as it goes.
The entire mine arc is slow moving, which helps to increase the tension felt in its oppressive atmosphere. This atmosphere is created through the use of muted colors (and remember that Eureka Seven is generally a very colorful show) and this sort of drawn out note on a string instrument. In that haze Renton catches glimpses of Gidget and Doggie kissing, igniting within him a desire for advancement of his relationship with Eureka. We see Renton do selfish things like eating a houseworth of pizza at a time when the entire Gekko crew is starving, and getting cocky about his ability to pilot the Nirvash. We also see Renton's naive trust in the goodness of others crumble along with these things as Holland's pettiness and Mr. Brittany's cowardice are put in full display moments before Eureka, herself frightened by her emotions, rejects Renton's advances, leading him to bail.
This arc has had Talho call Holland out on all his bullshit, shown Renton get a little wiser about the world, had Eureka realize her feelings for Renton, and most importantly given Renton a glimpse of what a real family feels like and what true love means. All of this is important for what's to come, but at the time it sort of leaves this painful jumble of emotions (I believe that's intentional, since Renton's own emotions are thus) where Renton cannot hold onto Ray and Charles even though he loves them, finds his efforts to do good stymied, and where he has no idea how to make Eureka understand how he feels for her. It's an excellent illustration of what a troubled, awkward teenager like Renton should be feeling, given how life has been going.
What's interesting to me this second time, though, is how Kawamori's trademarks are executed in Eureka Seven. In many ways the show skews closely to SDFM, with its focus on alien races learning to love one another and coexist, with this personified through the relationship between a man and a woman, and with all of this set to the backdrop of a heart-wrenching, life-or-death war and the destruction it leaves in its wake. In a way, a lot of this can be seen in Arjuna just as well as it can in Macross and Eureka, but what I think sets E7 and SDFM apart from Arjuna is simply the execution. In E7 nothing is forced, and there doesn't seem to be any active attempts to make judgments. That's not to say that the show doesn't have a message or an opinion. Indeed, a 2005 anime with a government ferociously hunting down innocents of a specific religion and accusing them all of terrorism cannot be said to not be making comments on the era in which it was made, but the difference between E7 and Arjuna is that Eureka understands the principal of "show, don't tell." Nobody delivers long speeches about how what the Federation is doing is wrong, you see how what the Federation is doing wrong and you empathize. And while people can be petty and violent in E7, the show also attempts to show that even the people who support this persecution have cause, have emotions, and have reasons for it.
Another significant point is that E7 has its own internal rhythm, which Arjuna lacks. Whether it be "Believe in the me that believes in you" or "the soul of the fist," or "three hearts become one," a show needs some guiding principles that are simultaneously unique and understandable. They don't have to be revolutionary concepts, but oftentimes they're simply restatements of already accepted ones. For instance, Eureka Seven's "Don't beg for things, do it yourself or else you won't get anything" is simply a restatement of the commonly accepted viewpoint that hard work and honest effort are better than being given anything. They're something Kawamori believes in, and that I think he wanted to communicate with that stuff about The Mountain in Arjuna, but the difference is that things are very much so centered upon this in Eureka Seven, whereas there are too many disparate ideas in Arjuna, unified only upon the destructive, rather than instructive, "Human Civilization is a Pile of Garbage." Renton's sister goes to find their dad because of these words. Renton goes with the Gekko for them as well, and his growing pains are built upon his failure and success to understand them. The show culminates in Renton doing something major for himself to get what he wants most. Over the series Renton monologues less and less to his sister and thinks more and more about what he himself needs to do.
But I'm kinda rambling now.
