Eureka 7 – Anime review – Eps 1 – 25

Nirvash and Eureka

REALISATION

Eureka 7 is a japanese anime series by Bones studio completely comprising of 52 episodes. This is a review of episodes 1 – 25.

new to the family? Renton Thurston in red.

In Eureka 7, we are introduced to Renton Thurston, the 14 year old son of the legendary Adroc Thurston, who just wants to be cool and air lift on the trappars. Trappars are, in very simple terms, wind energies which allow for a skilled human, as well as mechs (refered as LFOs in the anime), to ride on them with precision and some (dare I say) style. We later discover that they are also some sort of a fuel source or something but lets not indulge in any more flummox. In any case, they’re very important for flight (and also, fights ;))

Renton’s dreamed of flying alongside the crew of the Gekkostate, an outlaw air ship working for money and surviving the airwaves. Renton looks up to its captain, Holland, and later discovers that he possesses the Amita Drive which is required to power one of Gekkostates’s LFOs, the legendary Nirvash Type Zero – which is also the first ever LFO built. In an exchange he is allowed to board the ship and it is here that he meets our titular character, Eureka.

Thereon, the anime is a grandiloquent ride of discovery. The discovery of riding the waves on the Nirvash, the complex theories of Trappars, the mysterious physical nature of a Corallion and the intense imbroglio of life.

Typical to all BONES animes,E7 takes a good long time to delve into the characters it is portraying. And in a way this is necessary, since the only way the viewer is to get hooked on with E7 is the character development. It takes time but once you’re down 7-9 eps, you begin to get attached to the characters.

Gekkostate's mismatched crew

Thats been the case with all BONES’s series but here its more important, primarily since there is no clear direction in which the story seems to be headed – which is also my biggest gripe against the anime. Much like the case with GEKKOSTATE, there is hardly a sense of direction for the first few episodes, aside the random hinting about Renton’s father’s legacy, Eureka’s enigmatic charm and something EPIC on the threshold of occurance.

However once you do connect to the characters and start caring about their existence in the Pslam of Planets the anime starts falling to place. Some of the high points of the anime are the ways the producers have handled human emotions and the characters’s actions based on them. Yet even better is the portrayal of how they deal with the consequences of the said action, even if that is just a realisation of how stupid, or ignorant they’ve been.

This is apparent in Eureka’s realisation of adolescence love, Holland’s realisation of his immature and sometimes addamant decisions .More significant, however, is Renton’s realisation of the ramifications of eradicating an LFO and killing a human life with it as well as the realisation that not everybody sees the world the way he does. Simply put, coming to terms with the realities of why a man does what a man does.

the two types of Nirvash (you've got to see it to find out!)

Besides the slightly longueur beginning to the anime, its been a really gripping first half of the DVD box and I am all set to see the rest of it. I can sense I am on a threshold of something exciting to unravel in the story, what with Gekkostate being set up for a trap and Nirvash sleeping without both its pilots, the plot is definitely going to for a twist.

SUZUKU!