Except it’s not even really day one of the Edinburgh part of the festival which started several days before with a packed screening of the English dub of Your Name and followed by the two Resident Evil CG films and an education day. Day one for me then.
Starting with the first film in the Eureka Seven: Hi Evolution reboot series, from the off it was clear this was not a well regarded film. I had expected the cinema to be packed yet a third of the seats remained empty, and during Jonathan Clements opening remarks, the film was described as being “unfortunately” in competition for a judges’ award.
A review of the first Eureka Seven: Hi-Evolution movie
Everything is a remix, or so the saying goes. The first of the three movie series reboot of Eureka Seven, labelled Hi Evolution, seems to have taken this literally. Starting with a half hour or so of brand new footage, it then switches to retelling a meaty but largely irrelevant chunk of Renton’s escapades during the TV series.
Retelling is perhaps too kind a word for what is some cleaned up, original aspect-ratio footage from the landmark fifty episode TV series, chopped and screwed into the remainder of the film’s runtime.
Eureka Seven AO was never going to be as good as its progenitor, Eureka Seven. Very little since has been as unyieldingly brilliant as that 2005 masterpiece and few could hope to match its expansive, multifarious characters and story. That AO makes a good stab is, paradoxically, to be commended as well as lamented.
The story of Ao, a pariah on his own home island, joining up with a clandestine organisation to pilot a giant robot and battle similarly sized enemies is not new. The details of course are different and the background of political turmoil between Okinawa and Japan rumbles on while trapar - the nebulous green energy which allowed E7's robots to surf - is now mined as an energy source. For anyone with any familiarity with the original series then it's all a bit discombobulating; is this a prequel, sequel or alternate universe? Is it just another telling of the same story like the tonally wonky Pocket Full of Rainbows movie was?
As a way of organising my thoughts and pontifications on Eureka Seven AO before the airing of the final episodes, a semi-coherent brain dump (with subheadings!):
Of all the franchises that crave another series - Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, Stellvia of the Universe (well kind of), Moyashimon (wait...) - Eureka Seven was not one of them. The hugelyinfluential original series was Studio Bones firing on all cylinders. A tour de force of storytelling, boundless imagination, confident execution, and most critically a satisfying and conclusive ending. Say what you will about the pacing (soccer episode anyone?), it still stands as one of the best anime series ever made.
Eureka Seven Astral Ocean has a lot to live up to and does itself no favours by starting very similarly to Xam'd of the Lost Memories - an idyllic island community is attacked with terrifying force by an alien aggressor while an aged doctor tries to help. It's certainly a lot more coherent than Xam'd and has echoes Eureka Seven's original opening with the humanoid robot Nirvash careening into the Thurston's garage roof.
