Eureka Seven: Astral Ocean

More specifically, the final eps will air Nov. 19th.

So I saw the special.It's kind of creepy how much like his mother he looks like.

So the last two episodes are out. I'm not entirely certain what happened in them

Well, the ending was pretty typical for BONES, which is unfortunate to say the least. I have several big, BIG issues with the last episodes and the series in general, both in and of themselves, as well as in relation to the original Eureka 7.

In AO itself, simply too much is left unexplained or irrelevant, which I completed expected, but it's still unsatisfactory, especially in terms of characters.

The biggest problem is that The Scub are actually malicious entities (subconsciously or not) that must be destroyed. An UTTER AND TOTAL REVERSAL of an ENTIRE THEME of the original series, which they even admit! Apparently, this is the bias of the writer or director, who pulled the same stunt in the movie and manga.

Of course, I also dislike messing with the happy ending of Renton and Eureka from the original, possibly also part of that bias. Also, since that is denied to Ao, I think it flies in the face of the theme of family that was supposed to be important here.

I thought the ending was keeping the Scub around so that Naru and the like didn't get erased? At least, that's what Ao was trying to do, though I'm not sure if he succeeded

It is implied he succeeded, since he could surf on trapar upon reentry. The hypocrisy is more an issue with Renton, although he was doing to protect Ao. But doesn't amount to much, since there's this sudden risk of him turning to stone in the future due to trapar density, which I feel is a completely unnecessary point just for adding drama.

Basically, there is this confusion of Renton attacking Scub to protect Eureka and Ao (who are Scub), Naru protecting Scub but fighting Ao, Ao fighting Secrets then Truth to protect Scub/Naru and the world, Truth fighting Scub then becoming an Archetype(!), and the very existence of Secrets and Quartz; all of which are just extraneous to the original series.

edited 20th Nov '12 2:44:15 AM by Eschaton

So, in other words, the Super Robot Taisen writers are going to have their work cut out for them, huh?

But yeah, the ending was kinda disappointing, and I surely didn't care about Naru's sudden Character Derailment. Kinda seems like the writers had something against her and saw they had made her too sympathetic in Episode 22, so they went all "You are not supposed to like the bitch" on us. That's my opinion, at least.

It seems like there's a growing tendency of Japanese animations that pull 'WTF did I just watch for weeks' endings

This is one of them.

Just watched the final 2 episodes. So not only did they make no effort to answer any of the questions in the plot nor reintroduce any other character from the original series, they also had AO erase the Okinawa Scub Coral from existence, thereby making this series not only completely pointless, but a blatant rape and destruction of the original's theme and message.

As a fan of the original, I'm INSULTED by how this series turned out to be a freaking waste of time. Christ, now I know how Spoony felt when he played Ultima IX.

edited 20th Nov '12 9:01:31 AM by jackedup85

I found a very good summary of my and certainly other's issues of AO in relation to the original.

The concept of Scub Coral in E7 is largely based on a novel by the sci-fi writer Greg Bear, "Blood Music", and one of the characters in E7 is actually named after the guy. The novel dealt with the idea that the reality is a function of its observers, an idea which develops from the so-called anthropic principle, a real metaphysical concept that says observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. In other words, we perceive the Universe as it is because only in such a Universe an observer such as us could exist.

In "Blood Music", an inventor creates self-conscious microorganisms that perceive the reality in a radically different way from ours. They multiply and occupy a large part of our planet, but the density of their consciousness doesn't allow them to exist in a purely physical realm, so along with some humans they assimilated along the way they escape into a different reality of pure consciousness, not bound to physical.

This is exactly what the idea of Scub Coral and the Limitation of Life (or Limit of Questions) was based upon. So what's the problem? Well it seems that Kyoda (AO's director) didn't exactly understand what the E7 writers have made up for the story. In AO, we learn that large chunks of Scub Coral physically escaped into AO's world (let's call it World 2) which is also physical and in fact is completely compatible with World 1. However, this is what we can conclude from visuals in episode 50 in E7 as well, but the idea of reaching different levels of existence and planes of thought are still present (such as the beliefs of the Vodarak).

I think this to be a mistake on the part of the director because it doesn't tie together with the rest of the story that we learn from E7, especially when put under a looking glass of "Blood Music". Such solution merely delays the Limitation of Life and introduces an obvious plothole - if Scub could always escape into any point in space, time and alternative universes, well why didn't it do so earlier?

But Kyoda apparently remembered that they had some something about anthropic principle going on back in 2005 and so here we have Renton, explaining to us that anthropic principle is "reality changes according to how observer sees it." This is applied to Ao and Truth after the Quartz Gun is used to remove Secrets from existence, and in the ending Truth remains the "observer." This seems to me like a bastardization of both the real-life concept and the ideas that are built into original E7 setting. Basically it's a tremendous plothole that allowed them to use the Quartz Gun as an impromptu deus ex machina to eliminate the conflict we followed throughout AO.

And Kyoda introduces another drama generator. Turns out human and human coralian children turn to rocks when exposed to high density of trapar and die! I suppose Kyoda as the author is allowed to introduce such concept, but it puts a big slash across the message of E7. When Eureka was told she could have human kids, it was kind of a big deal and seemed like it would be important to the whole "co-existence" deal. So this concept doesn't go against logic, but it goes against the narrative. And even then there are inconsistencies. There are places of low-trapar density in World 1 (such as the Earth below the Scub, and space). If we are to take Scub Coral's dimensional pilgrimage as a fact, then half of it is gone and there should be even LESS trapar in World 1. Moreover, Ao used to hang around Scub Plants all the damn time and it didn't affect him at all. I think in Episode 24 Ao even remotely points that out in passing but the issue is quickly ignored. So what, was this introduced just so that Eureka and Renton could be fucked over some more, to parallel Charles and Ray's situation which was far from positive? It's evident this didn't exist back in 2005, just look at the last DVD cover art!◊

Dewey was right! Scub is just one big problem and coexisting with it is a joke! Good job Gekkostate, you assholes broke everything!

edited 20th Nov '12 2:28:57 PM by Eschaton

Only thing I was surprise about was Ao being the one who save Eureka that time.

I kind of was disappointed by the resolution over all. I mean Ao ended back in world (two years), does it mean that there is another Ao there or is it something else. I also feel that this kind of ruin the first series for me. I wish Anemone and Dominic was involve at least.

Damn! What about the romance subplot? No resolution!

Good summary of all of the problems I have with this ending within a larger E7 context. Thematically and factually it just does not work with what we've already known.

Regarding the last one, I'm about ninety percent sure that Fleur was meant to win.

That said, within E 7 AO the series on its own (and we're just gonna ignore the inconsistencies for the time being because otherwise my head will explode) it's so close to being a solid thematic ending for Ao's arc. Except for the fact that it's not, because if we take a theme as being family, then in the end Ao leaves both his biological and adopted families. And if we take the theme of it being taking responsibility for your actions, well that's problematized by the existence of the Quartz Gun and the fact that Renton ends up having all of his problems fixed by Ao before he can screw things up even worse. And if we take it as Ao growing up, well, he did get to do a lot of that during his offscreen time-travel adventures.

And...oh screw it I barely get this right now. Maybe I'll write up some more reactions later once I've managed to process it all through my brain. For now, three questions:

• So, uh, what was going on with Gazelle and co. there at the end? Were they signing an independence treaty or something?
• Hey, so uh, Ao? How long exactly were you gone, where did you go, and how did you manage to get a kickass hoverboard in the meantime?
• Now that we know the whole story that the writers have told, how would you all have rewritten the story to actually fit the story they were trying to tell?

edited 20th Nov '12 6:31:29 PM by moberemk

I get that feeling too that she is the one who won in the end, but I wish it was Show and Tell and Not Show, Don't Tell for this case.

Okay I saw the ending. It was actually very sad. Very emotional.

And in the greater context, it came out of nowhere. (I kind of wish Ao Ret Goned himself entirely, so we could make Puella Magi Madoka Magica jokes.)

So series thoughts. I get the impression there was a Troubled Production or Executive Meddling going on behind the scenes, especially since the original writer supposedly backed out after two episodes.

With that said, I've got four main problems:

One: A lack of a central theme: At it's heart, the original Eureka Seven was a romance story. Yes, there was giant mecha and sci-fi coral monsters, but ultimately it was about love, and the relationship between a boy and girl.

There is no central theme in Ao - at least none I could easily pick up on. It's not a romance story (heck there's No Romantic Resolution). It's not a family story either - Eureka is a MacGuffin, and Renton was only two episodes away from being a Last Episode, New Character. The only thing we can say about it is "This is the story of the child of Eureka Seven's two main protagonists". And that would actually be fine if it weren't for the next problem...

Two: A disconnect from the original series: Having nothing more than "being a sequel" I think is fine, as long as you can give a convincing connection to the original series. But ultimately there are only four things that return: Eureka, Nirvash, the Scub Coral, and Renton. All of them are diminished in importance - and the Nirvash and Scub aren't what they were in the original series.

I understand the idea of a sequel trying to make something new instead of rehashing the old, but in my opinion the new isn't good enough - the new series's plot and characters just aren't as interesting except Elena.. If AO's plot was better and if it had a central theme, it wouldn't need to have a bigger connection to the original series. Again, that it does not have a central theme beyond "sequel" means it has to actually be a sequel to the original series...but all it does is put the "Spin-Off" in "Spin-Offspring".

(And I know they were scrappies, but I'm kind of disappointed Eureka and Renton's other kids didn't show up when the original series clearly established they were a family. It's called Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, people!)

Three: They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: I'm going to be honest here, if they revealed that Elena was Ao's sister and she would pilot TheEND I would have thought that was incredibly awesome. Unfortunately, AO is a case study of how to use Red Herrings badly. A few outright false hints are acceptable. But if everything is a false hint it makes you wonder why they were even there in the first place. I get the impression that the appearance of TheEND and the hints about Elena and Ao's sister weren't for the purpose of telling a good story. They were for the purpose of getting viewers to keep watching until the end of the series. On the other hand, Executive Meddling or a Writer Revolt could have been involved in which case they reap what they sow.

(But seriously, that would have been awesome.)

Four: Bad Villains: There's nothing wrong with an Outside-Context Villain who flies around while everyone else is in giant robots. But the execution was bad; even Rom Stoll's voice actor can't make up for the fact that Truth is a poor villain. They should have given him a better motivation, or made him a more consistent character.

As for Naru, it's clear the writers didn't know what to do with her. (So much wasted potential).

I understand that this series makes a point of "no-one is really a villain" but there are plenty of series that do that better.

Can Super Robot Wars save this?: They'd have to considerably rewrite the plot - and I don't think they'll be able to surpass the fundamental problem of "show has no central besides being a sequel, when it's almost a sequel In Name Only". There's also the fact that AO seemingly contradicts the movie, so we can only wonder if it will be in the Super Robot Wars Z setting.

Final Remarks: Long before Eureka Seven AO was even announced, I read the single fanfic from Eureka Seven's Fanfic Rec section on this site.

And in my opinion, that fanfic was better than Eureka Seven AO.

Heck, in my opinion I could write a fanfic better than Eureka Seven AO

That's bad.

edited 20th Nov '12 9:54:13 PM by universalperson

You know, this series does seem to make Eureka and Renton the new Charles and Ray Beams. They even have a similar pose in the final episode.◊

In all seriousness, God that ending made me ill. So many plots Left Hanging, too many Red Herrings, and one of the cruelest examples of an Ass Pull I've ever seen in a fictional work. Ranks among Gundam AGE and Mass Effect 3's original endings as one of the worst endings I have seen this year.

And no, Super Robot Wars is awesome, but this piece of shit that doesn't deserve the Eureka Seven name is damaged beyond repair.

edited 22nd Nov '12 1:55:25 AM by sanfranman91

You know, all complains about the anime aside, it still has some damn good tunes. I cannot wait for the full Parallel Sign single to become available.

Eureka Seven AO: Save a Prayer. Did not know this was a thing until this morning, but I just finished reading it and it's decent. Hopefully it'll give a slightly more in-depth look at the AO universe; if nothing else, I'm kinda curious as to how it'll all fit in to the timeline.