So I re-watched Eureka Seven after almost a decade - an adult perspective
I watched Eureka Seven as a young adolescent and came back to it a decade later as an adult. Here is my perspective having experienced the series from two different sides of life. Be warned, it is a little long.
For a younger me, this show was the bees knees; it had everything. The animation was great. The opening and closing songs were all good and so too were the inserted soundtracks. The voice acting from all the major characters were on point. I was in the middle of my mecha phase (I just came off Gundam Seed and Code Geass was around the corner). It was a story about a the journey of a young boy into adulthood (which really resonated with me, obviously). And of course, the romance story was also really good. I remember really liking the main female lead.
I kinda lost interest in the series after the movie (Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers) came out and Eureka Seven AO was the final nail in the coffin. I decided to re-watch the series again after a decade because of the Hi-Evolution movies and because of the badass theme song for the first Hi-Evolution movie. Re-watching it as an adult versus when I was a kid really gave a new dimension to the story. I am older, wiser, and more experienced now so watching Eureka Seven also made me understood it better.
First and foremost, the theme of growing up, which, as an adult, made more sense to me than as an adolescent. Renton's journey was one that focused on his growth in the face of major conflicts. He went from being a naive, annoying kid to a mature adult and seeing the play-by-play of this development was really nice. I like to compare him to equivalent protagonists like Shinji from NGE, but unlike Shinji, Renton was way more developed at the end. I didn't fault him for his shortcoming as much this time, mostly because I sympathize with him more.
Secondly, the theme of the adults being a poor role model. In the story, the adults in Renton's life were pretty poor role models overall. Renton's father disappears early in his life. His sister abandoned her family. His grandfather never aspired for him to be anymore than a mechanic. His idol, Holland, turns out to be an abusive, temperamental guy with a serious guilty conscience. And Charles and Rey died on a pointless, vainglorious crusade. While the reasons for these circumstances might be justified, facts are that the adults in Renton's life consistently failed him and are held down by their own baggage. Watching this unfold but now from the other side of the coin, I could finally understand why the adults in his life acted the way they did: we're all just children trying to be adults. There are no instruction manuals and, sometimes, we get it wrong. It also made me realized a major quality of being an adult is having empathy. Renton developed empathy for the people that he was fighting. He didn't want to kill anymore, not only for moral reasons, but also because he grew to realize that the people he was fighting were individuals like him, with a life, friends, loved ones, and circumstances of their own. It takes real mental maturity to understand people at this level. As an adult, I can understand failing at being an adult and I can also empathize with a lot of the characters because I in their shoes now. Seeing Renton's development from the other side, seeing him grow into these qualities really made the the story all the better.
Finally, the romance story of Eureka and Renton is perhaps the strongest part of Eureka Seven. When I first watched this series, I was an adolescent so the romance part was pretty cool but it didn't resonate with me the way it does now. As an adult, I can say that now that the love story between Eureka and Renton is the best part of this story. Unlike most other romance story, which wraps everything up in a handful of episodes or chapters at the end, Eureka Seven builds up the love story between Eureka and Renton from episode 1 and shows it entire development, every tender and painful moments, to the last episode. To be fair to Eureka Seven, this show had 50 episodes while most others have considerably less but it also used it wisely to intersperse themes of war, coming-of-age, and surfer culture. I used to think that Toradora was the greatest anime love story of all time, but Toradora also wrapped up the love story of Ryuji and Tora within the last 3-4 episodes. Getting to see the full development of Eureka and Renton's love story from beginning to end was truly amazing and made it feel all the more authentic and real. Now, I can say unequivocally that Eureka Seven is the greatest anime love story of all time, in my opinion.
That's it. I am mostly glad to have been able to experience this amazing story again, this time from the adult side and understand things that I didn't understand before. This anime is truly a classic given that it held up so well and its message is so universal.
Posted Aug 4, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC · edited
I really love Eureka 7. It was one of the first anime I really got into when I discovered subbed anime, and I also watched it again years later (when Toonami aired it).
On a second viewing, the thing that stood out for me is how cleverly it turned Renton around from episode 1. I was actually with the TVtropes forums, of all places, for a couple of years, and me and everyone made fun of Renton so hard early on in that rewatch. He kept just going on about how he's 14 and life sucks and it became a running gag for us for the entire time (which took a year to air, keep in mind). But it so cleverly starts to turn things on its head as soon as he joins Gekkostate. Like instead of typical shonen-y annoying character joining the cool group with the cool characters, it makes it more and more obvious that he's practically the one genuinely good person dealing with shitty, cynical adults who need to be better. And that describes a lot of the appeal of the series to me, it gives you what should be a cynical look at something, but then will turn things around to showcase that the most optimistic elements are actually what are great and what you should take from the series.
The optimistic and cheesy ending felt earned after all the struggles Renton and Eureka went through. At the same time it makes the spinoffs and sequel that much more unpleasant because it felt like unnecessary cynicism given the well deserved happy ending of E7.
I agree with this assessment. Renton went from being that annoying kid to being one of the best parts of the story because of how optimistic and genuine he was. He stood in stark contrast with Gekkostate, being shocked at smuggling human organs and at how casual the crew were to killing people in battle. In reality, he became the most adult character in the story.