Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution 3

If you’ve seen me on Mal before, or you visit my profile after reading this, you’ll quickly realize that Eureka Seven is my favourite anime of all time. It’s pretty easy to see, cause, you know, it’s at the top of my favourites list and all. I found Eureka Seven at a pretty important time in my life, and proceeded to fall so deeply in love with almost everything about it, that I watched all 50 episodes over the course of three days. I was that entranced with it. I have never, in my life, cried as much as I did when I was watchingthat show, and it wasn’t sad crying either, it was happy crying—the best type of crying because it really feels like you’re emotionally decompressing everything. It’s the type of crying where the tears feel like they’re staining your skin; the type of crying where you can feel a lump in your throat, and it hurts. The raw, human sincerity, and pure, emotional honesty of the cast resonated with me, deeply, in a way nothing had managed before, and in a way nothing has managed since. These characters were human, just like me, and they had flaws, just like me, and even if they weren’t actually human—even if they were different—they experienced life all the same. Watching Eureka Seven gave me an emotional catharsis I have hitherto never, in my life, experienced with media, so, I knew it was special. After rewatching it later that year, it became my favourite, and I swear by it to this day. And of course, when something becomes your favourite, you naturally want to check out everything from the property. Unfortunately, I was in for an ugly surprise when I eventually set out on the grand endeavour to do just that. To summarise, the Eureka Seven sequels are bad, bad, bad, and really bad, for the most part. A lot of it comes down to the bitter hack that is Tomoki Kyouda, and his never-ending desire to besmirch his literal masterpiece out of spite for his literal masterpiece. Kyouda has stated that his vision for Eureka Seven was ostensibly mapped out in the first handful of episodes—a story about some punk-rock kid, born lonely at Bell Forest hospital, falling in love with a beautiful girl, and leaving on his coming of age journey towards adulthood. Allegedly, the Bones execs took issue with the dark, bittersweet tone his original layout of the ending took, and thus, had the ending changed to be a happier, and ultimately better conclusion, so as to sell more toys or someshit. Kyouda, being a literal child, has since devoted his entire life to absolutely desecrating the good name of the original, to satisfy his fragile ego, and as a result, has been responsible for some of the worst, and possibly, some of my most hated, anime to exist. To start, Pocket Full of Rainbows was just fucking atrocious, like, what in the fuck was this movie supposed to be? I don’t exaggerate when I say PFOR is my least favourite anime of all time, right next to No Game No fucking Life—it’s that bad. I don’t really want to get into it because it actually makes me quite sad thinking about it. It’s 99.9% garbage and about the only thing it does right is the ending song, which is something that’s always kind of defined Eureka Seven: the music. It’s about the only thing all of the sequels actually get right. Anyway, after PFOR, we had Eureka Seven AO, which wasn’t AS bad as most people make it out to be. It had some gorgeous Nakamura sequences, and enough Itano circuses to make Itano himself blush in embarrassment. Even if Sho Aikawa’s writing was somehow WORSE than Satou Dai’s on a bad day, it doesn’t really affect my enjoyment of the original, nor does it treat the original with overt disrespect. And now, we come to Hi-Evo—yeah, about 600 words in and I’m only now talking about the subject of this review—which is a very, very mixed bag of great ideas, and fucking atrocious ideas. For starters, the first half of Hi-Evo 1 is spectacular! We finally get to see the Summer of Love—one of the most important incidents in the series—which, funnily enough, happens off-screen. Anyway, the second half of Hi-Evo 1 is, yeah, not so good; it’s a half-assed, schizophrenically edited mess of a story, that, despite its admittedly interesting conceit, fails to deliver on almost every front. It even ends with a fucking dumbass bait-and-switch sneak preview of a sequel movie THAT DOESN’T FUCKING EXIST! Wow, you sure fucking trolled me Kyouda—got me a good one. The sequel we ended up getting (don’t worry, I’m almost there, just let me pointlessly ramble for a little while longer) was… good? Hi-Evo 2 is, frankly, kind of, sort of, amazing, kind of, sort of. I know I said the Eureka Seven sequels were “bad, bad, bad, and really bad, for the most part,” but as you can probably guess by the way I’m setting this up, Hi-Evo 2 was the, “for the most part,” part of that summary. I think if you’re an Anemone fan, like me, you’ll end up really enjoying Hi-Evo 2. It’s basically if Anemone was a real girl, and wasn’t trapped in the Pleasure Island of drugs she was designed to sedate herself with. It’s also an audio-visual fucking masterpiece that cuts between widescreen and 4:3 to mimic the stylings of the original show, with appropriate art direction to match. So it’s basically a fanservice film, but with one of the most ridiculous plots ever conceptualised. But like all Eureka Seven sequels, it has problems. There are weird CG segments that surely could have been animated, considering the bat-shit crazy mech sequences in the film, and it’s tonally just, kind of, all over the place. Overall, there’s nothing egregious about the plot; it’s a fanservice film, and, well, I’m a fan, so being serviced felt good, lol. I could go on for longer about this film and talk about the significance of Keiji Fujiwara playing Dewey, but, despite being at 1000 words and not yet mentioning it, this IS an Eureka Seven Hi-Evo 3 review, so now that I’ve finally set the stage, it’s time to discuss it. In anticipation of the film’s release, I followed every crumb, every drop of news to the best of my ability. I was there for all the trailers, all the PVs—the sneak-peak at the first 15 minutes? I was there. So naturally, the music video for the credits theme of the film —a song thoughtfully titled “Eureka” by the band Hentai Shinshi Club—caught my eye when it was uploaded to YouTube. I sat there, watched it, and thought to myself, “Why am I feeling legitimately emotional watching this? I know this is going to suck, and I know Kyouda is going to let me down,” but despite acknowledging that, I couldn’t shake that pleasantly awful feeling of butterflies in my stomach. Right off the bat, my expectations for this film were shaky—like they are with most things—and something just felt… off about the whole thing. I gotta say, I was getting a little bit anxious, and a little bit impatient, and a little bit aggravated. And the more I thought about it—the film and its release—the more I felt a little bit anxious, a little bit impatient, and a little bit aggravated. Alright, first things first: no Yoshida. Yeah, so we’ve lost the heart and soul of Eureka Seven because he was doing Orbital Children at the time or something like that. This is important, really important. Remember what I’m always saying: the character designer is really important, remember? Yoshida is really important, remember? All hope is not lost though, because Okumura Masashi—a man most notable for his work on the beautiful, but blatant Eureka Seven cash-in, Xam’d—decided he would try and fill Yoshida’s shoes. Unfortunately for Okumura, Yoshida wears a size 14. Okumura sure did his fucking best though, because this film looks fucking amazing! Ostensibly the last bastion for hand-animated mecha, aside from, maybe, Hathaway, but then again, I don’t remember Hathaway pulling out Itano circuses every fucking second. Sure, the film doesn’t always look stellar, and in the middle, the quality dips horrendously, but it’s not like the acronym “I.G.” is plastered on the cover or anything, so I can’t exactly hold it to a standard it couldn’t possibly live up to. But, yeah, like Tom Cruise—especially after his little foray in Iran—this movie looks, and sounds, pretty darn cool. And that’s the bottom line, because I said so. Before I really get into things, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the circumstances by which I’m actually able to watch this film. Hi-Evo 3 had its home release in June, and in the meantime, a small community of diehard fans on reddit—who don’t know Japanese, mind you—put together a fansub subtitle track for the film. While it’s not the greatest fansub out there, it was a real labour of love, and is literally the only reason I am able to watch this film. So thank you to those who were a part of that project. Alright, the movie. Okay. As aforementioned, I had already seen the first 15 minutes of the film back when Bandai released it on YouTube, but, oh boy, it was something else seeing it again. I remember doing this during that sneak preview, but as soon as Eureka performed the cut-back drop-turn, my heart fucking skipped a beat, and I said, aloud, in my best Fujiwara impression, “Cut-Back Drop-Turn!” The film doesn’t even make a point of it either, until Holland delivers the appropriate reaction, of course. Speaking of Holland, he’s in this movie, for some reason. Ultimately, he has no business being in this film, other than to share a scene with a pregnant Talho, which drove a fucking knife into my heart as soon as I heard Neye Michiko deliver her first of few lines in this movie. Honestly, it’s probably for the best that Fujiwara didn’t reprise his role here, cause it would have hurt too much, especially considering what Kyouda does with him later. At least with Morikawa voicing him, I can pretend he’s a different character entirely, which isn’t too hard to do, given his awful redesign (reminds me of another character). I’ll just come out and say it (spoilers, kids), Kyouda kills Holland off at the end of this movie, and it isn’t earned, and means absolutely nothing, and because of that, I feel absolutely nothing. I should be outraged, but I’m just… sullen about it—not even sullen, more like emotionless. I didn't even register that it had happened, because, for some reason, I was hopeful that Kyouda wouldn't fuck it up right at the end. I don't know why I ever thought such things. Thankfully, not all was lost. If this film had one saving grace, it would be its titular heroine, Eureka. If there is one thing Tomoki Kyouda is good at, it’s writing characters. Eureka brought a human touch to this film I was honestly shocked to see. Somehow, it makes sense that a grown-up Eureka would become a weight-lifting alcoholic, as out-of-character as that sounds. Hearing Eureka and Anemone, as adults, with the same voice actors, talk as close friends, made everything so, so real to me. I instantly bought into their dynamic. Whilst both their designs aren’t amazing, they still seem believable, as if these characters would actually look the way they do, given the appropriate context. Like, it makes sense Eureka would, without the love or kindness of those around her, mature into a hardened badass, and that Anemone would become a twenty-something that gets frustrated at kids for calling her old. It’s also a perfect touch that she does her hair like Katejina, even if there’s no way that was the parallel Okumura was drawing. Structure-wise, to me, it honestly feels like Kyouda conceptualized the middle part of this film—its emotional core—then realised he had to quickly devise the “plot” of the film, which kinda just bookends either side of the actually good, middle part. However, whilst attempting to ground the inherently larger-than-life soul of Eureka Seven with political intent, geopolitical conflicts, multi-national ethnic terrorism and anti-immigration movements, by means of, general, stern-faced diplomacy, Kyouda inevitably dampens the beating heart that made the franchise so special in the first place. What I’m trying to say is, this film lives and dies on its second act and the relationship between Eureka and Iris, despite Kyouda’s best efforts to “elevate,” or, “subvert,” the original intent of his masterpiece, out of spite for his masterpiece, in some vain attempt to debase what little good he managed in this film. Anyway, this all brings me to the shower scene—arguably the best scene in the entire movie, and possibly, the entire Hi-Evo sub-franchise. Seeing Eureka’s body brought Kyouda’s absolutely ridiculous script crashing down to earth, but in a way so real, I wasn’t ready for it, nor was I expecting it. This was a real woman’s body, with real scars—not fake, neatly adorned, anime scars from some tragic backstory—real scars, accumulated over a lifetime of fighting, externally and internally. Eureka’s scars are painful, and ugly, and harsh, but beautiful, in the sense that despite all that struggling, she continues on living, as hard and unfair as living may be. So that’s why I was shocked to my core when Iris asked to touch her, and then expressed the exact same sentiment I just did. It was mature, emotive writing I thought Kyouda not capable of anymore. But this is Tomoki Kyouda we’re talking about, so it all had to come crashing down somehow, and the cracks started to appear right when Sumner showed up. I don’t know how to say this any other way: Kyouda made Sumner and Ruri fucking jobbers. Why even bring them back? This goes beyond a cameo, because you literally wrote dialogue for Sumner, only to have him killed in the scene you introduced him in. Then we have your big twist, since you’re such a smart, out-of-the-silver-box (see what I did there?) kind of writer. Sigh (there you go, I typed it). Kyouda, why? Why do you retcon your own narrative with stupid shit? You do not deserve a Big O, metafictional plot twist. You have done nothing to EARN a metafictional plot twist. You hack fuck. It makes no sense; it is not smart. Why was Hi-Evo building to this WHEN THERE WAS NO FUCKING PAY OFF!? Having Eureka hug Anemone and tell her she loves her right before the third act WAS the big pay-off of this movie—well, for me, at least—and what’s worse, is that it wasn’t even intentional, just my sentimental ass. Kyouda can’t see what’s in front of him before it’s too late, and it ostensibly ruined the movie. The final conflict was so utterly and artificially manufactured as to be literally laughable. At a point, the movie becomes so caked in continuity, lore and meta, that it rips the stakes clean off the plot. Gosh, I haven't even mentioned Charles and Ray, but for my sake, I'm not going to explain why. Why couldn’t Hi-Evo have been just a fun collection of little “what if?” stories, set in the Eureka Seven universe? If this was the plan all along, then what was the point of Hi-Evo 1? Surely this couldn’t have been the plan all along? This movie ends with NOTHING—not even a fun post-credits scene—it ends with nothing, but Hentai Shinshi Club. I know this review has just become a disjointed, ranting tirade, but at least it helps me feel something. That was the problem with this movie and its ending: I felt nothing. I should have felt something, but I didn’t. When Renton made his grand entrance at the end, it wasn’t real. He didn’t fight his way across worlds to get to Eureka; he didn’t mature and pick up Keiji Fujiwara as a voice actor; he didn’t speak as the loving, caring individual known as “Renton Thurston.” I couldn’t help but think that Renton, in some way, represented the franchise—looking exactly like it did back in 2005—and that I was Eureka, holding on to him for dear life as he fades away into the light. *** So, this is it? This is the send-off to the franchise of my favourite work in fiction? You’re right, Kyouda. This, this is all I have. This 24 minutes a night, 90 minutes a sitting. This is my everything. I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone when they know that I live this. This. This is what I love. But you know what, sometimes things you love don’t always love you back. And you can give, and you can give, and you can give, and you can give, and you can give, and you can give, and sometimes you get nothing in return. You get nothing! And you have friends, and family, and fans coming up and telling you, “Why do you still do it? Why are you still here? Why do you subject yourself to this every night?” It’s because I can’t stop. I can’t! It’s a sickness. I can’t stop! And maybe my life didn’t always turn out the way I thought it would, you know? I thought it would have been better. I thought I earned something. I thought I would be more successful. But you know what. I just can’t stop myself. I can’t. But you, you bring this franchise back one more time. Listen to me, Kyouda! Bring this franchise back one more time, and I’ll put up my entire career. —Dolph Ziggler, probably.