The series shifts gears a bit as Ao gets to spend time with lots of girls. Such a hard life.
What They Say:
Having thrown in his lot with Generation Bleu, Ao returns with Team Pied Piper to their headquarters in Switzerland. There, he finds himself out of his element and struggling to figure out how he fits in to their plans.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Eureka 7: AO has had a kind of awkward couple of episodes where, similar to the original series, it threw a lot of things at us and a lot of it without any explanation. Unlike that series, it’s been hard to connect with the supporting cast as only Aoi is developed at this point. This episode is set to start changing that though now that Ao has decided to join up with Generation Bleu, at least for awhile, since his life back in Okinawa is essentially no more. So that has him being whisked off to Switzerland where they put him through a series of tests for his physical and psychological side, but also has him getting in a good panic as the little critter he came with has gone off and caused some trouble. It’s a nice bit of levity in an otherwise serious situation that also ties him back to Naru in a good way.
The first half deals with this well, showing us the structure that’s involved, some of the quirks of the supporting cast and how it all comes together in a very light and superficial way. There’s a big program here that runs Generation Bleu and the teams it sends out like Pied Piper, but it feels so disconnected from what’s really going on and the larger narrative that it feels like it’s missing something. But what we do get is a lot of time spent with Ao hanging out with various girls and just getting a feel for the place and some of their interactions with various members on staff. There’s certainly cute pieces to it all to be sure, and it helps to soften Ao’s image a little more after all the chaos back in Okinawa, but it feels like it could have done more with really familiarizing the viewer with what’s going on. But like a lot of anime series and Japanese sense of storytelling, there’s no need to go into the details.
Its not all downtime, sunshine and rainbows though as events are moving out in the world and that means the Pied Piper team has to be called up to action, which is not something that some of those in charge want since the team just came back from Okinawa and has had almost no time to rest and recover. But it is a war that’s being fought, even if some don’t realize it, and the team is made up of goofy professionals that Ao has to get used to. While the action is pushed off to the next episode, what we get here is some good setup that shows how all of the platforms and such are taken care of and it lets the quasi-military geeks really enjoy it all. But it’s also a little rough to watch because it harkens back to other series that played similar angles nearly twenty years ago that did it better in building the mood and designs. This may look better just because of clarity of colors and that it’s all digital, but it’s lacking something in presentation.
In Summary:
Eureka 7: AO has an episode where very little of anything actually happens. There are some fun character moments here but the same problem I had with the first four episodes still exists in that nobody is really standing out. Only Ao does at this stage simply because he’s gotten the most screen time and his story is obviously the central one. Beyond that, there’s a loose and poorly defined nature about the show that I’m having a really hard time pinning down and am really hoping that it improves as it goes on or it’s one of those series, of which there are quite a few, that play better when watched in marathon form. I have a love for te property overall because of its heritage, but it’s not making it easy to love by any means.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
