Joshua Channell

The first 30 minutes were great! It felt like I watching the series for the first time with a fresh coat of paint and I was so glad that we were seeing the Summer of Love incident. The first 30 minutes is filled with enough action, emotion and story to possibly make it it's own movie or an OVA at least. The same can not be said for the rest of the movie. After watching what is essentially a short prequel to the Eureka Seven series, you are immediately dropped into the middle of the story. I am not joking. most of the last hour in this movie is roughly 4 episodes from the original anime condensed to an hour. They are episodes that serve no purpose to the overall plot of the series, but serve to give Renton a bit of character development. However you will never why Renton ran away from the Gekkostate, why he wants to return and how he met the titular character, Eureka. This movie is 30 minutes of a very bloody good prequel, but then an hour of badly edited, nonsensical, recap that doesn't even recap what is important to understanding what is going on. You definitely have to have seen the original series to enjoy this movie, but if you've seen the series then that last hour of the movie will just feel like a waste of time. Which begs the question of who was this movie made for? It can't be new fans because they won't understand the movie at all, but it can't be fans of the original because the last hour literally does nothing and has no plot outside of the badly edited clips from the original series. This movie is not worth watching the whole thing. The first thirty minutes are worth it, but not the rest. I hope the next one is better and based on the post credits trailer it might be a much better movie with a better focus. Why they didn't reanimate everything, like Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone did and the changes and new plot points worked because of that, I don't know. That would of been better than the last hour being a jumbled mess.

This is set in an alternate reality and is very different from the Eureka Seven series. I would recommend watching the series first to understand some of what this movie goes on about. It's like this movie runs parallel with the series and does a lot of different things to make this movie feel like it's telling it's own story. I honestly really liked this movie, because it leaves the original anime alone and forms it's own story and the stuff that it does differently is interesting. These characters are slightly different from the ones we know; they're more hardened versions of the characters. Hell, even Renton has more of a backbone in this movie and much less winy than in the original series, which I greatly appreciated. The movie feels like an Eureka Seven movie and it is a decent one. I will admit they do reuse a few scenes from the anime. Why they did this I have no clue, but it is done exceptionally well and at least they were telling a new story and only used those scenes to act as a method of cutting costs and focus on the new scenes that are more important. I feel like this movie excels at telling a new story with the characters of Eureka Seven and it doesn't ruin the ending of the original series. In fact, it might even make it better. This movie is very much not as appreciated as it should be. Even though it does get a little confusing towards the end it is still a good ride. If your a fan of Eureka Seven then you should watch this for yourself.