RRV: Kōkyōshihen Eureka Seven 9-13

And so, it begins.

There's a lot of psychological underpinnings to what happens in these last episodes of the first season, but unfortunately there's so much plot (confusing and cryptic as it is) involved that those little indicators can get lost and only subconsciously act as support for later events.

For example, what most people remember about episode 9, "Paper Moon Shine", is the backstory for how Eureka and Holland quit the military SOF (Special Operations Force) and later create Gekkostate. While that's utterly important knowledge to understanding both Holland and Eureka, there's a couple of less obvious points to take away from the story and what happens when Renton hears it.

It's not too difficult to understand that Eureka suffers because of her past, and that she harbors unbearable guilt every day, with the children serving as a reminder of what she did to their families, but it's Renton who tells us the most about himself in his reaction to what she says; he denies it. "You couldn't help it, there was a war at the time," are the first words out of his mouth, and while that's not an unreasonable reaction to expect from him, the fact stands that he's immature and unwilling to damage the mental image he's already built up of Eureka, the one where she's a beautiful white angel who stands for everything good in his life. This isn't about Eureka so much as it is about him, and after the child abuse he's begun to suffer under Holland, he's loathe to taint Eureka with the knowledge she divulges about herself. To some unconscious extent, he puts it out of his mind, and as he's never seen murder up close or had experience with that sort of pain, it's easy for him to lessen the impact and comfort Eureka when she needs him.

The immediate effect of this problem is present in the next episode, "Higher than the Sun", though only subtly and as a side note to the immediate issues haunting Holland from his visit to Ciudades del Cielo, which I'll address in a moment. Things seem more cheerful for Eureka and Renton here, but while Renton has acknowledged her past, he hasn't actually tried to empathize with her; he's busier worrying about making accidental skin contact with her, or getting excited about confessing his affection for her, than in truly paying attention to her and noticing that Eureka isn't feeling very well. Part of this rises from his lack of empathy and understanding, and some of it is basic teenage selfishness; Renton is simply not mature enough to realize that the world doesn't revolve only around him, and that perhaps Eureka is in more pain than she's let on. As for Eureka herself, she seems to be having communication problems with the Nirvash, and interestingly enough the first person she looks for when she needs comfort is Renton, though she isn't very clear with her feelings or thoughts; it only exacerbates their now minor communication problem, and unfortunately that sets the foundation for the much worse ones to come later on.

The star of this episode is Holland, however, and his dilemma presents one of the most important themes of the series: taking responsibility for one's actions. He's a tormented individual, trying desperately to forget all the murder he committed in cold blood, and Talho is the one who forces him to face that past. He pulled the trigger, so he has no right to run away from his memories, and Talho understands that Holland's anger and childish desire to escape arise from the fact that he is still immature himself. He did what he did, and he has to stop hiding from it if he hopes to face the future properly; his cruelty towards Renton is just one of his various forms of pushing blame onto others when he himself cannot face the consequences of his actions.

For the time being though, that's all pushed aside, never quite forgotten. With episode 11, "Into the Nature", our cast has bigger things to worry about; a mysterious natural phenomenon termed a Coralian has appeared, and for reasons Holland is keeping from Renton, Gekkostate makes an attempt to reach the center of it. We're also introduced to our deuteragonist pair, Dominic Sorel (Shigenori Yamazaki) (who has been appearing in the military's ranks since episode 1) and Anemone (Ami Koshimizu), Eureka and Renton's foil characters. Dominic is much older than Renton, but he is brash and foolish, though much more willing to dirty his hands and thus an interesting opposite to Renton's lack of spine and idealism. He holds romantic feelings for Anemone, a young woman with a murderous and unstable personality who pilots the Nirvash theEND and acts as the foil to Eureka's quiet and demure attitude. During the mission, both the military and Gekkostate attempt to send their teams into the Coralian, but after a vicious fight, only Eureka, Renton, and Anemone make it through.

What awaits them in episode 12 is what I've termed an "acperience episode", one of four episodes in the series titled "Acperience", all of which feature bizarre mind-rape and unexplainable events, with this being "Acperience 1". As such, Renton finds himself lost in a terrifying dream, running for his life from the darkness and coming across a strange girl he's never met several times. Eureka chases after him, always arriving slightly too late to catch him. It's near the end of this twisted dream that Renton has an interesting conversation with what seems to be a pink skyfish.

"Did you know? There's so much hatred in the world, even if no one can see it."

It's a chilling little snippet, made worse by the fact that the skyfish speaks in Anemone's voice and that she herself appears to Renton seconds later, demanding he call her name. What's even more interesting, however, is that the dream then changes, and Renton finds himself in an ethereal ocean at sunset, where he imagines he sees his long-lost sister, Diane, before Eureka finally reaches him and asks him to come back with her. The dream over, Renton awakes in the aftermath of the Coralian to find Eureka unconscious beside him, and that Anemone was a real girl after all, and the pilot of the KLF he'd never seen before.

What's most interesting about episode 13, the aptly named "The Beginning" is the fact that it's the only time in the entire series where Renton and Dominic ever meet. Renton forces Dominic to take him along on a medicine run for Eureka and Anemone, both of whom are unconscious after the events of the Coralian. Several interesting things occur on the trip; Dominic seems to know about Renton and who he is, for one thing, despite not introducing themselves until the very end of the episode. For another, we witness firsthand that the people of this world are unhappy with the Federation military, as the survivors of the Coralian incident voice their anger directly at Dominic and even get into a fight with him and Renton for it. We're also introduced to the concept of Despair Disease, a fictional ailment where people become entranced by Compac Drives and enter a vegetative state. The relationship between Renton and Dominic is also interesting; they may be very different people on opposite sides of a conflict, but they're also both lovestruck boys who are willing to go to great lengths to protect the girls they love, and that brings them together. They may be enemies, as Dominic points out, but it doesn't change the fact that they're not as different as they'd like to think. Had they not been at war, perhaps he and Renton could have been friends, and that's the point of this little adventure.

In any case, episode 13 concludes the first season of Kōkyōshihen, and it sets up for the spectacular second quite nicely. All the correct tensions are in place, all the characters are accessible to us to some degree, and the mystery has only gotten more intriguing. "Who is Eureka?" Renton asks Holland as she's rushed to the medical ward, still unconscious, on board the Gekko.

"Just a normal girl."

Quick Thoughts

-Renton and Eureka are unfairly cute together. Also, for a set of characters in a Japanese anime, they sure have a lot of pre-relationship hand-holding.

-It's not Eureka Seven without Anemone! One of the first gifs I ever saw for the series was of this scene. I thought she was a crazy psycho who was splattering blood all over her face. Turns out I was only half-wrong.

-The conversation that Renton has with Madame Tiptory about racism has always been one of the most poignant conversations of the series for me: "Humans fear what they don't understand." When you think about it, that's exactly what causes most of human relationship problems, whether they're interracial, international, or simply between two people trying to be friends, family, or lovers.

-That part where Renton blackmails his way onto Dominic's bike is one of my favorite scenes. That's some pretty out-of-character backbone, standing in front of a gun without flinching. It says something about how far he's willing to go to help Eureka, and what kind of guy he can be when he tries.

-The child abuse has begun. Holland can really be an asshole sometimes, and Talho doesn't always stop him.

-I know I haven't really mentioned Dewey at all, but he's more of a shadow at the moment, though all his appearances are important.