RRV: Kōkyōshihen Eureka Seven 14-18

I love "Shounen Heart", but I still think it's an inappropriately upbeat choice for the second season opening.

If I had to describe these first episodes to the new season in one sentence, I'd say this is where everything starts going to hell. We don't quite get there, though; there's a certain buildup that has to occur before we can really get going on that journey, and it's a preparation full of foreshadowing and emotional depth. I'll say it again: I love this season.

While this section of the series is mostly about characters, it's also largely about philosophy and why humans act the way they do. The formula of Gekkostate's seemingly aimless wandering comes in useful here; the structure of these episodes allows Renton to come in contact with different people and situations and it serves to broaden his perspective on the human condition, as any proper bildungsroman should. However, this is also a story about interpersonal relationships, and not all is well on this front.

After the fiasco with the Coralian, everyone on board the Gekko has questions, and Holland isn't quite answering them. What are Coralians, and why did the military and Gekkostate try to infiltrate one? Why were Renton and Eureka able to get through, and why is Eureka feeling ill again? Episode 14, "Memory Band", though foremost a recap episode (which I've made my feelings clear on), does reflect on these questions and others through Stoner and his magazine, and it helps focus on the mystery and plot aspects of the series which, for the most part, get ignored in the first half. Bones is somewhat notorious for its use of recaps and flashbacks, and this episode isn't much out of the ordinary for this purpose. What does make it important, however, is that it helps the viewer grasp a better idea of what it is he or she should be focusing on in terms of plot (which, in classical Bones style, is complex and can border on being over-the-top) after the mental abuse suffered at the hand of the Coralian episodes, particularly "Acperience 1".

That being said, there isn't much of note in "Memory Band" if you've paid sufficient attention to the first season, and it's the following episode, "Human Behavior", that marks the true beginning of the season. The story here is a little out of the way and seemingly random: Renton, Matthiew, and Eureka have been sent to Controrad, Renton's true hometown, on an errand to acquire a famously healthy (and expensive) fruit known as the Pancha Nut. Unable to buy one for lack of funds, the trio results to stealing, only to be caught by Renton's uncle, Yucatan Iglesias. It's unclear whether or not Yucatan is Adroc's brother or the brother of Renton's deceased mother, but his ties to the family are defined through his relationship with Adroc, a man he and the other citizens of Controrad idolize for his heroic death.

Yucatan, whose physical design is based on Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop, is an interesting character. He's a compulsive liar, for one thing, and he is obsessed with Adroc and the pride that he's brought to the family name. He chooses to see things a certain way for his own benefit, and he makes things difficult for Renton because of it. To say that Adroc's accomplishments have left a mark on Renton is an understatement; he has always been viewed as a famous child, someone who by all means should rise up to be as great as his father. Renton, however, sees things differently. While the adults have always held certain expectations of him, he himself doesn't want to be his father. In a sense, Renton simply wants to build his own identity, and the adults have never let him get away with it, his uncle included. Yucatan is a man who likes control over his life, and he likes to think that he can use Adroc and his nephew to conform to his way of thinking and to boost his own pride and self-esteem. In the process, he all but tries to destroy Renton's identity through a series of escalating lies that Renton has no choice but to propagate for the safety of Matthieu and Eureka. At first the lies are small, and it's Renton himself who starts by telling his pro-military uncle that his companions are his classmates from military school. Over the course of the episode, Yucatan embellishes the lie with his own stories, making Renton look like the ideal nephew Yucatan wants, rather than the one he caught stealing Pancha nuts from his plantation. The lies culminate in a confrontation between Renton and his uncle when Yucatan realizes that he's harboring two members of Gekkostate. Interestingly enough, Yucatan chooses not to incriminate Renton, but instead presents him as a spy; whether or not that's because of familial love and a desire to protect Renton, or because Yucatan is loathe to destroy his own castle of lies is up to interpretation, but Renton snaps as a result. "I am me!" he screams, pointing a rifle at his uncle before running off in pursuit of Eureka and Mattheiu.

It's taken a while to get to this point, but this is the moment where Renton really begins to change. He has always suffered because of his inability to please the adults in his life, but he never did anything outright to deny those expectations. He let his feelings smother him on the inside, whether it was his anger and bitterness at his father, his own lack of self-worth, or his sense that nothing would ever change, even after accepting Gekkostate's invitation and leaving Bellforest. It it his experience with his uncle that forces him to admit that he wants nothing to do with those expectations, to affirm that he is own individual rather that simply his father's son. His sense of identity and self-confidence only increase when, in an attempt to rescue Eureka and Mattheiu from the military, he realizes that he has actual talent as an LFO pilot. Unfortunately for him, self-confidence easily grows out of control and into over-confidence when you're fourteen years old and discovering who you are.

Eureka herself is changing from the quiet and emotionally restrained girl she was in the first season. This is the first time that she has ever shown herself capable of anger, and Renton would be wise to realize that his own happiness doesn't necessarily extend to everyone around him. Since the Coralian incident, Eureka has been out-of-sorts, and her problem with the Nirvash is only getting worse and stressing her out. She, inversely to Renton, is losing her confidence and starting to feel like she's losing her place in Gekkostate, and watching Renton discover his talent for piloting the Nirvash is the last straw for her. In her view, he's stolen her place, the one thing she was better at than everyone else, and her jealousy and insecurity mark him out as a target for her frustrations. Instead of being happy for him, like he, in his self-centered universe, expected, she's furious and refuses to let him anywhere near the Nirvash in order to keep it to herself. In essence, she's been driven into a corner, and she's determined to stop Renton from taking that from her as well.

Episode 16, "Opposite View", is a complicated episode to talk about. A spiritual successor to the Acperience set, this is a strange little episode that nevertheless has a lot to say about several characters and picks up from where the newly established tensions left off in "Human Behavior". The damages from the battle with the military during the Coralian incident have forced Gekkostate to find a safe place to hide and make repairs, which leads to their occupation of an abandoned trapar mine. This is a melancholy place, a cave full of the memories of people who used to labor there, dreaming, like the gold miners in the 1849 California Gold Rush, of striking it rich. Echoing the lonely and dark atmosphere, the color palette has been subdued to include grays and washed out versions of the formerly vibrant hues we've become used to. Renton himself suddenly finds himself even more isolated from the crew, and now that Eureka is angry at him, he's at a loss with how to deal with her. He doesn't feel that he needs to apologize, which is essentially true, but he doesn't understand her feelings and he doesn't even try. He's indignant that she could be mad at him, and he foolishly tries to point out that he's done nothing wrong by insinuating that what she's feeling is irrational. "It's not like the Nirvash is saying I'm better," he says, under the guise of being uplifting, and of course he only succeeds in angering her further. Renton, however, still doesn't realize what he's done and how she feels, so he puts it down to jealousy and grumbles off to help explore the cave.

Even here, however, Renton finds himself alone as all the members more or less forget about him and leave him wandering the mine on his own. He accidentally comes across Moondoggie and Gidget sharing an intimate moment, increasing his surliness and sense of loneliness. Eureka's rejection of him is eating away at his newly-discovered self-confidence, and he's angry at her for being angry at him, but most of all he wants his relationship with her to go back to the way it was, and being privy to Moondoggie and Gidget's intimacy only makes him feel more lost about it than ever. At some point these thoughts and resentments lead him to his inevitable destination: a house based on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

To say that finding a huge house like this in a cave is bizarre is an understatement. Fallingwater is a historical house, built in the 1930s in Pennsylvania; it's a house meant to embrace nature, to be a part of the waterfall is sits upon while still remaining a modern building. So what is this house doing in a mine in Eureka Seven? Presumably, nothing. In the first place, the house is an illusion, a trapar-induced vision that Renton sees, part of the larger dream he steps into. However, dreams in this series are never simply dreams, and this one is a shared vision, a connection between himself, Eureka, and Anemone. After entering the house and eating his fill, Renton finds himself falling asleep (a dream within a dream) and awakening to an enormous amount of skyfish rushing by and a momentary glimpse of Anemone. Clearly things are becoming more strange, and when Renton follows the skyfish, he finds himself face to face with the person he wanted to see most, and simultaneously, the least: Eureka.

Despite being in a dream, Renton works up his courage to apologize, abandoning his pride and admitting that he doesn't understand Eureka in the process. He confesses to wanting to know her better, but she remains unresponsive, leading to a moment in which theEND arrives to attack, and Renton, finally realizing he's in a dream, throws himself in front of Eureka, while, in her view, he becomes the Nirvash and disappears. When Renton wakes up, the house is gone and he's lying on the floor of the cave. A mind-trip if there ever was one.

Yet this whole sequence does have importance to the plot in the form of character development. We don't get to see much of Anemone's side, but her presence and the fact that she and Eureka suffer from headaches at the same time implies that her role is of much more importance that just simple antagonism. The two more dominant figures, however, are Renton and Eureka themselves. For Renton, this is another indicator of his growth. He's started to realize that maybe, just maybe, the world doesn't revolve around him, and that other people have feelings and reasons for why they feel that way. He's started to come to terms with his own inadequacies and failings, and he's realized that he will never understand Eureka if he doesn't start putting forth the effort to do so. For Eureka, this is about coming to terms with the turmoil within her. The moment in which Renton becomes the Nirvash symbolizes her fear that she no longer has a connection to her machine, and that Renton is edging her out of her place as a pilot and as the person closest to the Nirvash. The world is coming out from under her feet, and she isn't sure what to do about it. Renton's apology, which she of course heard, does little to aid her confusion, and she takes no notice of his desire to know her better. At the moment, Renton is a mystery to her, the person she simultaneously holds most resentment towards and the only one who's bothering to try to understand her. That resentment, however, is winning out.

It's in this state that we find Eureka in episode 17, "Sky Rock Gate". As the men, including Renton, go off to buy reflection film for repairs, Eureka refuses to go and stays to help the other women with the chores, gaining insight into her own feelings from the perspective of others. Sometimes nothing is more helpful than having someone tell you what's wrong with you and helping you cope, and Eureka finds out that she knows far less about herself than people like Gidget and Hilda do just from watching her. Her jealousy out in the open, Hilda cautions her to think about why she she feels that way, and whether or not she's confusing jealousy towards Renton or jealousy towards the Nirvash.

That's a pretty significant step for Eureka to take in her emotional development. Prior to this conversation, her feelings were protective, like she had to keep Renton from corrupting the Nirvash somehow, but now she's unsure if those feelings have arisen because she's becoming more aware of Renton and the changes he's incurring in her life. In a sense, while Renton is feeling upset because she's rejected him, Eureka's upset because she feels the Nirvash has rejected her. While this new perspective doesn't necessarily make her problems go away, it does give her something new to think about, and she manages to let go of some of her anger enough to finally get back on speaking terms with Renton.

Meanwhile, Renton is having his own learning experience through his meeting with the reflection film maker Neil. Neil is a drunkard whose father passed away due to Despair Disease, and bad business has caused him to lose his work ethic and optimism. Despite being a little unreliable and unprofessional, Renton realizes that Neil has a lot of pride in his trade and that all he needed was a push (provided by Ken-Goh) to get back on his feet. When Neil announces he'll go out of business after completing the job, there's a sense of the inevitable made bearable by Neil's own efforts. He tried his best and worked hard, but sometimes giving up is the only way.

It was a tough decision to end this discussion on episode 18 for several reasons. For the most part, continuing past this point is difficult without discussing the effects of the next episode on the rest of the season, and this is already a long enough post as it is. In any case, "Ill Communication" is a very important episode, and one of my personal favorites. With the new reflection film, the repairs are able to get underway, but with the sudden introduction of Brittani-san, Gekkostate suddenly realizes that the mine they're occupying isn't abandoned after all.

My analogy to the Gold Rush of '49 holds most strongly with Brittani. This is a man who never lost his dreams of digging up something worthwhile (though in Eureka Seven, the commodity is trapar instead of gold), to the extent that he essentially abandoned his family in the process. He's a bitter and lonely man who's too afraid to admit that he wasted all those years in pursuit of an empty dream. Yet despite being unpleasant, Renton finds himself drawn to the old man, and it says something about his state of being and character that he prefers keeping company with a man like his grandfather instead of with the group of people he professes to admire. The honeymoon period is over, and Renton is disillusioned with Gekkostate as a whole; his friendship with Brittani alludes to his homesickness and to the fact that he doesn't feel like he belongs among Holland, Eureka, and the others. As for Brittani, he's pleased to finally have someone to care about him and break his spell of loneliness, but Renton isn't enough to dispel his growing sense of discontent and bitterness. Thus, when Renton presents him with a golden opportunity in the form of the famous Nirvash, Brittani decides that it's time to act and attempts to steal the LFO with Renton at gunpoint.

This all has an immense effect on Renton's psyche. He trusted Brittani on the basis of their friendship, and Brittani's betrayal destroys some of his innocence. He can't bring himself to understand why Brittani would lose hope after so many years, and it drives him to depression deep enough that even Holland's return to abuse as escapism does little to faze him. Unfortunately, Eureka chooses this time to finally open up to Renton, though only partially. She gathers up her courage to admit that perhaps he really is a better pilot than she is, and that she's considering letting him have the Nirvash. In a sense, this is an admission that she's giving up everything she has, and that she's on the brink of despair; it's as close to a cry for help as she has ever uttered, but Renton is too caught up in his own pain to realize that she's asking for his support. The world has gone back to revolving around him, except now he isn't remotely happy about it, and Eureka doesn't understand why Renton would feel so betrayed either. In her mind, trust in anything but Holland is something almost foolish, unfathomable, and his depression seems childish to her. Even the Nirvash has betrayed her, so what's so special about Brittani? Somewhere in the interim, Renton and Eureka built a wall between themselves, and both are stuck looking inward instead of trying to meet in the middle.

Welcome to season two.

Quick Thoughts

-Renton, you have the worst manners. A few episodes ago he was angry at the children asking to stay for tea, and now he's intruding into someone's home and eating all their food. Even if it is a dream, that is pretty inconsiderate.

-Perhaps being named after Mark Renton makes you prone to drug trapar-induced hallucinations.

-Every time Anemone gets injected I get anxious. I hate needles.

-Yucatan probably isn't Adroc's brother, because then his surname would be Thurston. I've always wondered if the name Iglesias isn't meant to help expand the ethnic diversity already present in the series.

-My best friend once said these more or less exact words when watching this season: "I love the tension between them, but I wish they would just kiss already!" As for me, I love the angst.

-This might just be the longest post I've ever written, and I'm not even to the really good stuff yet.

-Dat door kick.

-I love seeing Eureka get angry. Nobody does emotion like Nazuka, and I really hate that I didn't just go ahead and write on the whole season at once. But that would be horrendously long and I still have a ton of homework to do.

OP "Shounen Heart" by Home Made Kazoku
Episodes 14-18 Screencaps