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「ラ・ヴィアン・ローズ/Johannson’s book」 (Ra Vian Rōzu)
“La Vie en rose”
When we write the book on Eureka Seven AO, I suspect we’ll look back on this episode as the one where all the pieces started to come together.
There have certainly been flashier episodes of AO – episode 2 (for the sheer “wow” factor) and 14 (the brilliant re-introduction of Eureka and the exploration of her relationship with Ao) come to mind. But I’m not sure there have been more successful ones, and by that I mean this was an ep that seemed to accomplish a great deal both in terms of story and character, and did so in a way that was perfectly under control. Music placement and animation were flawless, characters were on-model, and the pacing was steady without being exhausting. This feels very much like the episode that’s going to provide the framework for the rest of the series.
I have no issue with the sheer amount of plot and intrigue that AO has thrown at us, but at some point the series was going to have to focus on a couple of major threads and build the conclusion around them. The reason I’ve been fine with it is because I have a great deal of faith in Shou Aikawa and figured he had plenty of time to do just that, and we’re seeing the process on display here. When this series started it was very much a character study of Ao, and while he’s always been central to events as the scope of the show has widened, it’s become somewhat less personal. This episode zeroed in directly on Ao once more, and I think it framed all of the colossal events playing out in terms of one very elemental quest – a lonely boy’s desire to find his mother. For all the talk of timelines and world lines and the Byzantine geopolitical intrigue there was a need to make all that about something manageable and human, and that’s it.
That’s not to say there weren’t massive amounts of information downloaded too, but plot-wise it now seems to be towards a larger purpose. And there was definitely a shift there too, finally answering some questions without raising more than were answered. It’s Stanley who dubs Nirvash’s new weapon the “quartz gun”, and it’s Nitorin Rajkumar who first gives voice to what it did – “damage the past”. I’d argue that damage might be a subjective term, but the point is that Ao firing of the weapon appears to have eliminated the scub burst from the past in Norway, and in the process altered the memories of everyone about the past. Except Ao, that is – is it because he’s, as Truthie puts it, a “child of the scub coral”? Mind you, I’m highly suspicious of Stanley here – I always have been but now so more than ever. I found his “This is a discussion for adults” jab at Ao both insulting and highly suspect, as was his reluctance not to dig too deeply into the medical issues suddenly facing GenBlue staffers (scub coral growing in the lungs). Stanley is a bad man, and he knows much more than he’s letting on.
The “damage” is done, in that Ao has definitely heard Rajkumar’s hypothesis and believes it, and it leads him to explore Goldilocks’ fate (garnering a somewhat sympathetic ear from Team Gazelle). His quest leads him to Ireland, where he finds Chloe and Naeve happily living and working at the family bakery. While Ao loses his nerve at the last moment and doesn’t announce his presence, it’s clear he’s both relieved that the girls are alive and horrified that his weapon has the power to alter reality. It’s also well-worth noting that during this expedition Georg continues to alternate between personalities (as he does later in the episode) and that the mysterious Elena tells Ao “I’m the only one who understands you.” I find her comments especially interesting in light of the revelation that she’s writing the manga that chronicles the adventures of Team Pied Piper (the anime adaptation of which is struggling in the ratings as some condemn it as a “terrorist propaganda anime” after GenBleu’s secret hoarding of quartz is outed).
There’s also a good deal of headway made on the question of alternate realities, and Johanson’s role in it. In his book (in Han’s possession, courtesy of Nakamura) he states that his adopted son told him of a reality where there were 7 billion people (Ao’s world has 3.5) and power is derived from nuclear fission, and where there was no massive burst after World War II that wiped out Tokyo. But it’s not “our” world, seemingly – there were “massive scub bursts in 1907 in Siberia” that dramatically impacted the Soviet Union (which didn’t exist then in our timeline) and China, and “all religions are obsolete”. Johanason states the both the Scub Coral and Secrets are manipulating human history, and dreams of a world where humans exist free of both of them.
This would seem to be the world that Truth is seeking to return to – or perhaps, the reality that he’s trying to restore. And the quartz gun would seem to be the key to all this – indeed, perhaps the key to everything. It launches itself under its own power and combines with Nirvash, and “eats” the quartz from a scub burst Pied Piper and the Coalition forces are squabbling over. But Truth steals it from Ao, and submerges Ao in the ocean – where he meets again with Eureka. This time, though, it’s clear that this Eureka is Ao’s mother – she recognizes him instantly, and tells him that she’s only able to intersect with his timeline for a few moments. She also tells him that although ten years have passed since she extracted the giant quartz and was sent to an alternate timeline (she notes how much Ao has grown) that only a few days have passed for her. Especially conspicuous in this exchange is her remark that “To the quartz, time and space are the same.” I don’t understand the full implications of that, but I believe it’s going to be central to unraveling all the mysteries at the heart of AO.
In that short and poignant scene in Nirvash with Ao interacting with the astral Eureka, everything that’s important in the series is captured in its essence. I think BONES has done a superb job with Eureka in her brief appearances, showing her as heartbreakingly beautiful and kind – an idealized boy’s vision of his most mother, yes, but one that surely resonates with someone who loved the original E7. Ao has committed himself now to bringing Eureka home to him by whatever means possible, and the quartz gun is seemingly the key – but the gun is “incomplete” according to his mother, and Renton has been searching for it himself. And when the moment comes, Ao can’t bring himself to fire it at Truthie, even as the latter encourages him to do so – Truth wants Ao to fire the gun because it will alter this world he loathes as false, but Ao fears to do so knowing that it might have great consequences for the only people he knows as “real”.
Clearly then, we’ve entered a new (and probably final) major phase of the story. Goldilocks are gone from the OP, and their role in the series is likely done. Ao at long last has his goal firmly in mind, even if he doesn’t know yet how he’ll achieve it. Is completing the gun simply a matter of consuming enough quartz, or is there more to it than that? Of greater import is the role the still-unseen Renton will play in the final resolution, and I think it’s safe to say that Ao is going to be faced with a very difficult choice – just what consequences is he willing to shoulder the responsibility for, if it means getting his mother back? I don’t expect any of this to be easy for him – it certainly hasn’t been so far – but in the end AO always had to find its resolution in Ao’s personal journey, and this week it took a big step towards that resolution.
Preview
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Apparently in the next episode Noah eats some jelly beans… not 100% sure on that though…
Another disappointing episode.
This coming from someone who has Deviluke as their name? Please, To-LOVE-ru has nothing on E7 AO…
You are saying it like I like To Love Ru a lot I just thought the name was really good. But I rather watch To Love Ru than this disappointment of a show, coming from an Eureka Seven fan.
I got 15 dislikes. Well it shows that there are 15 people out there who are butthurt over someones opinion even though its true.
I only see one butt-hurt person here, I’m gonna let you guess who it is 😛
See… what you did was state it was your opinion… then you asserted it as a fact… See the problem there?
Ha! clever joke now tell me one about how good this anime is. My opinion is FACTUAL!
No opinion is factual.
Or they could just disagree. No need to make a bigger deal out of it than it is.
Not as good as the Eureka Seven………..When is Renton going to appear???
Even Renton cant redeem this anime from how bad it is.
So, Like i said, twist ending: elena is a normal ass teen girl in “our world” who wrote a fan manga the end. Not time travel after all..
In the end, Ao will probably have to decide between keeping the world as it is or restore it to how it was. Scub Coral appeared way too early in Ao’s timeline.
Truth probably wants a timeline where scub coral never evolved.
https://randomc.net/image/Eureka%20Seven%20AO/Eureka%20Seven%20AO%20-%2017%20-%20Large%2010.jpg
Spin off manga plz?
What exactly is Ao supposed to be in that picture?
I guess a rabbit-sloth type creature?
but then it’s more troll than anything since Elena’s the one who is writing it…
I alologise for being negative but I hope I’m not the oy one who walks walk away from this episode feeling the same way.
As GE said, all the pieces are falling in to place and I can’t help but feel this sequel wasn’t needed. The original E7 was so neatly wrapped up that AO feels like its intruding on that. I could list many reasons why I feel this series doesn’t do the original any justice but if people are enjoying it I don’t want to detract from it.
I’ll just say that this feels like the Darker than the BLACK sequel to me. It introduces too many things that doesn’t work and misses what made the original so good. I won’t be watching anymore AO and I will not be commenting here again, I’ve never wrestled with feelings for a show like this before.
I’m gonna respectfully disagree about the comparison between AO and Ryuusei no Gemini. RoG had a neat idea for a sequel but gave it too small a timeframe to make it work, and even screwed with a few characters that were great in the original and became pointless (Mao, July, Kirihara).
AO is a completely different story that tries to explain the general mythos of the original. So far, the only character from the original we’ve seen is Eureka (and possibly Renton in a later episode) and unlike in RoG, her change in character makes sense and her appearance is crucial to the story.
I just hope this series can tell a story properly with its own characters before it’s over.
I’d agree.
In all honesty Ao shouldn’t even get a sequel label. It works as a hybrid of a sequel and prequel. Ao manages to elaborate on the events that led up to the Earth getting covered by Scub Coral and the exodus of humanity into space. At the same time it provides a follow up to Eureka and Renton’s relationship, in other words: Ao.
I find the concept a very clever one and so far very well executed.
But…if you agreed, why did you thumb me down?
Here’s one way to look at it:
AO is to E7 as Speaker for the Dead is to Ender’s Game.
Personally I think it’s E7’s Chrono Trigger to AO’s Chrono Cross …
Regardless, it’s fun to watch despite a few flat characters. From a sort-of-fan of E7 (it just took too long to reach its admittedly awesome climax), AO has done most things right so far.
Reading Steiner.
everythingg like flash of light,i totally don’t understand what’s going on
for some reason now they were suddenly talking about Johanson blah blah now
the glad point is Eureka is still alive and she on somewhere dimension.
okay, so this is the chronology I’m settled on after rewatching 1-16 after todays ep (and in context of it)
12,200ad\\ eureka seven ends.
121210ad\\ scub coral begin to disappear from the original e7 timeline (seemingly also portions of the souls of half of humanity/scub population existing in extra-dimensional space to avoid the limit of questions because why not..)
12211ad\\eureka and renton use a rotting gekko-go as in an experiment with scub coral. Eureka travels back in time to 2025.
*************
what happens between here, and when she returns in 2013 to give birth to AO, seemingly 3 months since her initial contact with the AO universe. also events between her arrival, and Ao’s early childhood are not clearly defined as of yet.
*************
2015 — eureka shows, for the first time that secrets can be defied by extracting “quartz” from the scub. she returns to her own time, seemingly minutes after her departure, despite having spent at least 2-3 years on this earth.
2025 — the events of eureka seven: AO.
I think its pretty clear where this is all going. Truth and the secrets are still elusive with a clear reason for their existence though. But in the end AO will probably end up in e7 land with his mom and maybe naru. (even though he obviously loves fleur now. >_<) And a if bones has the balls an earth with all the people he loves that maybe never had him or Eureka.. or scub or secrets, a johannsons paradise. This was the formula of the original too — the scenario of deweys plan, that was a severely perverted version of adrock's plan was still based on a weird ill defined book. That said – best anime ever,
love from a few months from now.
Forgot to mention — all appearances of “astral eureka” so far are real. The last one was, and this show is consistent with its imagery. Its clear there is an Eureka communicating with Ao from a future where this is playing out as well. So future eureka is the source of all blue glowy eurekas running around.
Oh, and truth is totes Dominic and Anemone’s kid. bwahahahaha.
Oh, and I don’t see this mentioned often, but It appears that ALL scub coral, in all of history come from the “future” to a world that “shouldn’t” have had them at all, which implies original eureka seven is a parallel worldline in a multi-verse. This is important.
no more chloe 🙁
i (and maybe ao as well) could have used more chloe 🙁
(and ayu matsuura, of course)
Even when everything else is falling into place, I still have a few questions: who IS Elena and why didn’t Ao asked his mom why her earlier self is giving birth to a daughter…
Either the quarts and/or the scub coral are sent from another time/space or they’re “gods”…
…farfetched?
i dont get it what do mean by this ” Ao fears to do so knowing that it might have great consequences for the only people he knows as “real”.
I dont get idont get it i dont get it please as many opinioon as the internet allow.
Not sure what’s so hard to figure out about that… Ao knows the Quartz gun removes things from the timeline as if they never existed… He also knows that can have unintended consequences (see removing of the Norway Scub Coral when he was getting rid of the secrets), so what would happen if he “killed” truth with the gun? Could it in turn make it where people he loves in the current world nor exist as well?
Alll of you look up the anime Shangri-La are Utopian. Utopian BIg Blue World.
So I am guessing Ao is eventually going to end up “alone” due to the quartz gun “correcting” everything?
Unlike Hideki Anno secretly replaces Shou Aikawa, I’d bet against that. It just doesn’t feel like a BONES ending.
Hopefully we don’t get a Kawamori like plot twist that feels like a troll.
That sounds very possible seeing the quartz gun as a “correction pen” look-a-like. Since it corrects history, where scubs were not meant to exist yet. But then will Ao correct history? I don’t think BONES would remove every single character from this “wrong” timeline…
By the way, any idea what the “konpaku drive” is? Sounds pretty similar to Compact Drive but should be different….
Someone’s having a field day with thumbs down trolling.
This episode gives much food for thought – I’m going to enjoy trying to piece this all together ^^”
(theme music piano playing) Ao: “Hey mom, so I want to live in THIS world!”
Naru: “Congratulations!” Elena: “Congratulations!” Eureka: “Congratulations!” Truth: Congratulations!” Noah: “orrrh! orrh!” (All the people Ao knows tells him, “Congratulations!”)
Ao: “Thank you to my mother, and goodbye to my father.”
Ao is in the name, Alpha and Omega.
if that actually happens this will be my response.
Never has Ao looked more like Renton than in this episode. When he acquired his resolve it was just a pallette swap of renton, and it was AWESOME. Renton needs to appear and make some waves soon otherwise I’ll be so disappointed D: He’s looking for the weapon, so perhaps he’ll get Ao and find it?
Actually what I want the show to do (something some fantasy and scifi shows do, but not enough) is reveal all the secrets (pun unintended) about 4 episodes before the end, and then have fun with them making it more and more epic for the finale. Like in the last 3 episodes we knew most of the answers to questions the series had asked, and then the final three episodes was just the action characters and story riding the wave of it’s implications. Please do the same again AO!
looking at ann turns out this ep was another (great) Arikawa and Mizushima team up (he did the storyboards.) As big a suprise as any on the show!
Eureka seven AO was the right show at the absolute worst time.
After the Last Exile sequal(whitch I havent seen)bombed I think pepole were hard wired to think this one would suck to.
It got lost in the crowd amongst all the huge projects that debuted this past season.
The brodcasting keeps getting screwed up going on break for weeks at a time when this is a series cleary not built for that kind of schedule. Hopefully the DVD crowd is more appreciative
Pepole are having a hard time accepting Dai Sato isnt still around (out of heh Random Curiousity anyone know the story there?)and aren’t intrested in someone elses vision.
Plus it looks like the finale will air smack dab in the middle of the new season’s debuts.
We still love you AO!
Spoiler alert
Show Spoiler ▼
Since apparently someone loves the thumbs down button a lot, I’m going to say this and just not respond to any comment. I’m honestly too mad to care who thumbs me up or down at this point; it means nothing.
for a two-week delay, the so-called “climax” that was hyped to fuck really was the biggest let down I’ve seen. The teasing of Eureka only resulted in the biggest troll I’ve seen pulled by Bones, and Ao manages to get a cannon that can reset time. This is just asking for a deus ex machina resolution of the worst kind. 17 is not any better, with the only things noteworthy being Elena’s dialogue with Fleur proving how meta Bones has become about this series (even the characters know how badly this show is going and know how fucked they are) and yet more teasing by Eureka that we may see Renton appear soon, since the time cannon is something he is looking for.
The show has 7 episodes to go and wrap everything up, and let me just say right now this has just been one gigantic boring slog from beginning to present point. Say what you like about the pacing of the original, but AT LEAST SHIT HAPPENED TO MAKE IT BEARABLE. This show has no concept of plot or sense of direction, the characters are duller than lead, and the only motivation I have to keep watching this is in the hope of Eureka and eventually Renton showing up. You know something is wrong when that is the only reason you have to keep coming back to a show. As a sequel, this is the worst I’ve ever seen Bones do, and I’ve seen Bones do a lot of bad shows.
I’ll just close this rant with something that has been bugging me for a very long time: Bones is not the studio it once was. I remember a long time ago when people used to hail them as the masters of Japanese animation, but obviously with shows like this, Star Driver, UN-GO, and even arguably FMA:B, those days are gone. The simple fact that the studio is trying to revive a franchise that is 7 years old and has really not much going for it in the way of continuation with a sequel that is decisively inferior is proof that they’ve lost their touch. Now, Bones has 7 episodes to turn this around and surprise us, but with how disappointing they’ve been this whole time, I’m not holding my breath. And if it turns out they can’t make something worthwhile out of this, I’ll never watch another production by them again.
Another good episode.
No Rebecca voice over during the preview. Does that mean she her existence in the story might be changed, or am I over-thinking things?
I see Ao returning and restoring the timeline to what it should have been in Eureka 7 by the last episode. With that, GenBleu would be erased, everyone’s lives will return to what they were before the scub coral inadvertently entered that timeline and altered history.
The worse case scenario is erasing his existence. I remember the end frame for Eureka 7 was showing only Eureka’s daughter, not a son. I wish I could find that picture again. The young boy could not have been her brother. Remember: Eureka gave hints that she was pregnant with a girl and not a boy, so Ao should have an older sister. That’s my thinking so far.
And, in all honesty…
Show Spoiler ▼
but Ao isn’t going to end up with fleur or naru if he erases his own existence within this phase of spacetime. though everything must go somewhere, the scub that he nukes probably is displaced to somewhere else…
I’m not sure that Ao committing suicide would be a direction Bones is opting for…
That’s why I called it a “worse case scenario.” I’m sure it won’t happen, but that weapon is pretty powerful in and of itself.
People need to remember that the “Quartz Gun” doesn’t change everything, it only wipes out Scub Coral and any subsequent Bursts it made in an area throughout history .. so basically .. when Ao fired the gun near the north pole it erased all the Scub Coral and any effects it had from North Europe … it doesn’t wipe people or change history randomly .. only people who are related/affected by Scub Coral and its Bursts have their lives changed .. the effects are not as dramatic/random as some people make them seem.
And what’s with the random “Eureka 7:Ao is boring”, “Bones are not like they used to be”, blah blah .. yada yada .. nobody is forcing you to watch the show nor did you pay a penny to watch it, so please spare us the unnecessary waste of time reading such comments and stop watching it XD
That makes sense.
You erase the scub coral near Norway and the timeline gets restored to its original version and related events gets “corrected” so to speak.
So, it’s actually a good thing then.
Now, about Truth… he doesn’t seem to like that weapon at all. Why…?
One of the other things ‘shaft’ Georg states is that even though the timeline has been altereed this doesn;t necessarily mean that everyone now has a better life.
Philosophical food for thought. Anything that happens in the past no matter however seemingly insignificant is a component of the present. We’d all love the power to go back and change a stupid decision or an embarrasing moment. Ao actually has the (strangely reminescent gekko-go cockpit shaped lance of longliness), but the reality of being the only one aware of the disrupted timeline would likely drive someone insane (or at least others to think you’re insane.) Ao certainly has a major puzzle piece now!
People need to remember that the “Quartz Gun” doesn’t change everything, it only wipes out Scub Coral and any subsequent Bursts it made in an area throughout history .. so basically .. when Ao fired the gun near the north pole it erased all the Scub Coral and any effects it had from North Europe … it doesn’t wipe people or change history randomly .. only people who are related/affected by Scub Coral and its Bursts have their lives changed .. the effects are not as dramatic/random as some people make them seem .. also where it is fired is important .. it will only affect the area where it is fired .. it seems “completing it” means it will affect the whole world and wipe out all Scub Coral or something like that.
And what’s with the random “Eureka 7:Ao is boring”, “Bones are not like they used to be”, blah blah .. yada yada .. nobody is forcing you to watch the show nor did you pay a penny to watch it, so please spare us the unnecessary waste of time reading such comments and stop watching it if you don’t like it XD
I don’t know what’s happening now but I love Fleur.
well for somebody who has never watched the original eureka 7 its very intriguing and i very much engaging with the plot which i dont normally not a veteran anime watcher so gomenasai in advance which is probably why i dont know who renton is or perhaps forgotten since i recently caught up from where i left off. however i enjoy the development and await further episodes perhaps after this when watching the original series everything will come into place.
I know its crazy on my part, but I’m kinda caterogizing Georg’s personality changes to more than a simple secondary effect. Even a secret would not communicate with such philosophical lines and especially not since their only goal are the quartz, and I don’t see him being that familiar with his questions, even if he’s a AI. In my honest opinion, I believe Renton could be the one sometimes provoking the dual personalities and calling Ao that way.