Eureka Seven Hi Evolution 1 Review — Don’t ask For it, Go Win it on Your Own

Psalm of Planets: Eureka Seven was one of the best anime series’ to grace the television screen in 2005. Its characters were multi-dimensional, it had great animation, and the story was touching. It went on to run for 50 episodes, which is a rarity in today’s age. After the disappointing Eureka Seven: AO, Bones Studio set out to do something new with one of their most popular franchises. Instead of doing another TV series, they decided to go with a trilogy of films, with one installment coming out every year starting in 2017. While Bones hyped up the fact that there were 30 minutes of “new” footage and the trailers looked excellent, the end result was not what we were expecting.

Adroc Speaks

The best part of this film is the first 30 minutes or so. We actually see Adroc Thurston, in the flesh, and he speaks. We see what happened during the first Summer of Love. Whether or not this is canon within the TV series is debatable, although I find it doubtful. It may explain why Dewey became the way he did though. Aside from Adroc, Talho, Eureka, and Holland, no one else really says much, and Adroc is the only character who seems to have any depth. He is a man of deep regret, as the plan he created to save mankind would actually end it. He sacrifices everything to save mankind, noting his regret that he would not be able to be there for his son, Renton.

He tells Holland to take care of “the children” (I took it to be his children, and he does say he thinks of Eureka as his child), which is such a poignant moment given what we see in the flashbacks in the film and what we saw in the television series. Much of the footage is actually recycled from the series, so we do see some of Holland’s more extreme actions (like threatening to kill Renton if he ever pilots the Nirvash again).

Boy Meets Girl … Sort of?

If you never saw the original Eureka Seven anime, this film is going to be very confusing. The most important aspect of the entire series is Renton and Eureka’s relationship. We see it mature and develop throughout 50 episodes. It’s a touching, beautiful story. In Eureka Seven: Hi Evolution 1, we get maybe two or three scenes with them together, and they are just flashbacks. They speak to each other just once. Renton is the only character who gets any development in the film at all, and even then it’s hard to pick that up because the film constantly shifts from flashback to flashback, then to flashing forward to another flashback, and so on.

“Don’t ask for it; go win it on your own. Do that and you’ll succeed.”

To say it’s a jumbled mess is a massive understatement. The film even repeats flashbacks at the end of the film and the climax was more about Renton and his development throughout the narrative, which he is telling in real time.

Charles Beams

The second greatest aspect of the film is we get so much of Charles. Charles Beams was one of the best characters in the original TV series and had a huge influence on Renton, even after his demise. What was really unclear here was if the narrative followed the series and Ray and Charles adopted Renton as a child, he ran away to the Gekko and then returned, or if they merely found him like they did in the series.

This is one of the huge conundrums of Hi Evolution 1: everything is jumbled because the story jumps back and forth so much. It doesn’t tell a cohesive narrative and the “climax”, if you could call it that, is simply character development that makes no sense unless you’ve seen the series. Even though characters like Charles and Ray are in the film, they don’t exactly do much. Their own arcs or motivations aren’t explained at all. And those who have watched the series know what they are going to do. Eureka Seven: Hi Evolution 1 felt like one gigantic setup, not a feature film in its own right.

A Film Dependent on Nostalgia

The narrative in Eureka Seven: Hi Evolution 1 jumped around so much it was incredibly difficult to follow. It had no cohesive plot. It started out strong, but after the first Summer of Love ended, along with most of the original footage, the film deteriorated quickly. Even the music was a disappointment, considering the same composer who wrote the music for the original series and Pocketful of Rainbows, which was a superior film, returned to score this Hi Evolution 1. After the original footage at the beginning of the movie, the film went back to a 4:3 aspect ratio as opposed to 16:9, which was incredibly distracting. It made it even more obvious that they were just using recycled footage.

Ultimately, Eureka Seven: Hi Evolution 1 relied on the nostalgia of a 13-year-old anime series. The selling point was to give fans what they wanted after all the complaints about Eureka Seven: AO. Instead, the film felt like a giant cash grab. I really wanted to like Eureka Seven: Hi Evolution 1, as Eureka Seven is one of my favorite anime series’ of all time. I just couldn’t. Nothing really happened in Hi Evolution 1. The preview for the next film looked interesting, and I’ll probably see it as a fan who watched the original series as it was airing in Japan, but I’m not holding my breath. This is really disappointing coming from Bones. They really should follow their own advice.

“Don’t ask for it, go win it on your own. Do that and you’ll succeed“.