ON SECOND WATCHING, HOWEVER, I have to say that most of the original disdain has evaporated. I enjoyed the series thoroughly on my first watching, but on my second and third, I was able to see the emotions and subtle development that pieced this series together into a wonderful and comprehensible whole.

I can understand that many people find Renton a weak, emo eyesore who pollutes the series with his idealistic whininess, but I found his character and his romance with Eureka refreshing, if at times a little bit exasperating. All of the characters have their own problems and decisions to make, and those decisions move the story in one direction or another.

Eureka Seven is a beautiful and amazing series that, while it does have just a couple inconsistencies, is an amazing, amazing series that tears at your heart and keeps you glued to your seat with its amazing characters and its vivid universe.

PS. The movie sucked. Despite my complaints I still like the show but in a different context. But that movie was horrendous and might offend those who liked the series more than me.

If they did get rid of Renton, the series would have been much better – definitely agree with you on that.

Borrowing song names for the episode titles doesn’t bother me so much because episode titles are what you could perhaps call “non-diagetic”, in that they don’t form part of the immediate on-screen world. I can accept the use of Carl Orff and Richard Wagner’s music on the soundtrack to the film Excalibur, but if I saw an orchestra and choir riding along after King Arthur’s army and playing O Fortuna, it would be ridiculous (and a rip-off of Monty Python).

I agree that ridiculous names are part and parcel of much anime, which is partly why I don’t watch any post-80s Gundam.

I also like the name Anemone with the Japanese mispronunciation — Eureka too, actually.

If they were going to conceive it from the start as a full-on, integrated postmodern work, it might have worked. Sorry to always come back to this, but Evangelion is, as always, the template. The use of old, sunken battleships as the surnames of nearly all the characters gives the series an air of impending doom and connects it to the war movie lineage that Anno was drawing from, not to mention the classic anime like Yamato that he grew up on. Eureka tries to pull a similar trick by tying the pop culture references from the creators’ youth into a similar thread of nostalgia and generational shift among a section of the target viewers. The difference is that the names from Evangelion still work for someone with no knowledge of Japanese history as standalone names that a normal person might have, whilst at the same time having a sort of classical aura all of their own that comes directly from the sound of the words. “Katsuragi Misato” rings very nicely in the ears.

This is just an example of the sort of self-indulgent laziness that plagues Eureka 7. I do like the name Anemone though — it comes from Murakami Ryu’s “Coin Locker Babies”, which I read as a student, but it’s got a nice sound, especially in the Japanese mispronunciation (I seem to remember erading that Toji, Kensuke and Hikari’s names from Evangelion came from Murakami too, although not from anything I’ve read).

I also doubt my 14-year old self would have taken to Renton, considering I still feel he was more of a 10-year old or younger. Holland’s immaturity was the main reason I stayed sympathetic towards Talho, so if anything, I guess that kept me going for a little while.