Eureka 7: A Poket Full of Rainbows Review

Even if "wasting precious time, doing nothing" is one of the best feats of strength I have in my Curriculum Vitae, sometimes I feel that I abuse it too much. Seriously, it seems that I have just too many hours to spare, and, instead of doing something useful and constructive, like watching Tsukuyomi Moon Phase for the seventh billion time, I lose myself in extra-curricular activities, such as giving Eureka 7: A Pocket Full of Rainbows a chance to leave me amazed, and virtually without words. I should stop that someday, it's getting extremely tiresome.



But first things first. I was never reluctant to try the Eureka movie, simply because I never expected it to impress me more than the series did. It's just another milk cow, following today's "let's make more money as soon as possible, with minimal effort" trend. I, for one, have absolutely no problem with this, for all that I care they could have made little creamy pieces of crap walking around the universe, pretending to fight Image while alt-tabbing to their porn websites, because, in the end, the loss is not mine, it's theirs. The worst thing that can happen when a production like this fails is me (or any watcher out there) losing two incredible boring hours in front of the screen, falling asleep now and then between the (quite few) interesting scenes. All in all, while the series was indeed something admirable, with a strong all-around script, some memorable characters (both in a good and a bad way) and enough bullshit to keep you entertained for the whole 52 episodes, the movie seems to me either rushed, or developed in a momentary lapse of creativity.



So, what exactly is the problem with A Pocket Full of Rainbows? Oh boy, where to start. First of all, we have Renton, the stereotype of male character that you begin to hate the moment you set eyes upon him. Personally, I have developed over the years an extremely sincere hatred towards such individuals in real life - the indecisive male, who can't make a stand on his own because he is a deplorable sissy. And when he finally makes a groundbreaking decision, it happens either when it is too late, either because someone was there to give him a kick in the ass and to push him forward. These are the guys that have their lunch stolen on a daily basis in elementary school, that get beaten to a pulp by younger kids in front of the classroom, and whose sexual experiences consist in 3-4 gigabytes of *.jpg. The producers managed to somehow make Renton bearable in the series by making us, the viewers, feel sorry for his poor soul. But in the movie, the desire to spill his guts all over Eureka's naked body grows exponentially with every damn minute.



Second, we have a problem with the story. Following in the footsteps of Final Fantasy: Advent Children, A Pocket Full of Rainbows is something you must NOT watch if you haven't seen the series before (in Advent Children's case, if you haven't played the game before). Why? Because, bluntly put, you will not understand a single thing. Nothing. Nada. Well, maybe except a very thin plot line, where a young male spends his early years alongside a young (and hot) female, then she gets kidnapped by bad guys, then he gets mad and enters the military, then he fights against a mysterious invading alien force, and then you press Alt+F4 because all is getting blurry and completely pointless. But the bad part is yet to come. While these things mentioned here apply strongly to people new to the Eureka universe, those of us who managed to watch the series before are in for even more surprises. Bad ones, I might add - it's like starting all over again. Everything is so dense, the flashbacks are so numerous and the story is way too huge to fit in a 2 hour movie. They start telling us something, stop in the middle of the explanation, then joyfully move on to a different thing. It's like a woman giving you a blow job and stopping right before the big bang. Except Eureka 7 is more puzzling than that.



The characters themselves act weird enough for us to rise a suspicious eyebrow. The relationship between Eureka and Renton hardly develops, they are practically in love since before they were born, all that's missing are some wild sex scenes, a marriage and a divorce. And a couple of semi-robot kids. Holland seems like a bad guy but he actually ain't, though his stubborn personality manages to sometimes piss people off. In a way, he's just like Renton - a narrow minded asshole who does not care for anything but himself. The difference between him and Gayton is that Holland actually takes action. Eureka 7 would not be Eureka 7 if Anemone wouldn't show up. But trust me, when I saw a grandma Anemone with wrinkles, I almost had a heart attack. I mean, it is a blasphemy for any respectable anime to create an OLD pink haired chick. Pink hair is reserved for lolis. Period. But even when she turns young again, Anemone loses her charm - she's just a smart pacifist little brat with no regards to violence - I surely missed the crazy, psycho Anemone from the series, and the times she went Shion-mode, burning everything that lived in her path. Overall, every single character acts differently from the series, as if they all were stoned by the perverted power of marijuana.



Animation-wise, A Pocket Full of Rainbows is fair enough. After all, we're talking Bones here. Everything runs smooth, the backgrounds are pretty damn well chosen, and the human (?!) Eureka at the end of the movie deserves a high five for hawtness. But even so, the (very few) action scenes are poorly developed. It is like they were made on the run. Nothing sparkling, nothing really epic, like in the series, just a couple of fast forwarding pew-pew laser beams, and a giant robot here and there. And that is all. Things culminate way too fast in this movie, leaving us, in the end, with a strange taste of desilusion. And this is something coming from someone who merely "enjoyed" the series - I'm afraid to see a hardcore fan's reaction.



I'm not saying that A Poket Full of Rainbows is bad per se, not at all. The intentions were there, true enough, but the way the script was childishly handled is pretty disastrous, if not even more. It's actually a sad thing, I had somehow hoped, deep inside, that this movie would prove me wrong when I always say that a follow-up can never reach the potential of the original. Seems I was right again.