So we’ve passed the 4th straight week of major exams, and tensions have been running higher than usual.  Thankfully, you can vent your frustrations by screaming at a projector screen in a crowded room with your fellow anime fanatics.  This week, we’re covering the 3rd Act of [C] and the Eureka Seven movie.  Down your reading beverage of choice and leave your pride at the door.

[C] 7 – 8

Episode 7 starts as a flashback episode covering Souichirou Mikuni’s past.  Although he used to be a musician, he began to work for his businessman father out of desperation.  Souichirou’s father spent every moment using money to build and stabilize a network for his company to grow.  As such, he amassed enough money to create power.  The atmosphere in the company is therefore cold, and Souichirou despises working for his father.  Mikuni also has a hospitalized younger sister named Takako, who has an unnamed condition.  However, her condition worsens, and sending her to America for treatment is her only chance for survival.  Conveniently, the company is also beginning to nosedive.  In order to save face (and money), the father refuses to send Takako and also prevents Souichirou from looking for money elsewhere.  Souichirou asks how his father could put the welfare of the company before that of his family.  His father replies that he has more to protect than his family, and he is therefore a businessman first, and a father second.  Of course, this seals Takako’s fate, and Souichirou becomes obsessed with taking everything away from his father.  During her final conscious moments with her brother, she says that because she no longer has a future, she wishes that the days could continue like this forever.  Shortly afterward, who should come floating up through the floor but yours truly.

Since Masakaki took his sweet time, Souchirou’s sister is now comatose, so he also hates the District.  Therefore, he takes steps to control the District and protect reality, spiting the ambivalence of those who created the District.

The second half of the episode is told through MYSU’s perspective.  Basically, she recalls Kimimaro as a flake, but she warms up to him and his overtly emotional ways.  Kimimaro is also becoming more interested in exactly why the Assets take their various forms, since they are supposedly the lost Futures of their respective Entrés.  The more MYSU understands about Kimimaro, the more…attached she becomes.

Episode 8 is where things get weird, and I mean WEIRD.  It opens with a view of the Southeast Asian Financial District in Singapore.  However, the giant coin in the center of the District has the total assets of the city as only $365 billion…and falling.  Talk at the Starling Guild is grim, as they prepare for the bankruptcy of that District in an event known as [C].  Apparently, if and when a District collapses in a country, the entire country is erased.  As for Japan, the negative effects of its own District are accelerating.  Kimimaro also starts noticing non-Entrés acting very strangely.

In addition to that prevalent vacuous expression, people keep dropping things, like all. the. time.  It’s as though everyone is trapped in a daze.  And what about the bustling city landscape?

In fact, only Mr. Ebara seems to have enough sense to string together more than 2 sentences, and he was about to jump off a building.  In order to keep Ebara from committing suicide, Kimimaro investigates how to reclaim the Future that Masakaki took from Ebara.  Once in the District, Kimimaro summons Masakaki, much to his amusement.

Kimimaro offers to pay even 100 times the initial value for Ebara’s Future, but it seems that one cannot simply buy back a Future.  When asked why, Masakaki simply says that such matters are decided by the Investors, the beings that actually control the nature of the District itself.  Although Kimimaro demands to see the Investors, Masakaki basically hangs up on him.  Upon further investigation via the Info Broker, no one has ever been able to reclaim a Future taken by the District.  The Info Broker then suggests that Kimimaro simply compensate Ebara for his lost children by paying billions of Yen.  However, even MYSU thinks that such a method is wrong.

Meanwhile, Ms. Sato notes that all major reports are now indicating ever-negative outlooks for the future of humanity.  She meets with the Info Broker in the real world, who informs her that key members of the Starling Guild may be considering changing sides.  As the Southeast Asian District continues to freefall, Mikuni orders the Guild to increase its defensive funds as much as possible by defeating the wealthiest non-Guild members.

Things continue to worsen in the lives of everyone around Kimimaro.  Mr. Ebara is killed in a traffic accident.  As for Hanabi, she literally throws away her dream of becoming a teacher and begins to sink into a depression.

While sitting at an almost-deserted playground, Kimimaro notices a mother giving her young son a 1000 Yen bill.  The wind knocks the bill toward Kimimaro, who notices that it’s just more Midas Money.  When he goes to hand the boy the bill, the boy disappears right before his eyes.

Later that evening, Kimimaro encounters the Info Broker in the real world, who offers to exchange currency.  When asked if he already makes enough money in the District, the Info Broker states that he does all this in the name of building trust, which has far more value.  On the subject of getting money in exchange for one’s Future, he sums it up very effectively.

Kimimaro chooses the Future, so he returns to the District to burn a large pile of Midas Money.  Although the gesture is largely symbolic about the physical weakness of money, it is also fruitless.  Ms. Sato tells him that while physically weak, the trust that people have in the paper money is what gives it value.  The trust is not weakened, so the District can just issue more Midas Money without fear.

After a quick confrontation between Kimimaro and Mikuni, Mikuni departs to the real world with the other executive Guild members to deal with [C].  We cut to a view of the giant coin in Southeast Asian District just as the Total Assets counter reaches 0.  The District itself begins to dissolve, and buildings and people start disappearing left and right.  Then, some giant green tentacles reach out from the ominous green sky and begin pulling the giant coin up into the sky.  During this time, the Assets around the District begin screaming and exploding into Midas Money, with a different-dressed Masakaki floating over the carnage while laughing maniacally.

So, we’re now 2/3 into the story, and the tension that was simmering has now come to a boil.  It’s nice to see the show finish developing its main characters before the actual conflict begins.  That said, I’m a little disappointed that the various minor characters have basically become barometers for the state of the real world.  I know that they are supposed to give some sense of relation between Kimimaro and everyday life, but it feels like everything about them is forcefully kept at arm’s length.  I believe that if you’re going to introduce characters into a series as short as [C], then they should at least be interesting enough to justify devoting precious screen time to them.  As for the story itself, it has turned far darker than even the premise would have you suspect.  Even though the world is becoming worse and worse, you wouldn’t realize it unless you have an outside perspective.   Therein lies the danger.  It’s one thing to say that you’re going to die in a train wreck, which you can avoid by not taking a train and avoiding railways.  However, if you have cancer slowly killing you, you may not even be aware of it unless you took the time out of your life to get an outside opinion.

Ebara brings up another interesting point.  Even though his Future (supposedly only his children) has been lost, he (and apparently everyone else) can’t seem to concentrate or retain new information.  We’ve all heard the joke that some people forget old things when they learn new things, but in [C], people are apparently losing the ability to learn new things.  It’s like overfilling a glass of water: as much as you try to add new water, almost all of it will simply spill out.  In this way, there is literally no Future for people, and in that context, such an idea is truly frightening.  After all, we scientists and engineers live and breathe on the idea of constant innovation and positive change.  To eradicate that would be to wipe away our happiness and very purpose for being.

I also like the small discussions about money and trust.  The Info Broker claims that with enough trust, he can get as much money as he wants.  As such, he is an informant and a currency trader, because people trust money.  In fact, people trust money so much that they’ll continue to spend it while huge stacks of it are being burned right before their eyes.  It’s just as Souchirou Mikuni’s father said: amass enough money, and it becomes power, the power that controls this world.  However, that power lies in its absolute ubiquity.  Isolate the money or destroy trust in that money, and it becomes ordinary paper once again.

As for the Financial District, I can safely say that both it and the various Masakaki clearly embrace chaos, but I’m not quite ready to label them as evil.  Masakaki is always helpful, though not very informative.  The District itself is pretty ambivalent, and even the Total Assets counter in the center of the District isn’t very informative unless it displays a very high or very low number.  Also, what of the Investors that we occasionally hear about?  We know about the consequences of Bankruptcy, but what is the actual purpose of taking the Entrés’ Futures?  With any luck, we’ll all find out next week.

Eureka Seven: Pocket Full of Rainbows

Produced by Studio BONES, the anime series Eureka Seven is based on a long-running manga series of the same name.  It is set about 10,000 years in the future with humans inhabiting a world filled with particles called Trapars, which are great for surfing the open air with, be you a human on a board or a mech on a board.  The story is about a young boy named Renton, who is the son of “the man who saved the world.”  One day, he meets a girl named Eureka who is part of an anti-global-government group of mecha-piloting hipsters called Gekkostate.  From there, a colorful cast, interesting battle scenes, and beautiful soundtrack await the viewer.  While the story starts slow, it accelerates into a larger world and a coming-of-age romance for the ages between Renton and Eureka.  Overall, it is a very colorful, emotional, and heartwarming anime.  Basically, if you haven’t seen it, then you had a rather bleak adolescence.

But that is the story of the Eureka Seven series, and this is the story of the Eureka Seven movie.  It has all but nothing to do with the original series, including background, character development, or storyline.  In fact, to call it a rewrite scenario would do disservice to proper rewrites like Fullmetal Alchemist (ironically, ALSO produced by BONES).  Now, when I mean “proper rewrite” (assuming such a term even exists), I mean that the new story at least grows into its own and creates an interesting and enjoyable experience.  The writers of this movie have decided to try doing the exact opposite.

The even larger problem with this movie is that even though the writers have made practically every detail different (I assume in order to dodge any copyright lawsuits), it takes a lot of time trying to explain away WHY everything is so different from the original.  This is where everything especially falls to pieces.  If this movie is meant for people who have never seen the series, then why spend so much time trying to (very loosely) connect the two?  If this is meant for established fans of the series, then why ruin EVERY LAST THING that made the series great in the first place?  Even if they could make sense of this silliness, there is no way that this movie could prove enjoyable with only two hours to redevelop.  Aside from the animation and some of the soundtrack, this movie fails on every other level.  I will give no summaries, as I feel that doing so would be a true disservice to the readers of this site.  What I will give is congratulations, to Gene, for showing the worst film in the 15-year history of the CSM Anime Club, and as I have access to the records going back at least 9 years, I think my claim is well-justified.  Pat yourself on the back, Gene, preferably with a serrated rusty knife.

For those lucky survivors of this movie, tune in Wednesday for the thrilling conclusion of [C], the anime movie Redline, and the live-action film Death Race.  Until then, enjoy your well-deserved two days of Fall Break.