Eureka Seven – Pocket Full of Feces [Review Archive]

I’ve gone over it a lot but I’ve run an anime blog since early 2005. All of my posts were lost about 3 years in due to sever issues and me not thinking ahead enough to have a backup. Then, some time later after I started over, it happened again – only this time the person who had access to backups and was supposed to be keeping them had not done that whatsoever. This then happened yet again.

However, I don’t want all my old stuff to completely disappear, even if some of it’s written embarrassingly (or embarrassingly close to how I still write showing I haven’t progressed at all!), so I’ll sometimes – any time I happen to stumble onto my old reviews specifically – will repost my now long-gone reviews. I’ll mostly avoid editing them, primarily leaving them in their fully original state aside formatting issues and in some cases adding some images because they’re not around any longer. It won’t nearly be all my old reviews (and I’m not going to repost any non-reviews) but it’ll be some at least.

This is the first one of those archival posts. I also want to add this time that this movie is still one of the top 5 worst things I’ve ever fucking seen in my life from this medium or almost any other. And of course comments are still open, my memory might not be as good of these as new things, but feel free to say something if you want, just maybe avoid (if you have a question) anything too specific as it’s been years since I’ve seen this stuff.

[Originally Posted in 2009]

Eureka Seven Movie

Pocket Full of Feces Review

The only image I could save from the original post because I made it and still had it.

This is probably going to be the easiest review I’ve ever written. Why, you might be wondering – well it’s simple…This was honestly one of THE worst things I’ve seen in my entire history of watching anime. If you know me at all, you know I’ve seen a damn lot, somewhere around 600+ different series completely through, and a lot of others that I dropped or never finished. So saying ‘this is one of the worst’ is a pretty good sign it’s fucking horrid.

Best part is, that image? It’s actually pretty fucking accurate to the movie.

To put it in short – let’s just say I understand why Bandai decided to release it in theaters this way. One night, one showing, same date and time nationwide. Because this way everyone will go to see it (that hasn’t watched it via downloading or streaming), and not have a chance to spread the word of what garbage it is. So they get their money.

Anyway, I just finished watching this at the theater and had not seen it beforehand. I kept forgetting to download it. So yeah.

On with my review of Eureka Seven : Pocket Full of Rainbows, or as the US release calls it “Eureka Seven : goodnight, sleep tight, young lovers”

Let’s go through it via the typical categories of a review;

The story –
To put it completely honestly and without exaggerating one single bit, the entire story from start to finish and in every single aspect (major plot line, character development, characters themselves, etc) felt truly like a fanfic. And no, not one of those very rare fanfics that’s surprisingly not that bad or a very well done doujin…but, to explain in more detail, it was like a poorly written fanfic by someone who loved Eureka Seven, Ever 17 (spoilers, the entire Gekko crew is stuck at the age of 17), Evangelion (half the movie was ripped off plot-wise and even some scenes like the end were completely obviously stolen from EoE), and many more. To make things worse they randomly mixed in peter pan very openly too…wat? I wouldn’t have been surprised if the director put himself into the story as a main character like most 12 year old girls in their yaoi fanfics. Not only was it so convoluted and full of stolen ideas, reused art, and horrid character design, it also just pulled important things out of its ass with no explanation…Not only was this movie complete shit, it made no fucking sense either.

I understand doing a reimagining of something, hell, Tokikake – my number one top favorite movie, anime, anything, etc, IS a reimagining/rethinking of the original Tokikake…and has little connection with the original material and is a sequel made up completely by the director. Yet it was done AMAZINGLY well, and it’s an amazing fucking movie. So I don’t have a problem with taking something and completely changing it in an openly stated rethinking. But that’s not what this was. This was a jumbled piece of garbage that felt like a child wrote it and threw in anything he could think of.

The story was COMPLETE ass, and not in the nice aww yeah dat ass way, but the fuck somehow my shower is using my old toilet water way and having a rain of lukewarm shit being lathered into your hair way. Which I don’t think is even possible. This movie was so bad it accomplished the impossible. Amazing.

The characters –

Holland’s name in this was 350Z, yeah, the car.

Eureka was an alien robot…you think I’m joking. I’m not, it’s the truth. Not only that – but at the very end of the movie during a very obviously stolen from End of Evangelion scene…she somehow becomes mentally retarded. No joke, she can’t talk properly (no explanation for it at all it just randomly happens that she’s a fucking literal retard) just moans and ‘jflkasdjflkehne HARLB HUR DUR’s all over and points at shit. Again, I’m not making this up.

Literally the Nirvash.

The “real” Holland in the movie was Professor Bear somehow, the Nirvash was some sort of literal ‘moe blob’ it did nothing but mukyu (is that you patchouli?) and flap its fat little arms around the entire time and was the size of a stuffed animal, Dewey raped kids and got killed before the movie even starts, Dominic is a teacher, Eureka and Renton were childhood friends with Nirvash as some sort of pet, anemone is an old decrepit lady, stoner and some of the other crew members try to rape Eureka, the list goes on and on and on…sure feels like a shitty ‘alternate universe’ fanfic, doesn’t it?

Not only all that, but no one was like their real selves either – it was like some butthurt fag who didn’t like the original went and rewrote characters to his liking. It wasn’t a retelling, it was just complete trash.

anemohgodwhyareyousoold

The art –
This realllllly bothered me. First off, the movie was shown with super fucking contrast, I have no idea why, but you could barely see things half the time if it was a bright scene…and there were many. But, that isn’t even my complaint, sadly something worse than that – and something that wasnt just a shitty reel of film or something, not to mention something I never expected. And no, it wasn’t just cuz of the super contrast that I thought the art or movie was bad.

The movie literally rehashed almost 90% of its footage from the anime series – and simply redrew in another character or changed minor details. I’m not joking. Literally, aside from maybe 20 or so minutes worth of new footage, the rest was simply re-used animation from the series with something else placed in the scene. It might be hard to understand and harder to believe – but watch it yourself some day, it’s no lie or exaggeration on my part. It’s like watching anime on CN/AS, remember when Tenchi aired and they shooped on bikinis in every scene Ryoko was in (okay not EVERY scene, just most, that silly slut), well that’s what this was the entire time, only they did a better job of making the ‘new’ blend with the old as it’s much easier when it’s all computer done in the first place. But almost the entire movie is just photoshopped footage from the show being treated as new.

I really never thought they’d do something so cheap with a movie for such an amazing series…it’s not like they had a low budget or any reason for it. They were just that fucking lazy.

Something else I really wanted to mention is the ending. Aside from retarded (literally) Eureka who also happens to be nude for some reason, the scene is the exact same as the ending from End of Evangelion. Big world ending shit goes down…then a destroyed place (full with the dramatic flashing lights you’d see in many eva scenes), no music, no talking, just the sound of waves. Then Renton, the male lead, waking up – w…where am I? Then Eureka shows up.

If she just started choking him it’d be the same fucking thing.

There were some awesome things about this movie, here’s the list of those:

1. Dewey, the main antagonist from the series, is a child molestor. No joke. They even clearly say so, it’s not a joke nor a misinterpretation. They say he’s a fucking pedophile straight out VERY clearly and directly. This is ‘awesome’ because it’s fucking hilarious, nothing more.

2. I don’t remember her name (Maria? or something like that) but the girl who was the second in command of the ship with the cool captain who chases after gekko state the entire series – well she is in a LOT of the movie, not very prominent or important, but she’s there in many scenes, and three different outfits! Plus, you get to see her with her hair down. She’s really damn cute, and seeing so much of her was nice.

3. The special at the end of the movie (for us watching it in this venue anyway) ‘behind the scenes’ type of thing with Johnny and some of the other VAs. This was without a doubt the best part of the three hours I was at the movie theater. Why? Because who doesn’t love Johnny or Crispin? Not only that, but they had some outtakes at the end which were hilarious too. It was great. But isn’t it sad when the only good thing about a movie is something that will probably be on its dvd’s special features and not the actual feature presentation?

4. Oddly, Eureka I kinda liked in this even being an …alien robot thing. She was a lot cuter in that her personality wasn’t so bland. She was cute in the series but in this she almost shoots an old lady, so yeah. I kind of liked her changes somewhat…though not much.

Eureka with loaded gun to head of said old lady.

That’s all the good points.

In the words of Johnny Yong Bosch himself (and yes, he literally said this after the film),“I’m sure you all loved the movie…actually if i say that I’d probably just get a bunch of boooos”. Oh how right you were, Johnny.