Eureka Seven The Movie   Starring (voice): Kaori Nazuka, Keiji Fujiwara and Yuko Sanpei Manga Entertainment RRP: £17.99 MANG5137 Certificate: 15 Available 18 April 2011

When Eureka, Renton’s friend, gets taken by the military he has to wait eight years until he has a chance to rescue her - though he also discovers that the military has a special interest in her. In 2054, Renton, a good soldier is soon embroiled in a ship wide conspiracy, aboard the Gekko, to break away, even though Earth is at war with an invading alien force...

Eureka Seven: The Movie (2009 - 1 hr, 50 min, 46 sec) is an alternative look at the original story. The film was directed by Tomoki Kyôda.

I’m not really sure why the film didn’t work for me, the original series tried to deal with some weighty subjects about the meaning of being human. All of this seems to have been ditched in favour of a mecha action/romance film. The problem is, if you haven’t seen the original series there is not enough time spent on either the backstory or character development to engage a casual audience. Although, for a new audience the story stands as a coherent whole, the changes, such as they are, are also likely to annoy fans of the original series. I obviously fall into the second category as I enjoyed the series, but not the retelling in the film.

I was surprised to see that the film was made in 2009, when the whole feel and look of the animation would give the impression that the film was made in the eighties, with only average levels of detail and a colour palette that borders on the dull. There is also an odd transition from cinematic quality animation back to television quality, presumably because they used a lot of shots from the original series.

Never one for laying down and losing, the humans, who are failing to win the war, come up with a plan to flash fry the Earth’s surface with lasers before leaving Earth in Starships. The apparent mutiny by his shipmates aboard the Gekko only makes Renton’s and Eureka’s job to save the planet all that more difficult.

Both the Japanese and English 5.1 audio track are two of the film's highlights, with clear character voices and pulse pounding tracks for the fight sequences. The picture, given that the quality changes, has a pretty clear 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer.

On the extras side there is a pretty reasonable Making Of featurette (50 min, 20 sec) which covers the usual interviews and clips from the show, the disc is wrapped up with two short TV spots (33 sec)

This one then is pretty much a suck it and see, I found the script unengaging and the switching of animation quality pulled me out of the story.

6

Charles Packer