This’ll probably be the last double whammy for a while. I promise. As I’ve said, I don’t know if anything’s especially illuminated is being revealed to me by juxtaposing my commentary for these shows together except to say that YU YU HAKUSHO’s holding my interest much more solidly than EUREKA SEVEN at this point. It feels like whatever burst of fleetness that so impressed me in EUREKA’s first episode has been running out like a shot of octane that’ll probably have to wait a few more episodes to re-fill.
Each episode’s had plenty of mecha air-surfing action, but it doesn’t matter how dazzling the animation is, nor how speedy the action is, if I don’t who exactly Gekkostate has been opposing this whole time - - and nobody’s really taken the time to do that, yet. It might work if these stuffy old dudes in their gray uniforms were more broadly evil archetypes that we could recognize and hate immediately. However, the show’s insisted on making them more nuanced antagonists who’re surely defined by all sorts of subtleties without actually taking the time to explicate such subtleties.
So… I’m feeling tempted to take up one of the runner-up series in place of this. The pile of shows I became interested in during the sampling period was a lot higher than just two shows. We’ll see. Renton, Eureka and their various compadres are certainly charming, but I’m going to really need to see some actual inciting action - - another dose of octane into the engine - - to get me hooked again.
On a lighter note, Renton should be grateful that Eureka’s children aren’t teenagers. You just know that they’d have been drawing penises on his face and his mech instead of simple, cute shapes if that was the case.
YU YU HAKUSHO looks like it’s falling more in line with the battlin’ shonen promised in the intro (featuring the other two characters in that thing goes a long way to this end.) Now that Yusuke’s “spirit gun” or whatever that laser beam he shoots from his pistol finger is called, I can rather easily envision the XP he’ll have to accumulate to level that attack up on his ability tree. You just know that he’ll be able to fire it off twice a day with the next unlock. These other two dudes (and I say that almost hesitantly because I was pretty sure the red-haired guy was a girl up until the point he started talking) even round out a proper venture party for the RPG.
Speaking of video games and the various allusion to them here, I find it terribly amusing that this show’s theme song sounds like it’s by the same vaguely-jazz, vaguely-funk band that did the elevator music for MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 2’s character select screen. Compare and contrast, why not? If these aren’t the same performers, then it’s got to be the same producer supervising the mix.
Speaking about EUREKA’s intro music , I suppose I’ve reached some new level of awareness (with all its accompanying XP) because I was able to recognize that the song was by Colors (the same dudes who did CODE GEASS’ intro) before I double-checked with the credits. I’ve been amused by how often Otaku will cheer for the Japanese pop cultural equivalent of things they’d revile at home, so I suppose it’d be a little hypocritical of me to dig Colors when they’re probably the far East's N’Sync or some such. I guess the shoe’s on my foot, now!
Watch this episode, "Childhood” here and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episodes here.
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE. Order them on Amazon here & here. Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk
