Eureka Seven AO ep16: losing names, losing sense.

[Eureka Seven AO ep15]

I’ve graciously put up with this festival known as the Olympics for most of the month, just so I can come back to THIS.  For some reason, I missed the Eureka Seven AO.  I missed the insanity, the almost unfair storytelling (how are most of us, especially the first time around supposed to keep up with this stuff?), and the melodrama.  Yes, I missed this.  And now that it’s back I’m just as confused as ever.

Enter Operation Polaris.

When the series last left us off, Truth and Naru (I’m assuming) had taken their false quartz (again I’m assuming) and used it to reactivate most of the Scub Corals in the world.  Secrets had come out in droves to take down these “intruders” and if they succeeded, then a lot people were not going to evacuate in time and would die.  Generation Bleu’s solution (or more specifically Mr. Blanc’s) was to use the quartz they had been storing for years in space, as a type of bait.  They would get them all together in an uninhabited spot (the North Pole) avoided most of the damage they would have caused before.  I’m only repeating all this to make sure we’re on the same page.

The IFO teams’ jobs were to escort the the capsule full of quartz as it took a descending orbit around Earth to attract the Secrets.  And in the end, the episode comes down to the mentally fatigued Ao again.  His last minute effort to get the quartz to its destination and save what he had just learned was the home of two of the members of Team Goldilocks, was met with an interesting and confounding surprise.  The bundle of quartz turns into a giant laser weapon that takes out all the Secrets in one spectacular “Tree of Life” style blast.  And leaves us with another episode with more questions than answers.  The biggest of those questions?

What the hell happened to the members of Team Goldilocks?

After the blast, they no longer existed in their world.  Only Ao remembered them, and there are no records that they or their home even existed.  All three, erased.

Perhaps three of the most unsatisfying character deaths I’ve seen.

This episode is leaving me with a lot to think about, but I am glad that this wasn’t the last episode to air before the Olympics.  It seems that the quartz isn’t just some explosive, radioactive substance from another dimension that makes Scubs come to life.  It seems the quartz is actively altering their dimension.  Or perhaps the destruction of the Secrets is doing that?  I can only imagine that this is what Truth has been dealing with for so many years.  There must be something that he’s seen, that he remembers that the rest of the world has completely forgotten.  And I’m assuming that this is driving him.  A damn lot of assumptions to be sure.  I still don’t understand what Naru was trying to accomplish by playing hero in the Type Zero before Generation Bleu stepped in.  A lot of people would probably say this show lacks answers.  All I’m looking for are clear motives.  Understanding the series’ Bonnie & Clyde would be a good step in that direction.