The anime blogging catch-up continues, and here is double-episode post for Eureka Seven AO. You mean we are not going to rescue my girlfriend Naru? NO way! Summary for Episode 08: Ao wants to go rescue Naru from Truth and tries to launch in the Nirvash against orders, but he is stopped and put into detention. Christopher decides to let Ao off without major punishment this time, but as a result Ao is followed all over the underground city by Gazelle's group. A Scub Burst event occurs in the Middle Eastern nation of Faisal Arabia and Team Pied Piper is dispatched. However, Christopher is called by the USA who are at odds with Faisal Arabia. USA offers Generation Bleu some benefits in exchange of pulling out of the Faisal Arabia mission. A Secret appears, but Team Pied Piper is ordered to pull back and they land on the waters near a wrecked city. Ao is pissed at the decision to let people die because of benefits for the company and storms off to a small cafe. Fleur finds him there and tells Ao that like him she also dislikes her father Christopher. Years ago, Fleur and her mother got into a bad accident and only one of them could be saved. Fleur hates Christopher because Christopher chose to save Fleur instead of her mother, and so now she will do what Christopher doesn't want her to do and that is to be an IFO pilot in his company. Afterwards, Ivica walks into the cafe and turns on the TV to show all the damage the Secret has done in the country. Ivica tells Fleur and Ao that the mission is back on due to international sentiments for help, and the two pilots are all too happy for the opportunity to complete the mission against Christopher's wishes. I thought IFOs should have lightning shielding like modern planes. Imagine what would happen if every passenger plane had to reboot when they get hit by lightning. Team Pied Piper catch up to the Secret which looks like a giant lightning emitting origami crane. Elena attacks the Secret from distance, but her IFO gets struck by lightning and it reboots. After shooting lightning for a bit, the Secret turns into a projectile and rises to straight above the Scub Coral in order to impact the coral as a free falling object. Fleur and Ao ignore orders and charges in and the Secret is on its free fall. Fleur and Ao pilot their IFOs to beside the secret and they start hammering at the secret using their weapons. Their efforts pay off the Secret is destroyed before it can hit the coral. Gazelle's gang is now Generation Bleu's odd job team. Team Pied Piper return to base and Fleur and Ao are on their way to flaunt their victory in Christopher's face, but they then discover that Christopher set up the whole TV broadcast of injured people with Gazelle and friends playing the injured. The two then receive detention from Rebecka for leaving their posts without orders (during the mission). Meanwhile, Christopher chats with Ivica and both agree to deny that Generation Bleu were involved in destroying the Secret. In the detention room, Ao and Fleur chat and the two get along nicely. Ivica then comes along to let the two out. ------------------------------- Summary for Episode 09: In Japan, intelligence officer Nakamura has a secret meeting with higher up officials in a car. Nakamura wants support in securing Trapar technology to help Japan, but the higher-ups are more interested in keeping the current peace and don't want trouble. Nakamura goes ahead with his plans anyways and gets some classified US data from the online hacking/terrorist group Firecrackers (of which Truth is a member). Nakamura and his supporters then use the data to start some sort of man-made Scub Burst experiment. This information is however relayed to Generation Bleu, and Team Pied Piper is dispatched to Japan to retrieve the Scub Coral core. Gazelle and his friends are also sent to Japan to monitor and eavesdrop on the experiment proceedings. The Japanese military go ahead with their experiment to reanimate some bad Scub coral mixed in with Scub coral core parts. The experiment manages to excite the components and produce a light similar to that of a Scub Burst event. The experiment attracts a Secret to the area in the sea, and Nakamura actually plans to capture the Secret for military research. However, the Secret starts attacking military ships parked near the experimental control center, and Nakamura is forced to make a hasty exit. Seeing the smoke from afar, Gazelle and friends abandon their observation post and decide to drive to the base. Meanwhile, Team Pied Piper travel to the experimental site underwater and the pilots are warned to have their IFOs stay in flight mode due to the water pressure. The pilots are instructed to retrieve the Scub Coral core but Ao doesn't listen and flies out of the water to find the Secret. Ao's Nirvash is spotted by Gazelle who then loses control of his van and drives down the hills. At the same time, Nakamura spots the Nirvash while leaving the facility with his subordinates, but suddenly the driver stops the car, kills the other subordinate and reveals himself to be Truth. Soon afterwards, Gazelle's van charges down from the hills and hits the SUV Truth and Nakamura are in. The winning strategy requires use of friendly fire. The Nirvash hugged the Secret to death. I'm being serious here. While Ao chases after the Secret, Fleur and Elena go after the experimental apparatus, but they only find small broken cores and bad Scub Coral pieces, and Christopher and Generation Bleu staff notes that that piece are probably from a Scub Burst 70 years ago. Meanwhile, Ao dives into the water once again to fight the Secret, but the Secret (in the form of a giant eel) has camouflage and Ao also gets into trouble with the water pressure. Fleur arrives to back up Ao but her IFO gets hit too, but Ao then sees that the Secret becomes visible when swimming in Trapar particles. With that in mind, Ao purposely damages Fleur and Elena's IFOs to release Trapar particles, and this enables Ao to see the Secret and grab hold the Secret to destroy it. After destroying the secret, the Nirvash runs out of fuel and the IFO is cracking under the water pressure, but Ao is saved by Fleur and Elena who fly the Nirvash out of the water and back to the Triton. I can fly, shape-shift, have various other superpowers... so of course I'm the one behind everything. Back on the surface, Gazelle and friends escape from their wrecked van to see Truth standing atop of the SUV. Nakamura is shaken by the crash and accidentally falls into the waters. Truth then proceed to reveal he was behind everything from providing the material to Nakamura's experiment and also the delivery job for Gazelle, but he doesn't really give a reason for his action and then disappears. Later that day, Nakamura meets with the higher-ups again and has his hopes completely dashed, but once Nakamura leaves the car, Truth appears and destroys the car and kills officials inside. Truth then takes Nakamura's hand to give Nakamura an opportunity to change something even larger than Japan. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Two okay episodes. There was action in both of them, but so far in the series only the first Secret fight was memorable. The other ones were pretty short and fairly straight-forward once Ao figures out the correct strategy. As a fan of mecha action, I want to see something a bit longer and a bit more difficult for the good guys to win. As for the story, I was a bit surprised by these episodes because they didn't really involve Ao trying to go after Truth and rescue Naru. Naru is supposedly the female lead, but the series is content with having her kidnapped and off the show for now. Of course, rescuing Naru or even going after Truth is not on the top of Generation Bleu's priority list. Ao was initially angsty and all ready to go for the rescue, but after getting stopped by Generation Bleu and then sidetracked by a few missions Ao doesn't seem to be that concerned about Naru either. Maybe he knows he won't be able to find Truth must less do anything without help. So instead of going out to rescue Naru, Ao has gotten to know Fleur better and improved their working relationship. They also saw how clever and manipulative Christopher can be and how he plays the power and politics game with various forces, but they also see that Christopher does care about his employees, at least to a certain extent. We also have the he Japanese intelligence officer Nakamura who hasn't given up on his ambitions yet and tries to get Trapar technology for his country by any means, but then we find out that Truth was the one manipulating everything. We don't know what sort of "truth" Truth is after and how he gets all of the fake/bad Scub Coral parts, but we know he is trying to drive the world towards a certain direction and his plans tend to create a big mess for other people. Judging from the episode 10 preview, Ao isn't going after Naru any time soon and will be stuck doing some other mission for Generation Bleu. I guess the series is going to take its time to reveal the where the central plot is really going. From the feed of A Product of Wasted Time

read more: Eureka Seven AO 08-09