Eureka Seven AO - Episode 11

This week's episode of Eureka Seven AO sees us heading off the Manchester, and the world-famous Cavern Club.  Wait... shouldn't that be Liverpool?

The subject of this little jaunt isn't to do the Smiths tour or reminisce about Joy Division, but to get to the bottom of a question that haunted us briefly earlier in the series - who is the singer named Miller, what's her relation to Generation Bleu, and most importantly of all what is her relation to Elena Peoples?  Although it seems obvious that the two of them are the same person, there's much more to this theory than meets the eye, and it's a question that this episode deliberately seems to answer before taking a step back and toying with it a little further.

Much of this ties in directly with the Pied Piper crew's latest engagement with a Secret - at least, they try to engage the Secret expected of an Australian Scub Burst but find no sign of one.  This makes for what seems like an incredibly easy mission, offset only by the fact that in this desert setting the sand gets everywhere... but what if that sand was the secret?  Before we know it Team Goldilocks, Ao and Elena are on a hallucination-driven rampage that, in the case of those latter two individuals, casts further doubt on the truth about Elena's identity.  Just who is this girl, and why are so many interested parties putting so much effort into finding out?

If there's one thing that can be said about Eureka Seven AO, it's that it certainly knows how to use its situations to create deliberate confusion and doubt in plot points that would otherwise be simple - we saw it previously in the case of Truth and Naru during the latter's kidnap, and it rears its head again to throw doubt over Elena's identity and activities this time around.  Though it might not be fresh idea-wise, it certainly keeps things interesting in an instalment which is based almost entirely around the premise of Elena's past and motives, and it sets the scene for what could be some interesting progression of her story moving forward.  Between this and an increasingly fantastic soundtrack, the lack of action wasn't too troublesome here as there was enough to be getting on with to keep things enjoyable - it still concerns me a little that we don't have a real focal point for the series yet even at this point, but at the moment Eureka Seven AO seems to be getting by just fine.