Eureka Seven AO: Jungfrau no Hanabana-tachi

This OVA is part of a bundle with a PS3 game for Eureka Seven AO which hit Japanese stores in late September. It takes place at some point between episodes #7 and #12 and doesn’t really add anything substantial to the story – it’s a silly, slightly fanservice-y bonus episode, and a nice promo video for Switzerland. Visit beautiful Switzerland!

Eureka Seven AO: Jungfrau no Hanabana-tachi
Torrent [1080p 10bit FLAC]: Download
Torrent [720p 8bit AAC]: Download
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There’s a bunch of cultural and local references in this OVA that need some explaining; we’ve decided against cramming countless TL notes into the episode, so enjoy this bonus content here after you’ve watched the episode (since it’s got a couple of spoilers).

• The Generation Bleu HQ is firmly lodged into the Jungfrau, crowning the Bernese Alps as one of its main summits. The Jungfrau is considered something of a primus inter pares of the Swiss Alps next to the slightly more famous Matterhorn (… primi inter pares then). The surrounding area goes by the name of Jungfrau-Aletsch these days and is a World Natural Heritage site. (Ignore the sign at the end by the way, Wilchingen is near the German border.)
• Fleur, Elena and Ao set out for a short two-day field trip that takes them across Switzerland, from their Jungfrau HQ via Bern (taking the Jungfraubahn, a famous rack railway, for a bit) to Zurich and then back south to the Italian border near Lugano and Locarno. Hit that up on Google Maps or OpenStreetMap if you want to follow their itinerary or the iOS 6 map if you want to watch the world burn.
• Ao and the other girls visit the city of Zurich for a spring festival called Sechseläuten. “Sechs” means six and “läuten” means ringing: the Fraumünster bells ring at 6pm on every 3rd Monday of April to signify the end of wintertime; it had a more pragmatic reason in earlier times, but these days, it’s something of a normal festival including a parade. One of the highlights is burning a snowman ragdoll in effigy, going by the lovely name of Böögg. Either way: this is how Zurich greets springtime. Nothing to do with cosplay, Elena.
• The OVA showcases a couple of landmarks in Bern and Zurich. You can see the Zytglogge and the Käfigturm, two of the capital city’s landmarks, on the pics they briefly show roughly halfway through the episode. The Zurich tour is a bit more extensive, but mostly takes place in the historical city center: the Stüssihofstatt in Niederdorf, the super exclusive shopping avenue Bahnhofstrasse (Swiss don’t into ß), the Limmatquai, and the Rathaus. The “Sechseläuten park” that Juno mentions does not exist; he means the Bellevue square most probably. Sophie C. Friday is later seen climbing one of the Grossmünster twin towers, said church towers probably being Zurich’s most famous symbols apart from obscenely expensive costs of living and greedy bankers that are bringing the downfall of global civilization as we know it with their ruthless abuse of international finance and trade mechanisms. Oh, and it’s a really pretty place, too.
• Speaking of Caster Friday: she is wearing classic Christian Louboutins, and she is wearing them really well. Classy lady.
• Bones are kinda infamous for the broken English they casually strew about in their shows. This time around, we also get broken German and broken French, sometimes even in the same lines, much to my displeasure. We’ve decided for keeping the foreign words and carefully adapting them, and against some flashy reinterpretation since we value unobtrusiveness in our subs. The only thing that is really of note would be the “tatakau Jungfrau” which we’ve rendered as “Kriegsjungfrau”, proper German for “fighting maiden”. “Fräulein” means “young lady” or “young woman”, and Fleur can’t speak French apparently.
• If there’s more, just ask.

– Ianu