//eureka_seven_songs.md

what follows is an attempt to identify the songs that give titles to the chapters in the eureka seven psalms of planets manga. it's a neat manga, you should read it. i never saw the anime and probably won't ever.

as the clear majority of the chapter titles do come from song names and/or lyrics, and i think that is cool, i figured that all (most) should be similarly identifiable as specific songs. this observation then evolved into a personal quest to do exactly that. however, this project has inherent pitfalls. it is possible i might interpret a chapter as a song reference that was not intended as such and, as you'll see if you dig into the notes, some of the titles are generic enough that they could be literally dozens of different songs. there is no way for me to conclusively identify every song, or even most of them, and this list is not to be taken as authoritative—way too much guesswork is involved. i did this primarily for my own amusement and curiosity, and at the end of the day it isn't too serious. if the list i put together is close more or less to the intended references, and i get a fun playlist to do dishes to, then i am happy with that.

i am not the first person to have this idea. i did a first pass on my own before consulting with a japanese eureka seven wiki. while i didn't always go with their picks, in cases where they identified what seemed a more plausible reference, i did defer to them. and their list absolutely helped me realize that some of the songs i knew from their originals were probably being referenced two steps removed (by way of japanese bands covering and/or referencing them) in eureka seven. most importantly, it gave me confidence that enough of the songs could be identified that i probably wasn't wasting my time with the songs that really ran me through the ringer figuring out.

my methodology for selecting songs was to prioritize:

as i don't speak or read japanese, i had to use google translate a bunch. in cases where this methodology wasn't enough to get me to a particular song, where my lack of confidence with japanese language was complicating things, or where i suspected i was missing a more apparent reference, i have made note of the decision logic that i followed to make my final selections in the footnotes below.

no one asked for this. i don't know why i'm like this. :3

listen to the playlist here

chapter chapter title artist song title
1 start today hi-standard start today
2 kids are alright air kids are alright[1]
3 holidays in the sun the sex pistols holidays in the sun[2]
4 silence burns eastern youth 静寂が燃える
5 the sun & the moon husking bee the sun and the moon
6 siamese dream the smashing pumpkins cherub rock[3]
7 summertime blues guitar wolf summertime blues
8 two machine guns the high-lows 二匹のマシンガン
9 the world shatters and resonates in my ears eastern youth 世界は割れ響く耳鳴りのようだ
10 it is a child with adult—alone alone the high-lows 一人で大人 一人で子供[4]
11 know your enemy rage against the machine know your enemy
12 flowers of isolation—helpess eastern youth 裸足で行かざるを得ない[5]
13 flourish spiral life garden[6]
14 easy to smile senseless things easy to smile
15 the heretic anthem slipknot the heretic anthem
16 right now korn right now[7]
17 again & again asparagus again & again
18 if i only had a brain ray bolger if I only had a brain
19 what can you see from your place? eastern youth 自由[5:1]
20 the future is in our hands the blue hearts 未来は僕等の手の中
21 the lost world you & explosion band ロスト・ワールド
22 full emotion fools eastern youth 大馬鹿流エモーション!
23 spiral life spiral life ライフ・イズ・スパイラル[6:1]

  1. this could be any number of covers of the who song of the same name, or even the original, but i felt there was a better case for it to be this track by air instead because there are so many references to spiral life throughout the manga[6:2] (air is one of the members of that band's later projects). ↩︎

  2. there is a live vhs/dvd by the high-lows from 1997 named after this song, which i think is extremely likely to be the reference. but they don't cover the song, and the one song from there i considered swapping in (スーパーソニックジェットボーイ) felt like a pretty big stretch so i stuck with the obvious reference. it's the pistols, they're iconic, i don't need to overthink this one. ↩︎

  3. i think it is more likely that the chapter is a reference to the very iconic album than the very obscure b-side of the same name. under that assumption, "cherub rock" was the song that fit thematically with the chapter and tonally with the rest of the mix the best, so i went with it. but this is probably my most arbitrary decision i made in assembling the list. ↩︎

  4. i had the worst time ever figuring this one out. the high-lows were the last band i realized belonged on here, despite the fact i was already familiar with their music, and there are multiple references to them. ↩︎

  5. the chapter title is a lyric from this song, not the title. ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. flourish is an album by the band spiral life, but no songs include "flourish" in the lyrics or their titles, so i just picked the single from the album that felt like it represented the theme of the album and fit the rest of the songs style wise. and the last chapter is more likely just a reference to the band name, but this song was close enough that i went with it. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. while a lot of the songs were hard to pin to one particular recording, this one keeps me up at night. the first song i thought maybe it should be was the creatures' cover of the herbie mann song, but it doesn't really fit with the overall vibe and felt too obscure. eventually i settled on this korn song. if rage against the machine and slipknot weren't already on here, i'd probably have skipped past it, but especially since it is right after the slipknot song, a strong argument can be made for it belonging here. however, supercar does have a b-side to one of their singles also called "right now." supercar absolutely stylistically fits better with the rest of the bands on here. but it being a deep cut, and not really fitting super well right after the slipknot song, ultimately dissuaded me from selecting it. ↩︎