Well it's been awhile since I've posted in on this but the show only has a week left on ANN and I'm trying to crash finish it up (as in I have lousy time management and managed to not get past Ep 8 until now).
Anyway, I just finished the Raraba Rau section of the show (I'm up to Ep 22) and I have to say that while Andy and Aishia from SEED are obviously based on Raraba and Harmon the two characters they most remind me of are Ray and Charles from Eureka Seven. Well that and Harmon has a strange reserablance to what Tammy Wynette, and quite a few other CW female singers, looked like in the 1970s (so is Raraba Rau suppose to be George Jones are something? Goodness lets hope not! ). I also liked Andy and Aishia a lot better from the get go than I did these two.
Other comments at this point: The late disco era music and dress really add to helping me enjoy this show and remeraber when it was originally aired. I was 14 when this originally aired in Japan, so I actually remeraber this stuff first hand and from a age range that the show was trying to appeal to at the time. One thing I wanted to mention is that I'm pretty sure some of the visuals for this show referencing what was going on then are intentional. I don't mean the CW singer thing - that was my attempt at a joke . Instead I mean Degwin Sodo Zabi looking like a cross between Idi Amin and Papa Doc/Baby Doc Duvalier, and a James Bond baddie (and not jokingly Harmon's hair probably really is a nod to specific hairstyles, popular in North America, from the same time period).
Back to the music, there are times that both it and the costumes remind me of Blake's Seven's first season which makes perfect sense since both aired the same year. The makers of each probably didn't see the other at the time of the filming of either but were likely just influenced by things that were happening at the time. In another nod to B7, Char seems to really have a "Kerr Avon" personality at times though they are very much not the same characters. However, I can see why Char was so popular. Good looking, amoral, and totally not like the other characters in this show. You can't tell where he's going but you know when he pops up it's going to be interesting. Last thought - Amaruo is a brat. Not news to anyone whose seen the show, I'm sure, but I do find it interesting that MSG manages to make him one but not totally making him unlikeable. They found a way to do a character like this and make it work well and they should get some credit for it .