Ja ne!
Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Oedipus had not (spoiler alert!) been an arrogant father-killing, mother-banging, eye-gouging, emo prick? Me neither, but if you could create a bizarro-Oedipus story, this would be it.
Story
Eden of the East’s main strength is its story. The basic gist of the story is that Akira finds himself naked and partially amnesiac only to discover that he might possibly be a terrorist. We’re thrown right into a seemingly random situation, but we gradually find how all the little pieces fit together. Although the overuse of memory-wiping is a bit troubling, I liked its use in EotE much more than in most series (especially since the memory block was overcome each time). A quick look at the Wikipedia page for amnesia has this interesting snippet:
Functional causes are psychological factors, such as defense mechanisms[...] Another effect of amnesia is the inability to imagine the future[...] This is because when a normal human being imagines the future, they use their past experiences to construct a possible scenario.
Now I’m not saying that the writers meant to imply all these factors, but it’s easy to speculate how these causes and effects could relate to Akira. I’m sure Akira wanted to think of himself as a hero, but ironically he had to cast himself as the villain in order to accomplish his heroic goals. Furthermore, the challenging nature of Mr. Outside’s game led Akira to believe that he needed to start anew in order to construct a plan to save the future. This makes it especially awesome when Akira notes, right before wiping his memory again, that he hopes to end up the exact same type of person in the two forthcoming movies. Mmm, irony, I love it. (Fortunately, Akira has no more funds to buy another memory wipe, because if he did it again I would shoot him before the Supporter had a chance to.)
Characters
As sweet as the story is, the cast is kinda sucky. Akira is awesome, and some of the fringe characters do a fine job in their role, but the entire Eden of the East Club is rather blah. Saki is an especially flat character (haha). I had high hopes for her after the exciting first two episodes, and I was ok with her emo funk after the gyudon/job interview incident, but her character never really developed after that (haha again). For the entire second half of the show, Saki just ran around and narrated. She became a past-revealing vehicle by way of wire tapping. How lame is that?
Even worse, there was so little chemistry between Saki and Akira after they got back to Japan. I suppose this might mimic real life, as Saki was more just-a-friend than anything else to Akira; this was hard to take because we are clearly supposed to root for their love to succeed. Instead, the most heat this show had was between Kuroha and Akira, and compared to young, pouty, brother-in-law-loving, cookie-hawking Saki the sight of underwear-clad Kuroha was enough to make Akira pass out. We’re talking Haruno Sakura levels of disappointment here, except that at least Sakura can heal you while she’s moping about her crush. The only thing I remember Saki being good at doing was selling cookies made in her likeness.
Tilt
The art is consistently awesome, although some might feel a little strange about seeing Umino Chica’s character designs. Personally, I had no problems with it, and I liked the quality and the style of the art in EotE. The OP is a very modern swirls-and-text affair that matches very well with Oasis’ Falling Down, and the ED’s paper motion capture was really cool as well. I thought the voice actors also did a great job, though I know some people were thrown off by Kuroha’s deep voice. All in all, I felt Production I.G did an excellent job with EotE.
Verdict
I think this show did its job perfectly, and I’m really looking forward to the two movies. I have a few nitpicks with how well things wrapped up, but I also suspect that the real story will start with the first movie.
Kabitzin’s Rating: 5/5
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1971 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, I largely agree with you. Saki was a disappointment despite starting out as an interesting character that could hold her own within a relationship dynamic with Akira. I think her character could become interesting again if she starts taking a more active role within the story, rather than being a passive observer like she was in the latter stages of the series. But I’m still rooting for the romance between her and Akira… if only because I find him such a compelling character.
I just loved the art style and Umino’s designs. The mix between Production I.G.’s usually clinical animation style and Umino’s really cute designs gave it a rather unique feeling. It meant it could be mysterious and serious but effortlessly switch to a little more humourous, which added personality to the characters.
It’s one of the contenders for anime of the year, IMO. I have pretty big expectations for the movies, but I really can’t wait to see them.
“As sweet as the story is, the cast is kinda sucky.”
“Kabitzin’s Rating: 5/5″
Wait, what?
In my rating system, 5/5 doesn’t mean “Perfect,” it just means “Excellent.” I think Akira made up for the rest of the cast, since no one else really did that much.
I completely agree with your review Kabitzin. To add a few points, I think that a major problem with this show is that it easily could have been 26 episodes, but it feels like it was purposely truncated because they were planning movies.
There is just so much more material that could have been covered that wasn’t and it’s a huge shame that it had to end with the reset.
I feel the entire arc with Kuroha was kind of dumb though and in the end led to absolutely nothing. Like nothing came of that aside for us seeing that Taki is actually a really good guy.
What this show really needed was 5-6 more episodes of a dedicated Pantsu being Taki’s secret right hand man, more other Selecaos, and perhaps something really crazy like the 20,000 NEET weren’t just sent off, but they were in fact sent off with a specific job to do, which in the last episode finally culminates and lets Taki win the game. Oh well… I hope the movies are worth it.
Looking forward to Johnny, the movie!!!
If you watch Paradise Lost it is pretty great for an ending. But I can’t for the life of me figure out why I’m the only person who thinks Ato Saizo is an alien. 1 he has enough strength at 100 to drop school teachers in a taxi, 2 where did he get the technology from 3 he looks like an alien!! Maybe not from outerspace but definitely not from these parts.