Comments on: I still like Eden of the East, for all its faults

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:22:46 +0000

@Hanners: the fact that it’s trying to be grown-up at all makes me more forgiving, but it throws enough questions out to allow you to forget that too. I’m still not sure about the NEET issue, mainly because events move so quickly that the final episode (hopefully being subbed and released in the next day or two) will throw my theories out of date so quickly.

@Peter S: it’s frustrating, but I’m having to accept the possibility that there will be a lot of incidental details left open, but that only had a minor effect on my enjoyment of Xam’d, for instance. Now we have not one but two feature films to speculate about now…

@Hige: again, the “what about the movies?!” gets me scratching my head. This is one of those series that’s crying out to be twice the length it is…makes me wonder if the scenario was planned for a longer episode run, until the schedulers dropped the eleven-week bombshell at a relatively late stage in the production. That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest actually.

@Kin: you’ll be waiting impatiently to see what the films do then, right? It’s not much comfort I know, but you’re not alone. Dammit, it’s nearly a year!

By: Kin

Kin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:25:35 +0000

I have similar sentiment,there’s a lot of things in it that I’m hoping the series will explore in depth, however with only a few episodes left it’s hard to imagine how this series going to tie up everything together. Unless it goes onto a second season.

By: Hige

Hige — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:25:22 +0000

I think that lack of cohesiveness is really what makes Eden difficult to get stuck into. The genuinely good bits get bogged down by the stilted attempts of genre-striding. The audience aren’t given enough of anything to really sink their teeth into and it results in a fairly tepid final opinion.

After the ninth episode (which I thought was excellent) I’m honestly convinced that Eden needs to be a 26 episode show. All its disparate elements could fit in with each other if they were given time to breathe, but as it stands eleven episodes probably won’t be enough. It’s very frustrating.

By: Peter S

Peter S — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:50:35 +0000

I don’t have much to say here, but for me the H&C connection has more to do with the character designs. I can easily imagine Saki in that show.

What concerns me most of all is that, wherever the plot is going, they’re not going to tie up all the strange things they drop into almost every episode. The Johnnies? The dog with useless wings? I love strangeness, but even as I watch things like the man giving Akira his pants or winged women crashing through windows, I can only hope we get a fuller explanation in the few eps we have left.

Oh, yeah, with the winged women, there was that helicopter …

By: Hanners

Hanners — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:26:26 +0000

You know, it’s nice to be able to read a more balanced view of this show and I have to salute you for it – I’ve found it difficult to distance myself from my gut feeling that “this is something special”, to step back and ask myself “but is it really?”… I guess the fact that it is trying something a bit more brave, broad and ‘grown up’ than a lot of current anime is masking some of its deficiencies that you’ve pointed out here.

Personally, I’ve really enjoyed the dynamic of Saki and Akira for its largely understated nature – It’s never really been lost to my mind even in episodes where it isn’t explicitly touched on… It’s always there in the look in Saki’s eyes or a moment of hesitation or doubt before she speaks, and the internal dual between her burgeoning love of Akira and her doubts about him have been expertly realised.

The whole NEET debate generated by the show is also fascinating, although I’m inclined to think that the series as a whole is swinging towards lauding the positive aspects of this kind of society – That physical isolation is no longer a barrier in this hugely connected world, and that it can in fact bring about even greater progress (witness the Eden search engine for example) thanks to the erosion of “groupthink” as a result. Perhaps not having “a cause” is creating a generation freed of only thinking narrowly about a small sub-set of goals and problems, for the good of everybody? Regardless, this show serves up food for thought faster than I can clear it from my proverbial plate, and I love it warts and all for that ability.