Review : Higashi no Eden

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“This country has fallen into such a sad state, that someone needs to stand up and lead it somewhere.” – Takizawa Akira

Story: (3/5)

In year 2010 of an alternate universe, certain parts of Japan were hit by missiles Mondays of each month, but due to fact that there were no casualties, the society moved on as normal. During graduation trip of Saki, she was saved by Takizawa, who was a very odd individual whom suffered from amnesia. He possesses a phone that allows him to use up 8.2 billion yen, and is apparently involved in a death game to ‘make Japan great again’.

NGL, the first couple of episodes of this anime were dead interesting, given that the mystery vibes are very strong, and the power of Juiz (the ‘Siri’ in the anime) amazes me. And the Selecao concept reminded me heavily on Mirai Nikki, which is a huge plus in building the overall setting of the anime. However, the anime became uninteresting for me after the TV series, the 2 movies aren’t actually bad but it became more of a ‘message’ anime to the older generation higher ups and to the NEETs, particularly in Japan.

Eden of the East is actually an image-recognition system (also the name of the anime in English) developed by Saki’s club in the university, because it recognizes via social networks and forums, this program eventually became involved in finding out Takizawa’s mysterious past, and made the side characters somehow involved in the whole Selecao business.

Characters: (2.5/5)

Takizawa Akira is portrayed as a charismatic person, he literally charmed Saki with reasons I couldn’t interpret, Saki fell to him just because of his words of ‘I will save this world’ or some sorts, plus he also kinda persuaded with Kuroha to not kill the person whom he thought was Saki’s friend. His style of playing the game can be described as self-sacrificing, time and time again he chose to be the antagonist (to the citizens at least).

Morimi Saki is a bad written character IMO, she was a normal graduated university student who had problems with the current society's attitude to younger generations, with her job interview’s terrible experience. She was introduced to a company with her brother-in-law’s (also her initial crush) relations, but due to some reasons she got rejected indirectly. This made her in anger with the higher ups, as they can’t even say that to her face. Her parts in the rest of the series to me is just pretty meh.

Eden of the East club members are okay, everyone besides Pantsu are the normal supporting characters, his almost death experience shocked me the most. As for the antagonists, most of the Selecao dudes were cleverly introduced but poorly developed. Interesting characters includes the Kondou the detective who reminded me of Inuyashiki’s famous ‘bang’, Hiura who followed his ideal on building a hospital-town, Kuroha of the amazing ‘johnny hunter’ arc, and also Mononobe who is the main opposition to Takizawa. The rest of these people are easy-forgettable characters who make no huge impacts on both the TV and the movies.

Music/Sound: (3.5/5)

The first opening was Falling Down by Oasis (the band who made the infamous Wonderwall), personally I don’t like this, but IT IS quite unique as there’s not much anime that uses opening songs of other language (from what I can recall), and which the most notable one is German OPs of Shingeki no Kyojin. The first ED is average. The second OP was another English OP, again I do not favor it, although it has a quite interesting intro. The third one is finally in Japanese, it is not bad but not impressive either.

The OST however is what gave most of the marks in this section, in which many of the OST played during the TV series really set the mood of the scenes. Some notable OST were ‘No Name in D.C.’, ‘Unbalance’, ‘AKX-0’, and ‘Reveal the World’. The OSTs are overall well executed and deserves applause.

There’s no broken English accent here, I was super impressed, and then I saw they hired Westerners to dub some of the Americans both in the first episode of the TV and first movie. Kuroha’s voice on the other hand however, is terrible, her VA made her sound the extreme end of the ‘Ara-Ara’ spectrum, which is unacceptable for me.

Art/Animation: (4/5)

I simply can’t praise execution of episode 1 enough, such beautiful directing work. I never once thought an anime could do a B-roll. So, the camera initially followed Saki’s perspective, then after the White House short incident, the camera turned back time to Takizawa’s perspective.

The appliance of CGI is non-intrusive for me, so props to that. A watercolor-like aesthetic is used in the scenery art, very beautiful for a 2009 anime! The character designs are good, but Kuroha’s blue lipstick is a pain in the butt.

Conclusion: (8.8/Above Average)

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. 

Is this a must-watch, no, but is this as underrated as other claims? Depends heavily on the viewer, for me its cool watch but not exactly awesome. As some of the plot felt rushed and chugging all answers to the movies was a bad experience for me.

I will recommend Higashi no Eden to NEETs and especially those who yet to watch Mirai Nikki and Psycho-Pass, as they are better anime in my opinion.

Watch it here! :