notoriousj0e

After finishing episode 11 of Eden of the East, I asked myself: "What was my reason for watching this show?". Was it because I enjoyed Terror in Resonance? Was it because I didn't hate Future Diary and gag at the mention of its name? Or could it be because I wanted to watch Death Note, but dont want to commit to 30+ episodes right now? By all accounts, I was disapointed by Eden of the East.

Maybe the biggest problem with this show is the grievous identity crisis that lasts through its entirety. In Episode one, the mc, Takizawa, compares himself to Jason Bourne, as he has no memory but possesses a large array of passports and guns. Soon after, he becomes entangled in a half-baked romance (wouldn't be a complete anime without one), mysterious terrorist plottings that nobody seems to care about (a sentiment that I shared), a cell-phone based death game (there's the gag-reflex from the Future Diary hate group), and a visual-recognition software startup (that's a new one). The show also suffers from no real tone. It remains a dorky comedy with frequent dick(I mean johnny)-humor throughout moment of tension or mystery.

In one scene in a helicopter, a character says "this game is stupid". The nail has been hit on the head. We can go home now folks. The survival game theme has been reused to death, especially in anime. So in a bid to be unique, the makers of Eden of the East came up with the dumbest, most convoluted competition with less plausibility than Future Diary at its worst. Originality exists in the scope of a narrative and the execution than it does in a novel concept. Another fail by EotE. The show ends without a completion to the game, thus increasing the why-bother factor. 

To summarize, Eden of the East an ambitious show that tried to do too much and failed at it all. I didn't like the confused narrative, lack of a point or catharsis, or the ridiculous absense of depth or tone in the characters. The rating was overblown by people who enjoyed the ambitious nature of Eote's concept and heralded it as revolutionary. Unfortunately, Eden of the East is just not that good an anime and not a fun or intelligent watch.