Eden of the East

Eden of the East is an 11-episode mystery series about... well, I can't really say anything because so much of this anime's actual plot would be considered a spoiler. (Yeah, it's one of those). The synopsis AniList provides is purposefully vague and I will be too in this review. The last thing that I want to do is spoil a show that someone was looking forward to seeing. However, being vague about the plot doesn't inhibit me from airing my grievances with this show.

I first discovered this series while checking out Hulu's anime catalog of all things. I wasn't expecting them to have so many neat series on there, to be honest. The thumbnail caught my eye right away. The way the girl is drawn, slightly scared and nervous, with the guy's smug expression and the burning building in the background, I thought Eden was going to be a hostage show where the girl was coerced into a dangerous situation by this guy and forced to do crazy things. That's not what this anime is of course, which is probably for the best because my ideas are definitely interesting, but what the anime turned out to be was actually much stranger.

This strangeness mostly stems from the plot, which is pretty out there. Even though the plot is rather insane, it does provide insane and interesting scenarios. There's a lot of potential in the plot for a great, detailed story about corruption, terrorism, murder, etc. The problem is that the anime pretends that the plot doesn't exist. With this setup, there are so many places you could go, but it chooses to go absolutely nowhere. I feel like this is what happened in the writer's room:

Writer #1: "So we have this great story with all this material. How should we flesh out the plot and explore the situation our MC is in?"
Boss: "We shouldn't. Let's keep everything surface level so we can explain it more in the movie. That way people will have to pay to actually get the story."
Writer #2: "Well uh... if we're not going to explore the story, then how do we end the show?"
Boss: "We don't. We make the ending super unsatisfying so people have to watch the movie to get the real ending."
Writer #1: "Okay, what about the characters then? I think this show won't work without strong characters. If we don't understand the characters' motives and who they are as people, then nothing will make sense."
Boss: "We don't have time to do those things. We're just trying to get people to watch the movie."
Writer #2: "...so you don't want us to deepen the relationships between the characters either, do you?"
Boss: "Would that change the number of people who buy the movie?"
Writers #1 and 2: "..."
Boss: "Exactly!"

Thus, Eden of the East was born!

It sounds ridiculous, but it's true. AniList will tell you that our MC, Akira, has lost his memory. The entire series is spent on him trying to figure out who he is and what he was doing before he lost his memories. The problem is that the show requires Akira to also progress the plot without his memories and it struggles to juggle both of these tasks. So, instead of juggling, it chucks one of the balls out the window and focuses on having Akira figure out who he is. We're not going forward in the story, we're going backward. And once we get to a point where we can start progressing again, the show ends. Going backward is not necessarily a bad thing either, but the show refuses to give us enough information about the plot to make going backward worthwhile. So the plot malfunctions and does nothing.

The characters receive the same treatment. Legitimately none of them have arcs. Every single character is the same as they were at the beginning of the show. Why is this? Because you have to watch the movie to get the actual character development! Not only do none of the characters have arcs, but they also have no depth to them. We know nothing about these characters besides surface-level information and they act as one-note as possible. Some of the characters are actually abandoned and never mentioned again even though they should be extremely important to Saki, who is the other main character apparently? The story isn't about her in the slightest though. The anime kind of forgets that after a few episodes. It goes from being sort of about her to 100% about Akira and Saki takes a supporting role. She is only there to make Akira look good.

But, there has to be some good things about the anime, right? I gave it a 33/100 after all. And yeah, this show isn't completely incompetent. Actually, the things I believe it does well, it excels at. The music, for example, is probably the best part of this show. It's the thing I remember most about it. Each song fit the scene perfectly and was unique enough to worm itself into my head. A lot of anime, movies, and tv shows, go with simple background music to not distract you from the action but fail to realize that unique songs can complement the action just as well, if not better.

Another thing I believe the show gets right is the art, which is beautiful. The scenery in particular really pops because of that painted look it has. I was always looking at the backgrounds because they were so pretty. The character design was done well too, which makes it a greater shame that the characters are written so poorly.

The last thing I want to talk about before ending this review is the animation. I really disliked the animation in this series. It felt incredibly clunky and slow as if the characters were moving through molasses. Not everything has to be fluid, but there needs to be a reason that your animation is like this and there just isn't one. It genuinely feels like the characters take 2 times longer than they should, to do anything. The use of 3D animation is also not great in this anime. It looks pretty bad most of the time it is used and stands out too much from the 2D animation.

So, should you watch Eden of the East? Nah. There are much better shows to watch. This felt like a waste of time and one giant advertisement for the Eden of the East movie. That's why the anime stops at the beginning of the story before anything happens, that's why there's 0 character development, that's why nothing is explored beyond a surface-level explanation. Everything is to get you to watch the movie. So, as a stand-alone piece of media, Eden of the East fails tremendously.