What does nudity have to do with terrorism and politics? Quite a bit it seems. Eden of the East opens with a naked man who calls himself Akira Takizawa in front of the White House just as Saki Morimi gets in trouble with the Secret Service for tossing a coin onto the White House lawn. Akira has no memory of who he is, or what he is doing naked.
The series follows Akira, who has a cell phone loaded with ¥8.2 billion, as he tries to discover who he really is and a game that he is apparently a part of. The cell phone also connects him to an operator called Juiz, who has almost God-like powers over society.
Eden of the East keeps you guessing; it shares a lot of the same elements as the Bourne Identity. I found the story a bit odd, and convoluted. Juiz has unrealistic power over society. Saki falls in love with Akira, but that isn’t a surprise since he is a “safe” bad boy.
Akira is an interesting character. You don’t quite know if he is putting on his amnesia or is genuinely clueless about his past and who he really is. He comes off as a nice guy, but yet some things point to a perhaps more sinister past. Akira has no reservations when it comes to nudity…much to Saki’s discomfort.
Saki is a pretty normal college girl. She wants to find the right guy to date and just graduate. She is pretty adventurous despite the innocent quiet exterior.
Production IG handled the animation. Eden of the East’s vehicles look ripped out of Ghost in the Shell. The characters and nicely painted background remind me more of Studio Ghibli than usual Production IG fare.
Eden of the East is interesting. Saki, Akira, and the other characters are believable and appealing. They are older than the usual protagonists (college age); although the designs feel more high school than college.
Eden of the East has periods of action that seem to come out of nowhere. Mostly the show is full of suspense and mystery.
I am generally mixed about Eden. On one hand, I found the story interesting and appealing. Other the other hand, some parts of it made little sense and felt too unrealistic for the world Eden develops. I liked how this anime felt modern and present. The series mentions 9-11 and other present day events. The technology is also believable and familiar.
The name of the series comes from a search engine Saki and her friends developed together.
I recommend Eden of the East if you like suspense thrillers or want something different from the usual anime fare. Despite its flaws, Eden is an interesting story and a solid watch.
I loved this show It was captivating, deep, had not too much action that it felt like another combat, or action packed drama anime, but enough where the show wasn’t all talk and kept it from getting boring. One of the only things i hated but loved was the ending of the anime+movies. I really fell in love with both Akira and Saki as a couple and died when Akira disappeared, BOTH TIMES!!!!!!!!! I feel like most of the characters were developed pretty well, a couple support characters got a little jipped, but overall good development. There weren’t too many characters to keep track of, and you understood what point of view each person was coming from.
The plot was great, there was the “Bourne” influence. I never really cared for the Bourne Series, and never thought I would like the plot of it either, but Eden of the East amazed me. From the Seleção and Juiz, both Portuguese meaning, “Selection” and “Judge” respectively, displaying outside cultures effecting the world, while still keeping Japanese culture, while not necessarily a focus of the show, or really even too much of an aspect, but still keeping it at least displayed pleasantly as to see the nicer sides of what is sometimes displayed negatively.
For me Eden of the East is one of the best Animes, and Television Shows for that matter, that I have seen. The amount of emotion and all round love for it that was developed in the few episodes consumed me as I was watching. All I wanted to do when I was watching it was find out what happened next, and when I stopped all I wanted to do was go back and watch it again. I feel that if more people had watched this anime, it probably would have been more influential on society (or at least I wish), and would have ended up on the sites top 10 most influential :P.
In short I am glad I chose to watch Eden of the East on a whim, thank you Netflix, and would absolutely recommend it. In my opinion, the animation is good, storyline great, character development is good, emotion and well just heart are there. I would probably give it a 9.5-9.9/10, purely based on a bit of biased coming from not seeing the Akira/Saki relationship completely come full circle, and the fact that the series was as short as it was, other than those, I can not think of really any other problems that I noticed whilst watching it.
Production IG does anime well. There hasn’t been an anime they have done yet that I haven’t liked on some level. Eden of the East is very deep and subtle. In that regard it is closely related to Ghost in the Shell.
Netflix is great for anime. I found Crackle has a different selection than Netflix. It is worth checking out, especially since it is free.