Eden of the East

[Buffalobiian]

Alternative title: Higashi no Eden
Genre: Drama

On November 22, 2010 ten missiles strike Japan. However, this unprecedented terrorist act, later to be called as "Careless Monday," does not result in any apparent victims, and is soon forgotten by almost everyone. Then, 3 months later... Saki Morimi is a young woman currently in the United States of America on her graduation trip. But just when she is in front of the White House, Washington DC, she gets into trouble, and only the unexpected intervention of one of her fellow countrymen saves her. However, this man, who introduces himself as Akira Takizawa, is a complete mystery. He appears to have lost his memory. and he is stark naked, except for the gun he holds in one hand, and the mobile phone he's holding with the other hand. A phone that is charged with 8,200,000,000 yen in digital cash.

~ANN

Official Website: http://juiz.jp/blog/
ANN: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ency...e.php?id=10474
AnimeNfo: http://www.animenfo.com/animetitle,4...i_no_eden.html
AniDB:http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl...anime&aid=6238
MyAnimeList: http://myanimelist.net/anime/5630/Higashi_no_Eden



First Episode: [gg]_Eden_of_the_East_-_01_[C9E23B74].mkv

[Sapphire]

Oh I totally HAVE to see this!! Honey and Clover was riveting, beautiful, and heartbreaking. Only based off of that I have high hopes for this anime.. totally downloading now!

I remember when the other students from Honey and Clover were trying to find out Morita's secret job, I really thought Morita was a spy for the CIA or something.. ahckck. Wait, it only has the same illlustrator, so who knows.. ahhh

We'll see we'll see! I'm optimistic.

[Ryllharu]

Holy crap.

It has a completely different feel to H&C, but the characters feel the same. It's kind of hard to describe.

The OP and the ED are easily the best I've ever seen, and that is no exaggeration. The OP is just really pretty, but the song is good too. The ED though...holy crap. That is some amazing stop motion papercraft.


Back to the episode. The use of the white scribble over his junk accomplished two things. 1) Satisfied any need for censorship and 2) constantly drew your attention to it as it moved and flickered, completely eliminating any protection the censorship actually provided! That made the audience as aware and uncomfortable as everyone in the series.

Morimi is very attractive as a character too. She has that energetic air about her that the heroines of H&C completely lacked, but she's savvy and althetic enough to keep up with 'Akira.' I liked all the pop culture references he made in the apartment, and the English was really well done. Maybe they finally got some native speakers for once.

Lots of big mysteries too. Who is behind the Noblesse Oblige organization that wiped his memories with a phone call? Who is responsible for the terrorist attack and why? Is the description wrong (Morimi and Akira already meet up before the missiles are fired, not three months later)?

As for this episode, who was 'Akira' pointing the gun at? Was it the cops, was it the White House, or was he after Momiri?

There is no way I am not watching this, whether gg is trolling about just doing this one episode or not.

[animus]

This was a great first episode, it's so unique.

And damn, I'm so fucking glad they didn't have people speak Engrish throughout the whole thing and actually had people that could actually speak English fluently.

Surprised there wasn't something politically with the missile attack since a nuke flew over Japan not too long ago from N. Korea.

[Sapphire]

FFFFFFFFFFFFF---

Exactly. As soon as the ep finished, I was just like, "HOLY. SHIT".

The animation/art is realistic and amazing. I mean you could see the reflections off of the sparkling airport floor oh my god. I looked at the DC terrain and for the first time went, "so this is how America looks with a Japanese animation style," rather than "uh, I assume this place is supposed to be somewhere in North America?"

The show was all together suspenseful, humorous, and interesting even though I had no idea what was happening. It's an amazing premise. I love both dazed yet determined Morimi and quirky yet badass-clever Akira.

I was shocked at how good the American accents in this show were. I was like HOLY CRAP okay they got some natives and it worked well. I think I will have to marathon this show because there's no way I can watch this in small doses.

I can already tell this will be a masterpiece.

[masamuneehs]

man. this show is getting some kind of rave reviews...

The fansubwiki site lists this series as already being dropped by gg. And I've really had it up to here with their asinine pranks and trolls. Regardless of if they're doing it for real or not, I'm going to sit and wait for another group... well, a particular group that is...

because I'm not going to be trying out this "Desire" group
Desire - Eden of the East - Episode 1
Any group whose first release was Rideback Episode 07 and whose staff page is filled with idiocy sends up certain warning flags for me...

Good news about this series: Frostii and AnimeONE will also be subbing it.

Bad news about this series: It's only 11 episodes long.

This has gone on my list of things to watch though.

[David75]

That's what a bit of nicely managed CG can do. And I think this is just the begining of that technical trend. For now, if you watch the details, you get the CG feeling and understand the technical choices that had to be made for the ep to be produced quickly enough without impacting production costs too much.
Also they had to make some choices so that it remaines anime and keeps an artistic touch.
I'm still wondering wether it's a good or a bad thing. Time will tell I guess. It also really depends on the quality of the scenario and story.
I remember the first CG anime (french or other ones) that were just horrible for lack of story or anything interresting. Then you have some hilarious eps from "Tripping the Rift" were quality isn't even a problem, since humor, sarcasm and everything about it is way more important.

Regarding american voices, they're a bit too clean, studio recorded with absolutely no sound scene integration. So it really sounds like some video games. But it's fine too, at least they improved that part.

Regarding the story:
Is he some kind of clone or artificially grown human?
They talk as if he'd be eliminated, but he wasn't. His brainwashing did not affect his abilities. For some reason, the girl is either the target of part of it.

Other than that, I do not think of anything particular, strange start I'd say.

[Ryllharu]

I'm still wondering wether it's a good or a bad thing. Time will tell I guess. It also really depends on the quality of the scenario and story.
I remember the first CG anime (french or other ones) that were just horrible for lack of story or anything interresting. Then you have some hilarious eps from "Tripping the Rift" were quality isn't even a problem, since humor, sarcasm and everything about it is way more important.

Putting aside things like Voltron: The Third Dimension and ReBoot (the latter was awesome back in the day), I ultimately believe it will be a good thing.

Sure, there will be the occasional Pilot Candidate, Boobanaut, or To Love Ru horribly integrated CGI, but on the whole, they seem to be getting a lot better at it. Eden of the East looks a lot more like a Makoto Shinkai film (especially the airport) than it does those titles. The key point is to stay away from a few spectacular action sequences and blend it in more uniformly. Using is for backgrounds is often very successful. It even works in manga, as Akamatsu (Love Hina, Negima) has been using CG backdrops for years.

Also they had to make some choices so that it remaines anime and keeps an artistic touch.

Still, don't forget that almost no anime these days is actually hand drawn. It's all done on computers, even if it doesn't look like it is.

[Kraco]

A really interesting series for sure. I was purely posivitively surprised by the American voices as well (and thus it was no surprise to see American names in the credits). They almost sounded strange considering how it's normally Engrish you hear, and so to actually hear real English sounds out of place (which I reckon was a part of the issue for David as well, even if he only talked about technical quality and integration).

Hard to say too much about the plot yet, other than I don't think the dude had too deep a mission yet necessarily. He might have been some sort of a prototype or an experiment for possible future missions. Perhaps some sort of an artificial dublicate personality that can be activated with a phone call. Who knows, but hopefully we will learn more later.

The girl was also really nice. Energetic like has been said, but felt really believable and real. She might turn even more energetic once back in Japan, if they really want to emphasize little details.

This show is absolutely a keeper.

[Buffalobiian]

The dude does sound like an experimental subject where they're designed to have multiple personalities, enabling them to turn on the "terrorist" mode on and off, while no amount of probing by officials and government would be able to link them back to the organisation.

However, "programing" artificial personalities may be hard, if not impossible, so after they train them up as a terrorist, you simply wipe them and let the other develop naturally, calling them up only when needed. Since it's "natural", nothing should seem suspicious to an outsider neither. After all, you can't screw up an act if you're not acting.

Interesting, and while I haven't seen Honey and Clover, the characters still have a really nostalgic feel to them.

[Dark Dragon]

As someone who never really liked Honey & Clover, this show is a pleasant surprise.

The OP/ED animation blew me away and the OP song being in English instantly reminded me of Ergo Proxy. I too was surprised by the non-engrish voice acting and that was one of the main reason that i kept watching.

I like how this episode has a really relaxed atmosphere to it even while revealing the more serious side like wiped memories and bombing. Morimi is certainly cheerful and a bit ditsy i'm not sure if i like her yet. Akira is definitely an interesting character and i enjoyed the Bourne reference.

One of the few shows this season that had me sit through the entire first episode without wanting to skip it.

[meller]

Well, the OP is done by Oasis and called "falling down" from the "dig out your soul" album.
I wonder how Production I.G. managed to get them ...

[Ryllharu]

The same way that Geneon got Radiohead for the Ergo Proxy ED. They paid for it by licensing the song.

[David75]

The same way that Geneon got Radiohead for the Ergo Proxy ED. They paid for it by licensing the song.

SonyMusic is a sponsor, so maybe they didn't have to pay too much for it?

I remember ParadiseKiss ED going very well with Franz Ferdinand's "Do you want to"
I guess that when a sponsor is a music major, that helps

[Sapphire]

I vote this for Series En Fuego

[Marik]

Another option.

[Mistwalker & Tadashi] Eden of the East - 01 (720p H.264 AAC).mkv

[Lunar] Eden of the East - 01 (720p H.264) [F0144C3F].mkv
[Lunar] Eden of the East - 01 (XviD-Hobovision) [012564D1].avi

[MFauli]

well, i dont get all the hype and use of superlatives, but i definitely liked the first episode and will keep watching.

morimi looks like a 1:1 clone of the girl in Itazurana Kiss, though.

[Yukimura]

I watched this first ep and felt mild amusement and passing interest in seeing my hometown rendered quite attractively (albeit with some inconsistencies of course) in an anime but I'm not ready to sell my first born for the DVD boxset of the show just yet.

Both Akira and Momoi seem like ditzes, and I was under the impression the tone of the show would be more serious than comedic. I don't particularly care for ditziness when it's mixed unevenly with seriousness, but I think it can still be done well so I'm curious how that will play out. It's probably a safe bet that Akira at least will have more than one side to him and where he might go seems decently up in the air. I can't see many paths for Momoi's evolution though, beyond ditzy neutral party having crazy stuff happen all around her and maybe becoming ditzy determinator.

The animation, character design, and to a lesser extent character behavior all reminded me of Library Wars and that may take some getting used to as something about Library Wars's look and feel always rubbed me the wrong way even though I ultimately enjoyed the series. I'm hoping the series takes a more serious turn in the coming episodes with the whole bombing/organization mystery but who knows, the serious tone could just as easily end up being a background to a ditzy romance story (please God not that).

[MFauli]

Library Wars? I thought that at least Morimi looks like a Hayao Miyazaki-character. Her facial structure looks like Chihiro´s from Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi.

[Pandadice]

I loved this. It was so awesome. I'm not exactly sure if I can pin-point and explain what exactly made it awesome, but it's more like everything in it just worked well to make it a very enjoyable and interesting watch. There were a few scenes where I was going like "did they really have to do that? <.<" (example being the scene in the hallway with the cop :x). and I have to admit I'm a little uneasy about the story so far.. the whole terrorist in DC hits a little too close to home. but it is interesting, and I'll definitely keep watching it.