Hige vs. Otaku

I honestly can’t decide on this series and judging by the reaction of parts of the ’sphere and their Twittering, I’m not alone. Certain schools of thought currently best describe my nonchalance. To summarise: it’s objectively good, but . . . eh. Something feels like it’s there, pulling me along to follow each episode, but I can’t work out if that’s genuine interest or fear that without it I’d be watching nothing of this current season.

Eden of the East is a solid effort, or has been for the past seven episodes. Its ideas are interesting, the set up is mature and the characters… actually, this is my biggest problem. I honestly don’t care about Akira, quirky, carefree amnesiac, or Saki, quivering docile anime girl, or any of the bland supporting cast. I particularly don’t care about Saki, in fact. Her bizarre sense of duty towards her sister’s husband confuses me, it seeming to be a sort of misplaced paternal respect or weirder still, inappropriate feelings. Her unrelenting wetness (no, perverts, not like that) drives me mad and I wish with every episode she didn’t exist. She stumbles around in that knocked-kneed squealing way anime is so fond of depicting its female characters in and adds nothing to the proceedings. Of course, apart from some hackneyed prince fantasy, which I suppose is meant to add romantic depth but instead only adds depth to my contempt for her fatuous existence. She’s like Yamada only tedious and shit.

All this from Kenji Kamiyama. Kenji ‘one of the adults’ Kamiyama, a man born nineteen years and a day before me and a reliably thoughtful, interesting director. It feels like he’s watched Honey & Clover, decided it was pretty cool and attempted to apply his love for sociology and hard sci-fi onto its contemporary-Japanese-kids-falling-in-love template. It fails horribly in that respect: Saki and Akira’s fledgling relationship doesn’t feel like anything more than the obvious, ’save you from this bland, dissatisfying life’ situation its meant to be. There’s no substance there, no hint of chemistry that would spark a relationship between these two characters. Maybe Poor-Mans Morita likes the idea of being the prince to Faux-Hagu and his interest stems from that kind of saviour complex, but that isn’t interesting nor is it convincing. Eden of the East seems pretty keen on verisimilitude – particularly in regards to its characters who occupy real places and reference things/events that give firm nods to reality – and this obviously affects the expectations of the audience. Our suspension of disbelief adjusts and our tolerance for whimsy declines. It takes a certain shrewdness to juggle so many contrasting genre elements together and make them work. Kamiyama, who struggles with characterisation at the best of times and isn’t known for his flights of fancy, can’t seem to pull it off. The sci-fi is solid, and the social commentary is interesting but everything else, which is a much bigger piece of the pie, is mediocre at best. The end result just feels rather stale and difficult to warm to.

But then it’s important to remember we’re only half way through and Eden of the East still has many intriguing, honestly decent aspects to it. The plot has a lot of potential, though it’s difficult to imagine them fitting in the suggested formula of one Selecao per episode. I suppose it’s obvious now that Kamiyama doesn’t intend to play it that way, which makes the remaining four episodes a rather interesting prospect. I can probably bear the tepid love story if the broader pay-off is worth it. Either way, Eden of the East has a class that makes it very easy to stick around and find out.