Dir. Kenji Kamiyama
Japan
[Note: This is a review of all
the parts that make up this property – the original eleven episode television
series (2009), and the two feature films King
of Eden (2009) and Paradise Lost
(2010) – as one single entity. I will not include spoilers, but the bigger
issue of reviewing this in these terms is how the opinion one has for the work
contrasts from just reviewing the television series by its own and the whole
together. It may also mean you will have to acquire more than a single DVD set
to get all the parts of the entire narrative, so take note.]
If there is one virtue to Eden of the East that stands above all
else, it’s how different in manner and tone this is from most anime that is
released in the West. Its prime focus, whittling it all down, is its
director-writer scrutinising his country’s sociological and economic situation
and, through a science fiction, political thriller premise, offering up his own
hope for the future of Japan through entertainment. Missiles are a motif of the
work, but it is just as likely, if more so, for a major plot turn to take place
just from a piece of internet technology or a mobile phone, military hardware
having less effect than ordinary consumer technology in a country where such
things of mobile communication has its own urban legends and pop cultural
connections. Envisioning its world through the eyes of restless youths,
shut-ins and NEETs, the latter young adults not in employment, education or
training, it’s a story where a single specialist phone can make the Prime
Minister of Japan say “uncle” on public television. It’s very much a creation
of the late 2000s and of this decade, even at five years old now, still relevant
now for Japanese and non-Japanese viewers, and fascinating storytelling of the
period only a few years ago you can view from a distance.
On an improvised trip to
Washington D.C. by herself, the young Japanese woman Saki Morimi (Saori Hayami in Japanese, Leah Clark in English) has an odd
encounter with a Japanese man her age, completely naked and welding a pistol in
one hand and a phone in the other, outside the White House, finding herself becoming
enamoured to this mysterious person calling himself Akira Takizawa (Ryōhei Kimura in Japanese, Jason Liebrecht in English). With no
memories of who he is, Takizawa discovers that the phone is a specialist one
where, with up to ten billion yen only accessible on it available for his use,
he has the ability to do almost anything through a mysterious female contact
called Juiz (Sakiko Tamagawa in
Japanese, Stephanie Young in English),
who proclaims him as a savour of Japan. With such power in a single phone comes
great responsibility, realising he is in a game where he has been fostered into
trying to save Japan with this phone at his disposal, slowly recovering his
memories with the help of Saki and her friends while dealing with the
consequences of this predicament, both what he may have done before he lost his
memories and the other users who have these phones as well, all called Seleção
and trying to win the game or do what they desire with the resources they have.
Wanting to literally punch the person who set the game up, Takizawa has to deal
with the consequences of having a whole country on his shoulders and doing what
he feels is best for it.
The original television series
juggles political drama, latent romance, comedy and this mild science fiction
idea together in a way that succeeds by its end. The only real flaw with it, by
itself, is that it was clearly halted from having enough episodes needed to
tell the whole narrative that was planned out. It goes with a considerate beat,
and makes a full narrative arch, but with the following theatrical films
afterwards, it’s clear that Eden of the
East needs more than those eleven episodes to fill out the wider storyline.
This causes the whole project to have some flaws with its pace and
presentation. The series itself is perfect in structure baring a couple of
episodes surrounding a character known as the ‘Johnny Hunter’, which in a second viewing works for characterisation
but has a contrived wrap-up of that scenario. It suffers a lot more in the
first theatrical film King of Eden;
it is needed as it is structurally, but it repeats the beginning of the series
somewhat pointlessly and feels like it covers less in eighty minutes than what
a single twenty minute episode from the series did. Thankfully Paradise Lost, as the ending, corrects
this problem.
It’s amazing how subdued Eden of the East is over these
different pieces. It is very idiosyncratic, far from a Dragonball Z-likw work or a major fad series usually based on a Shonen Jump manga. This series is
anchored down by its emotional core, specifically around the character of Saki
whose handling as a character perfectly symbolises the whole project as a
whole. In the wrong hands, she could have been all the worst stereotypes of the
passive, waif-like female character, Kenji
Kamiyama writing all the characters, even minor ones, well. Even if she
could still be accused as being a one dimensional character, getting perilously
close to this in the first half of King
of Eden, there are two factors that prevent this and also solidify the
narrative. One, that despite Takizawa being the cool, confident male hero of
the story, everyone including the antagonists have their moments to speak in
the spotline and that the events that take place are not pushed forward by
coincidence, but by a single word utter at the right time or an available
laptop which levels the playing field for every character to contribute
something. It’s also clear, having her open and close the whole story narrative
wise, Saki is the clear protagonist even if she’s not in every scene or has the
final-final sequence of the entirety of Eden
of the East. Reversing the usual trope in anime where it’s a male in this
position with a mysterious female love interest (or two or three or a whole
illicit boudoir of high school girls and foreign exchange students), she is the
audience surrogate who is having to understand this all and weaves the
proceedings for us together around a concise arch she can learn from and we,
the viewer, get the best from with her as the placed narrator of the series. At
the centre of Eden of the East, she
works perfectly as the anchor to prevent the entire story from becoming vague
and float off into ramblings about Japanese economy; the growing love story works
in this, rather than being an arbitrary contrivance like in another anime,
making sense to flesh the whole story out and to make sure everything – from the
political talk to the oddest Dawn of the
Dead (1978) tribute you could ever see – work together fully as a single
tale.
This emotional core allows the
original TV series to (potentially) work by itself as it concludes a solid
character arch, and allows, even with the faltering pace in the first film, for
everything in the entire proceedings to keep consistent. The closing films do
not, in any way, top the ending of the final episode of the TV series, which
will disappoint some, but this work from the beginning is an immensely talky,
leisurely paced work when you loosen the genre tropes wrapped around it. It’s more
difficult to pigeonhole than a lot of anime, and by the final film, it is
clearly the creation of a director-writer who wanted to explore his feelings
about his country, old enough to have absorbed any the political strife in the
Seventies in Japan when he was growing up as a child, and also see the country’s
economy blossom and burst in the eighties. He can also look forward, through
what he concentrates on in this story, while staying entertaining and comedic
even in its more serious parts. He follows in the same distinct school of
director-writer Mamoru Oshii in expressing
his philosophies through these genre films, and that he is famous for his
spin-offs of the Ghost In The Shell
films, which I need to see, is befitting him.
The fragmentation of the whole
project mars it slightly, which is the only real fault of Eden of the East. Beyond the annoying issue, as always been the
case with anime, of having to acquire every part of it, and having to contend
with expensive prices and DVDs not being available, it does have a real effect
in making it drop in quality with The
King of Eden film. Everything else succeeds. The TV series caps itself off
well, despite only having eleven episodes and leaving you wanting more, and by
the end of Paradise Lose it
successfully closes the story off if you don’t view the story as being the
ending of the TV series but a drama. It manages to survive the potential chaos
of splitting off the whole story into three pieces and it still shines from it,
so much so that even the series’ end credits is a great pieces of short film
making by itself in its stop motion, paper animation. The desire from the
animation company Production I.G. to make something different is clear to see
and they all really put their hearts into this, flaws or not. That its not
based on a manga, a videogame or tie-in, but an original creation that was
fully thought out, makes it even more refreshing.
