Anime Review | God Eater (Lights, Camera, Action!) Page 1

Anime Review | God Eater (Lights, Camera, Action!)

God Eater

The God Eater franchise of games has a cult fan-base in Japan, and although there have only been two entries in the series, both have had an updated remake entitled "Burst" and now the original is getting a second remake/re-release this year on PlayStation 4 and Vita. Essentially a Monster Hunter-esque hunting title, the story and setting really elevate it over the majority of the other Hunter clones. This anime adaptation is based on the original God Eater, and is set in the year 2071 where the Earth has been overrun with strange beasts known as Aragami, beings impervious to regular weapons, devouring anything manmade. Around the world, regions have established safe zones to try and help the remainder of the human race survive, being protected by "God Eaters," genetically modified soldiers that use "God Arcs," weapons that use Aragami cells to hunt and harvest the Aragami.
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The retelling of how the world became a dystopian land of monsters is not initially explained, with there instead being flashbacks throughout the series that tell the story of the past twenty years, showing the initial discovery of the Oracle cell that makes up the Aragami, through to the disaster that wrecked the world, and the fallout afterwards. The story from the game is quite faithfully adapted, replacing the player character with Utsugi Lenka as the protagonist but keeping the supporting cast and the major story beats. Utsugi is one of a "new" type of God Eater - while previously the God Eaters would have a single type of Arc, either blade or gun, a new type has the ability to transform between the two.

Possibly the best part of the adaptation is the transition of the key elements of the videogame - the designs of the Aragami and the God Eaters, along with the God Arcs are superb and end up looking fantastic on both, as does the combat between them. It makes sense for the visuals to be the strength of the series considering the anime is coming from UFOTable, those responsible for the outstandingly stunning FATE recently. The series uses an odd heavily accented, shaded art style that is at first quite off putting but makes for some beautiful sequences along with CGI Aragami.

The series had issues from the start, with delays to episodes and confusion over just how many episodes would make up the whole event, originally being listed as only nine in total. At the end of the ninth episode, however, a message stating "Episodes 10-13 Coming this Winter!" was shown and the studio has asked fans to stick with it. The series not getting a full order of 24 episodes is a shame as the storytelling itself is not bad, yet does suffer from a slow start, which could alienate viewers early on. These types of slow burn anime often then end up kicking into high gear towards the finale but with such a short season it's unlikely for that to happen here. Similarly, the extended cast has interesting back-stories and all deserve more time to be explored. What character development there is feels sparse and brushed over - there are numerous interesting characters but there are too few episodes available to examine them all. Soma's unique birth and his childhood would be great to cover in more depth, as would the early days of Lindow and his sister.

8/10

Great - Silver Award

A surprise hit! The story of God Eater is suitably dark and does a great job of adapting the source material, with the Aragami and the God Eaters making a fantastic transition onto the screen. UFOTable also continues to produce outstanding quality with its visuals. While the series stumbles to get started, by the last few episodes it manages to become something great. Hopefully, the series will get a second season or an expansion to the short planned ending next season. Come back this Winter where Cubed3 will be looking at the final four episodes.

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Supa_hyped 26.10.2015#1

watched the live action film. was a decent watch. might watch a couple episodes sfter im done with 1 punch man and ushio and tora. giant monsters, guns and swords cant go to wrong, can it?