God Eater Episode 1 [First Impression]

On that day, humanity received a grim reminder. 

Vantage’s First Impression

I have to admit, I am conflicted. I was initially interested in God Eater because of its premise and that Alisa babe with the red hat, but the former is giving me a heavy sense of deja vu and the latter didn’t appear at all in this first episode. We know very little about the plot going forward, although much of its setting can be inferred – it’s a post-apocalyptic world where monsters called Aragami have attacked humanity and presumably confined it to certain safe areas, with an organization called Fenrir mounting a counter-attack by using Aragami components and perhaps Oracle Cells to create Jinki weapons to kill them all off. So at the moment, it basically looks like a combination of Shingeki no Kyojin, Owari no Seraph and Black Bullet dressed up in the clothes of Monster Hunter, complete with a black-haired, green-eyed main character who has of course shown himself to be reckless, angry and most likely traumatized. God Eater could have really raised a storm if it aired in the last decade, but, well… that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

At the same time, it’s cool, with massive oversized weapons. And I like cool things, especially if I forget about looking at it from a critical standpoint. Of what I’ve compared it to I also really liked Black Bullet, although the abundance of lolis may have had something to do with that. To his credit, Lenka did actually display a surprising level of calm before the Aragami attack was announced, so I’ll give him that – when he first joined, he listened to his superior’s orders without question and was a really nice guy to his fellow newbie, Kota. He also isn’t grossly overpowered (yet), which is a good sign – as a New-Type with a transforming Jinki he’s special, and better than how new recruits usually start out, but is still pretty useless in a real fight. He has good intentions, I guess, but his stoic silence is making him seem a little bland at the moment, and his subsequent hot-headed outburst didn’t exactly make me see him any better. It’s pretty obvious that he’ll be joining the ranks of the elite 1st Unit, who have suffered no casualties since their presumed ace Lindow took the helm – Lindow’s the badass casually smoking while calmly dispatching all the Aragami who throw themselves at him. Another member is Soma, who looks like a version of Zapp Renfro after he’s aged a few years and suffered a few important bereavements.

I have a lot of faith in the ufotable pedigree, which is why I want to view this in a favourable light. I mean, this is practically their first venture away from anything to do with Type-Moon, the Tales of special notwithstanding – they must have some sort of idea of what they’re doing. If something finds success in an increasingly saturated genre, I think it has to have: (i) been first in the genre, (ii) high production values, or (iii) entertaining side characters. It would also help if it pulled out a couple of unpredictable plot twists somewhere down the line, but so far God Eater has (ii) and potentially (iii) to its name, and especially (ii). If there’s anything that’ll keep me hooked on this it’s the art style, which looks like it’s been doused in a gallon of Unlimited Budget Works. It looks CG, but is apparently hand-drawn with a lot of shading – so it feels like something people would either love or hate. I think it looks gorgeous, and along with the designs it’s the only thing that’s fully lived up to the hype this has generated so far.

After weighing my options up, I’ve decided I’d be up for blogging this. I’ve signed up for hardly anything else this season, and God Eater certainly hasn’t done enough to deserve being written off on its very first episode. If I end up shooting myself in the foot, then, well… at least I still get to watch some beautifully animated people swinging around oversized weapons with cool designs. And there’s that Alisa babe. With the red hat.

Possibility of Watching: High
Possibility of Blogging: High 

Stay tuned for Oki’s impression!