God Eater Episode 9: Soma Schicksal

Soma route confirmed.

Impression

So firstly, it’s good that they’re pushing the last four episodes to Winter 2016. I hope ufotable will spend the next few months reflecting on their mistakes and taking their time with producing something with good quality that can air on a regular schedule – which is ironically the least we expected from them to begin with.

As for the episode itself, it turned out to be pretty plot-heavy, which I was happy about. I don’t see how their bleak situation could possibly have a proper ending, but somewhat of a plot does exist now. Johann has a certain set of ideals that he won’t let anyone else mess with, Lindow is en-route to becoming a target for disposal, Alisa is being brainwashed by that sleazy doctor, and Lenka is running around befriending everyone in Fenrir. Despite Alisa having been the most obvious love interest for him, being ‘that’ one hot girl with the revealing character design, I think he’s gotten further with Soma in a single episode than he has with anyone else during the rest of the anime – even Sakuya or Kota. I mean, he’s spent the most screen-time with Alisa, but it didn’t really help that she was a silent and helpless wreck the entire time. Lenka x Soma OTP, anyone?

I didn’t think Soma jumped off the helicopter with the primary intention of protecting the device – it was a positive side-effect of his actions, but I think he was just being an angry person as he usually is, and wanted to kill the Aragami out of irritation. God Eater is developing this trend, in which each character backstory tries to out-do the last character’s in terms of how big a shit life took on them – imagine growing up as a child in the knowledge that your own parents made you a half-breed for the sake of their own goals. And his mother even died during childbirth, too – in effect starting off the trail of bodies that he supposedly left behind in his wake due to his ‘curse’ as a shinigami or whatever it was. At least it was implied that Aisha was already pregnant when they came up with the idea to put the Bias Factor into a growing baby – the despair would have been even worse had Soma been conceived for the sole purpose of being experimented on to help mankind. Although the entire pregnancy did seem like an accident to me…

I can also now understand why Major Amamiya resigned. It was already bad enough seeing the rate at which the Aragami evolved from all those flashbacks – even on the battlefield, anti-Aragami weaponry which was just used became ineffective mere seconds later, once they adapted. But seeing those things just grow out of thin air like wild Pokemon appearing in tall grass was just… doesn’t that mean they’re not even reducing the number of Aragami at all? If the scattered Oracle Cells just reform again after being separated, aren’t they getting nowhere? I honestly don’t see how humanity can be anything other than utterly fucked if the Aragami don’t even stay dead once they’ve managed (with great difficulty and loss of life) to kill them. I’m surprised Lenka didn’t just give up and retire upon seeing how they’re born – on top of the fact that he’s pretty much about to die now that he’s continuing to use his Jinki, he’s not even going to be able to do all that much good by using up his life.

I wonder what Johann is trying to do? I don’t think he’s an ‘enemy’ in the sense that he’s against the rest of humanity, because at this stage the two possible sides are ‘humanity’ and ‘everything else’. But I can see him having some sort of unethical world view that advocates sacrificing lots of people for a supposedly greater good, and I can also see him trying to achieve exactly that with Aegis. Which makes it pretty tragic for Lenka, who is using up the remaining fragments of his life for something which isn’t actually real. Whatever it is, it’s clearly important enough for him to try to dispose of Lindow over it, which… he’ll probably regret once there’s a massive Aragami invasion and there’s no-one skilled enough to kill it. It’s not cool that they’re using Alisa for it, though. All the poor girl wanted was for the doctor to help her get over her trauma, even if she had to be hypnotized – but to think she’s being made to kill Lindow instead?! What are they doing?!