Step yo’ game up God Eater! – ep. 4

Well we got everyone back at base safe and sound with little to no trouble. One thing that I noticed last week was that even though the situation seemed dangerous, while they were on the plane, everyone in 1st unit is just so bad ass that nothing really feels like a threat. So just like the activities in this episode, I didn’t really feel any danger when the Aragami were around. Which is definitely bad. A show should never make a monster adversary lose its threat to the audience and the world. But God Eater has basically turned Aragami into crops you can farm for. Which is ironic because they actually harvest some Aragami this episode.

It seems that as of late the only things that are keeping me interested in God Eater is the awesome animation and Alisa’s hot bod. And honestly that’s not enough to keep me engaged in a show. If anything I feel like I could just go google searching Alisa and get the same satisfaction I do from watching these episodes. Because at the rate its going, God Eater is shaping up to be a major disappointment.

Like I said earlier, with everyone back at base things are starting to feel safe again. And now with 1st unit getting three new members in Kota, Alisa and, Lenka, they seem like they’ll be nearly unstoppable now. Kota is a pretty good addition to the group. I really didn’t expect to see him around again since that first episode but I guess he’s been training in the day or two that Lenka’s been in trouble. But he’s a nice addition to the team even if he doesn’t seem to pull his weight as much as the others. He brings a dynamic of not being another stoic bad ass, like the other five members of 1st unit. Theres also an interesting situation going on with his mother, who seemed actually mortified to hear that Kota passed his training to be a God Eater. Other than that though, he seems pretty bland so far. So he sort of fits right in with the rest of 1st.

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Alisa is hinted at having some sort of medical problem and she also is so stupid that she can’t figure out how to work with others. I mean what is the Russian training to be a God Eater like? I highly doubt they would let someone who is this inept at teamwork be a God Eater, let alone just throw them into a unit and commence field missions. She either needs to get knocked down a peg by an Aragami or someone needs to slap her up, preferably Tsubaki.

One good point is that we’re getting to see the final goal of this endeavor, and just by the description it sounds really flawed. The plan is to get all of mankind and put them in an island where they will be safe from Aragami. But that’s only land Aragami, no idea what they’re going to do about the rest. I mean we already know that there are aerial Aragami, so I’m willing to bet there are aquatic Aragami too. But I guess this logic sounds good enough to Lenka because he is just too amazed at how big the island is to think about this plan called the “Aegis” project.

And the “Aegis” project is the reason our heroes are venturing out and farming Aragami this episode. And these scenes where they are hunting are super boring. It’s almost equivalent to watching someone farm for xp in an MMORPG. And to top it off the characters are so bland that they can’t make even make it interesting with dialogue between them, so there is literally nothing to keep you interested or invested in these scenes. The only time I actually cared was when Tsubaki confronts Alisa for being a stuck up bitch. And that is even played of like, meh. I swear, if these farming scenes keep up, I’ll be thoroughly disappointed.

Oh wait, when I said the characters were bland, I guess I misspoke. Because there is one thing redeemable trait they all have, but we already know what it was and so didn’t need the reminder. Their compassion for humanity. They find a group of survivors on the way back from farming and decide to bring them to their fortress. And immediately I knew this wasn’t going to work out for these people. The show was obviously setting it up for tragedy and nothing else. We already knew all our characters are selfless bland characters, so we didn’t really need to see it again. But the kicker is that they have nothing to do with the people being rejected from entering the fortress. Nope, it’s not our heroes fault, it’s the guards who won’t let potential God Eaters into town.

Now while I do sort of like the concept that the only allowed inhabitants are potential God Eaters and their families, the whole group being rejected that way feels cheap to me. It was clearly there to keep showing how much 1st unit cares about other people and are selfless, but still needs to throw tragedy in, just because. This way we can have the heroic characters that are admirable but aren’t to blame for the bad things that happen, because its out of their control, yawn. I think it would have been better if they found out the little girl had potential for being a God Eater and dragged her away form her family to begin her training. But to just turn them away was just meh. And ultimately thats what this whole show is starting to feel like, one big pile of meh. Come on God Eater, get back to me when you have characters worth caring about and a plot that makes me want to see how it ends up. Because currently you seem to have neither.

Logan Peterson
Logan Peterson
My names Logan and I love writing about Anime. Other art is guchi too. When I'm not writing gonzo reviews I'm writing books. *If interested look up The Dream Sequence on Amazon.* I usually write more editorial stuff than just plain reviews. I like my writing to be more big picture. I feel consumer reviews are a thing of the past and more personal reviews are the most valuable nowadays.