God Eater opens up with our main protagonist Renka Itsugi wandering in open world hiding from Aragami (Big Mutant Monsters). He has some flashback of people dying. It might be his family but I’m not quite sure, didn’t really get to see any faces. And he didn’t comment on it so it’s up in the air for now. I’m sure we’ll get some insight to who’s those people were in later episodes. Once the dust clears he finds himself at Wall Maria, from Attack on Titan. No, no I’m just kidding of course. But that is exactly what I though when they zoomed out and displayed the city of Fenrir. And after reading the plot of this story, and seeing the first episode, it sure feels a lot like an Attack on Titan type story.
After the super wide shot and some weird camera effects Renka finds himself in a training room and he is being tested if he is able to wield a “God Arm” (humanity’s last hope at fighting the Aragami). And of course he passes and gets a somewhat clunky looking bracelet. The staff conducting the exam up in the control room mention that its weird that an outsider is compatible with a “New-Type”. I think this refers to his “God Arm”, but that parts still a little hazy. We also get a little flashback of the same onlookers talking about energy sources, and its made somewhat clear throughout the episode that they had something to do with the creation of the Aragami and the downfall of the world. Something to do with energy sources and what not.
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So Renka is indoctrinated into the God Eater force, but seeing that his God Arm isn’t complete yet and he’s inexperienced, he’s forced to sit back and train while other go into battle. This seems to upset him a lot but he doesn’t get all hot-headed about it. If anything it motivates him to take his training more seriously so he can get out there as soon as possible. Though he does butt heads with Major Amamiya (A sort of task force commander, I guess). It’s also notable to mention that she too has a God Arm seeing that she has a big bracelet on too.
As per orders of the Major, Renka is tasked to train with a fellow God Eater in training named Kota. Kota is nice and friendly. He seems sort of laid back in a way but that might just be him trying to lighten the mood. Kota extends a hand to Renka and he accepts it, which is nice. They go through some training together and while Renka shows great promise, the Major still has her doubts. She talks about how those with exceptional potential are often never able to grow because they die so soon. This gives us a nice look at how and why the Major will make future decisions. She knows that loses are inevitable but still values those that can make a difference. Which is a hard thing to weigh when you’re in such a position as hers.
After a few too many failed training exercises, Kota sees that Renka is losing his motivation. So he takes him to witness the finishing touches being put on his God Arm. We also get introduced to the head of maintenance Licca. She seems rather young to be doing this sort of stuff. But in a post-apocalyptic world I guess there’s no time to grow up anymore. I mean I’m pretty sure that Renka and Kota are just as young as her too.
An unknowable amount of time passes and terror strikes when the Aragami break through not one but two places in the wall. And on opposite sides no less. It’s here where we find out that the God Eaters forces are stretched so thin that they have barely enough to deal with both sides at once. Seeing the dire situation Renka disobeys orders and breaks out of the facility with his God Arm to go help the side with less forces. The Major tries to stop him, but he uses his God Arm powers to give him exceptional agility and jumping power and easily jumps over the barricades placed before him.
He gets out there an sees a fellow God Eater get wrecked from behind and goes to try to help him. In the process he takes on a few Aragami but is unable to really do anything to them. I thought that God Arms could beat the Origami, but when he slashes at them it barely seems to do anything. This leads to him losing his weapon. The injured God Eater tells him to run, but Renka has a flashback to those dead people again and picks up a wooded beam and continues to fight anyway. But of course the wood breaks and Renka is tossed away. Luckily he’s tossed near his weapon so he makes a break for it, but another Aragami closes in on him. He’s almost eaten until the Aragami is sniped out of the sky by a female God Eater. Then two others descend on the battlefield and just start shredding away at the Aragami as though it were nothing. And they seemingly have the same weapon as Renka… WTF why didn’t his weapon work against the Aragami when he was trying to protect the injured God Eater. Renka deduces by the leader’s name that this is the famous 1st unit.
And with them taking care of everything Renka sort of watches in awe of their skill for a while. That is until he sees a woman in the midst of being attacked and quickly runs to her rescue. But seeing that he has a sword and the Aragami is far away and closing in fast it appears that his rescue attempt will end in vain. But Renka beckons to his weapon to reach and it responds to his wishes by transforming into a sniper rifle. A powerful beam shoots out and saves the woman in time. Apparently this isn’t normal seeing that the entire 1st unit is amazed that his weapon was able to transform. But I think that transformation has something to do with the weapon being a New-Type. And that about wraps up the episode.
Now I gotta say I’m really torn on this show. God Eater really has the potential to be anything at this point, so its hard to really know what to expect in later episodes of this show. The animation is weird. Like almost like they layered traditional 2D drawing over 3D character models. It’s somewhat off-putting but doesn’t really stand out enough to affect the show. I assume I’ll gradually get used to in a few episodes. The combat and fight scenes seem really clunky and aren’t shot very well. Which makes all the actions scenes that are supposed to be intense and suspenseful, just plain boring for me. This is weird considering that this is a Ufotable show and they usually can do really good fight choreography and camera placement. So I don’t know why this show doesn’t resemble some of their other works. Maybe it will get better but if it continues like this it will get really boring really fast.
But time did pass rather quickly when I was watching it. So I guess that’s good. I wouldn’t say the first episode was really captivating. I sort of like the main character seeing how he’s not overly stoic but not overly hot-headed. One of the deciding factors on me to continue watching this will be how they deal with his character. Same goes for all the characters we barely know like 1st unit and the scientists.
Sometimes there are shows that have very awkward intro episodes because they try to get to the meat of the show too fast. And that’s what I think this show suffers from. They try to explain too much but don’t really give it any importance. Its more or less put in there because its information we need to make the scenario make sense. I know its necessary but it could be written into the story in a way that doesn’t seem so heavy-handed. I’m not saying its bad, but it does seem a little lazy. But the content is enough to make me want to come back next episode and see what they can do with it. So while I’m not completely sold on God Eater, I haven’t given up on it yet either.
