The Seleção logo/emblems are really neat. I wonder how long until someone
recreates one as a Halo 3 emblem. Dang, I just depressed myself.

So are you watching Eden of the East yet? Because you should be. I know it’s really easy now a days to pick out a couple of Shakespeare quotes and drop terms like “noblesse oblige” all over the place, but the show really seems to have its shit together.

And by has its shit together I mean it doesn’t get itself lost in philosophy and plot. All the intrigues and memory loss doesn’t get in the way of the developing relationship between Takizawa and Morimi.

On the left is Takizawa Akira, on the right Morimi Saki.

Anyway, don’t judge the show from the first episode. There is a lot of good stuff in there, like a fairly faithful re-creation of Washington D.C. and English voice acting that doesn’t physically hurt to listen to, but there is some bad too.

It’s usually ‘Long Takizawa’ but it’s a little cold out here, ya know?

For me, Takizawa just don’t feel real in the first episode. He comes to his senses in front of the White House, naked and holding a gun. Also he can’t remember anything about himself. I don’t see someone in that position acting in the calm and collected manner that Takizawa does.

Not that it’s a huge deal if I am. I mean, it’s kind of a small thing.

But by the second episode, Takizawa starts acting a lot more believably. Also, one of the major hooks of the show is introduced. Remember when Takizawa was naked in front of the White House? Yeah, well in addition to holding a gun he was also holding a tricked out cell phone. It turns out the phone is connected with an account containing 8.2 billion yen in digital cash.

So by episode two the show is in full swing. Takizawa is starting to piece together his past and how he figures into “Careless Monday”, a bizarre missile attack on Japan that resulted in no loss of life.

In addition to the content being sweet as hell, the wrapper it comes in is pretty slick as well. With Production I.G. doing the animation it is no surprise that the quality of the animation is high, but there are so many other little things that it is amazing.

The exploding pencil missiles are the best part.

The aforementioned accurate depiction of D.C. (Which I’m hoping holds true when they’re running around Japan too) and the English voice acting are just the start. The song in the opening is by Oasis (Yeah, the Wonderwall band) and the stop-motion papercraft thing at the end is creative to say the least.

I feel like MyCircle or one of those other chumps should steal this for their interface.

Also, make sure to hit pause every time there is a phone on the screen. The amount of detail being put into those little buggers is impressive. Ditto for the Seleção interface on Takizawa’s phone.

Good, now that those jerks are gone, free candy for everyone! Just send me a pre-paid envelope and you will be buried in candy. I have literally no candy that I can’t wait to send out to you. Wait… what?

Damn that hand blocking our view of what number he is!

It seems clear to me that the guy we saw in the first episode is the Supporter. What with him being in such close proximity to Takizawa when the mind wipe happened. What I’m curious about is if his line “Number 9 is proving to be more unique to be imagined. But this is the end.”

Does that mean he has set up this situation and thinks that Takizawa is going to be killed? That seems hard to believe given how much random element was contained in that situation. It was hardly a way to ensure he was killed?

Or does he just know what Takizawa is planning and just think that he isn’t going to survive it? I guess that could be a good explanation, but I can’t see how the Supporter would figure out what Takizawa’s plan was.

Right now I think the best explanation is that the Supporter manipulated Takizawa into erasing his memory. But even if we settle on that explanation we don’t know why the Supporter is targeting Takizawa.

If I am right and these are NEETs, I am slightly scared of how judgemental Japanese people are.

These “Johnnies” were the other thing that struck me as really odd in this episode. Possibly it is just a weird head trauma thing, but I doubt they’re going to waste time in an 11 episode series.

The first thing that ran through my mind is that they were the NEETs that he rounded up in the shopping mall. But does that mean he killed/sent them away because they pissed him off in some way?

Anyway, three cheers for an awesome fourth episode. Please remember to use the spoiler tags if you want to talk about episode four stuff peeps.