God Eater the animation
I will be mostly talking about the anime. However, in order to understand God Eater, you need to have played or at least know about the original games, mainly God Eater 1 for this anime.
God Eater 1 was originally released on PSP in 2011, and that’s the version I played. Then I played God Eater 2 on PS Vita in 2016. As if 2021, both games are available on Steam.
Well, if you haven’t caught on already, I had been a pretty hardcore fan of the series. There is God Eater 3 now but I haven’t even touched it because I strongly felt that the franchise was being milked on.
📜 The background
The world of God eater takes on an apocalyptic setting where monsters called “Aragami” has pushed humanity to near extinction. At one point, humanity has developed the God eater bracelets (AKA God arcs) which allowed few select humans to be able to fight the monsters.
To dive into a bit deeper, the bracelets contain cells from Aragami. It’s called oracle cells. Those cells are heavily suppressed for compatible humans to control and transform the cells into weapons.
A few select fortresses across the world began to develop and host God eaters. God eater 1 takes its place at Fenrir. God eater 2 takes its place at Friar. The names of places don’t matter to be honest. They are basically fortresses to house God eaters.
The anime
The anime sits somewhere within God Eater 1 universe. I say it is early in God Eater 1 timeline since Lindow is present in the beginning.
The MC is a guy named Lenka who, like all other God Eater stories before him, becomes a new addition to the God eater crew. He is determined to exterminate all aragami.
Sadly, that is as far as he goes. He does have determination but lacks abilities and tactical thinking to get far.
In fact, all he does in the series is charge in recklessly fueled by his sheer determination, get hurt and endanger others in progress. That trend of his never changes until the very last moment of the anime where he actually takes on a role.
Now, this series is weird in a sense that I actually recommend you to watch episode 10 before watching episode 1. It is episode 10 that covers Lenka’s past. If you start watching episode 1 first, you may not actually make to episode 10 because the story is actually pretty … boring.
It basically goes nowhere, and you don’t really have any reason to keep watching. It is only after watching the episode 10 where you may grow an emotional attachment to Lenka. But then there are only three episodes afterwards.
The anime actually had a hiatus moment after airing episode 9 due to scheduling. Basically, the team realized they would not meet the deadline, so put it on a hiatus of 6 months. After a fresh start, they actually steered the series on a good track. But then they had only four episodes to make. Too late in my book.
Conclusion
Play the games. The anime is pointless to me. It doesn’t really cover anything, nor does it reveal anything. It reinforces my suspicion that the anime was created to boost awareness for the title before God eater 3 came out.
God Eater games have always featured a silent hero where you can heavily customize your character. This ultimately means that an anime studio would have a very hard time picking a time line to create a proper story for their anime because there is no main character.
In fact, this anime shouldn’t have had Lenka as MC. They should have chosen either Soma or Lindow. I would have preferred Soma since his story turns quite bittersweet.
Just a fun note. The girl in the middle with pink hair is Kanon Daiba.
She is notorious for friendly fire in the game. What I mean is that, if you put her in your group, she is likely to hit you in the back more than she hits your enemy. And it isn’t even a bug. Her card shows that she has a negative friendly fire rating, meaning she has been programmed to do so.
That trait of hers has made the character some sort of a legend within God eater universe. In fact, I own her 1/8 scale figure even. She will even show up in God eater 2 as a recruitable character. I believe her friendly fire has been toned down which is a shame.
In the original PSP version I played back in 2011, she was brutal. It was like she was intentionally aiming at my back. I still kept her in my party most of time.
Why? Well, when she shot my back and my character was blown away, my character would be immune to all damages while being blown away. It was quite useful in hard bosses.
My GE collection
I own a lot of figures from God Eater 1 and 2. I will review these figures eventually one by one or by a pair.
You may notice that it’s got 2 male and 6 female figures.
Since I prefer gender balance if possible, I would have really preferred if Lenka was made into a figure. However, due to rather low popularity of the anime series, he was never made into a figure. It’s totally understandable as well. Lenka was really an idiot and a useless character for 99% of the story.
The reason I prefer gender balance is simple. I am a believer of a concept that you can appreciate the female form only when it’s around its counterpart.
Until next time.
