Eden of the East - Episode 7

Just when you think you've got your head around Eden of the East, what it's doing and where it's headed, along comes another episodes to blow most of your expectations our of the water again. So it goes with episode seven of this constantly surprising series.

After doing a deal with Akira last episode, the "Eden" development team now have more important fish to fry, namely locating the whereabouts of the missing Ohsugi who is continuing to enigmatically post for help from his current plight via an online bulletin board. The Eden of the East search engine does a fine job of pulling some more information for them to work with from the clues left by Ohsuhi itself, but of course Akira has an even more powerful tool at his disposal...

Thus we're left with the rather awesome scenario of Seleção fighting against Seleção, as Akira uses his status to track down Ohsugi and attempts to stop Roppongi Hanako from getting to him first. This results in an almost comical series of more grandiose requests from both parties, much like those kid's cartoons where two characters pull out bigger and bigger weapons against one another ad infinitum.


What Akira doesn't seem to have realised however (or has he?), is that he's left his phone on through much of what follows this battle of wits from a prior conversation with Saki, so as Akira meets and talks with the "Johnny Hunter" after tracking her down she hears everything. Who knows what this will mean for how this series develops down the line, but all I will say is that the climax to the episode is a literal mindfuck that really defies explaining or discussing at this point in time. Akira is turning out to be one very cunning guy though, that's for sure.

Yet again I know I'm going to risk sounding like an Eden of the East fanboy, but it continues to defy expectations at every turn - Indeed, this particular episode defies many things, not least the thought of only watching it once... I almost get the feeling that I have to watch this episode again just to get a complete and entire grasp on its ending. I suppose you could suggest that such a state of affairs is a sign of sloppy story-writing or plot development, but I'm not buying that - Instead I'd suggest that the story and the way it's presented is just so damn clever that you may need a second viewing to pick up on everything that you've missed before.

Once again then, Eden of the East is working well in so many ways, from its mysterious overtones right down to that ever-intriguing relationship between Akira and Saki, the latter of whom really nails her feelings to the wall in this episode in her reactions to events. Really, if you only watch one new series this year, I'm seriously starting to believe that Eden of the East should be it.