Short Synopsis: Akira and Saki arrive at Akira’s… “home”.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
For me, the great thing of Eden of the East is that it only gets awesome after an episode finishes. At least, I had that with this episode: most of the episode was just a collection of strange events with very pretty production values, but as I started putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together and things started to make more sense, the setting only became more and more intriguing.

So, we now know that all of the Selecao get a starting budget of 10 billion yen, or 77,7 million Euros. Akira used 13,9 million Euros of that in order to buy his own shopping mall and gather 20.000 NEET and had them killed. Since having 3 people killed costs around 11653 euros (as shown in the previous episode), the murder of the 20.000 NEET would have cost him nearly exactly 77,7 million Euros. Now that’s a nice coincidence there that I didn’t expect.

Now, my guess would be that Akira killed those NEET in person, instead of using Juiz, since otherwise he’d be broke right now. The question now remains what he did to all the bodies of those people, since it doesn’t seem like Juiz cleaned up for him.

My image of the pre-mind-wipe Akira at the moment is one of a deranged madman: somehow he got the complete wrong idea of carrying out his mission of improving the world, thought that it’d be a good idea to simply get rid of all of the NEET in Tokyo, rather than all of the bank-robbers, rapists or terrorists. He threw around with money for a while, bought his own shopping mall, killed 20000 people by hand and was happy about it. Then he started to probably regret his choice; he went crazy, did nothing but watch every possible movie in existence, made some fake passports, fled around the world and in the end he simply erased his own memory to end himself from constantly being haunted.

It’s interesting how for once, we have a show that doesn’t criticize bad society, but those naive minds who think that with the right amount of money and power this world can simply be turned into a better place. I do want to see more of the other Selecao though. Akira in this episode was labeled as a very notorious member, which means that the other members of the Celecao didn’t run off with their money in the way he did. It’s going to be interesting to see how the other ones ended up using their money: are Akira and Yuusei the two worst examples, or are the others the same and also waste the money of the Selecao?

Short Synopsis: Ein and Zwei disguise themselves as a teenaged couple in order to get close to their next target.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Whoa! I must say, that while Phantom may be a blatant Noir rip-off, it’s promising to surpass Noir very quickly if this keeps up. From the outside this episode looks like your average random episode, but the cast got so much depth through it. It’s in episodes like this in which Bee-Train’s real strength lies: not the awesome music (though that does help), but the excellent characterization.

It was very strange to see Ein acting so convincingly like your average teenaged girl on a holiday with her first boyfriend. Especially considering how goofy Zwei looked right next to her with his bad acting as her boyfriend. I like how she even commented to Zwei how he still needs to work on his acting a lot. There was quite a bit of subtle fanservice in this episode, but even that had its purpose: to show the sexual tension between Ein and Zwei.

And that’s another point at which this series rocks: Ein and Zwei are really characters who don’t speak what’s on their mind: they leave their feelings and thoughts exactly out of their jobs, but the thing is that we hardly ever get to hear their thoughts. During those above-mentioned fanservice moments, for example: we can only guess what goes on their head at those points, and this gets especially confusing when the two start acting like their complete opposites and at times it gets really hard to point out which a subtle action of the belongs to: their acted personas, or their own intuitions.

And I’m personally a huge fan of series that manage to leave certain things up to the viewer’s imagination. Phantom knows exactly the difference between simply leaving out an important plot point, and just subtly refraining to say things that most people can figure out on their own. And when we finally get a confirmation (or denial in this case) of Ein’s feelings at the end of this episode, it does make impact. Especially considering how this series has only gone on for four episodes, I’m surprised at how far it has already come.

Short Synopsis: When Oz wakes up from the Abyss, he’s greeted by a certain threesome.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so this episode was mostly meant as a build-up, to close off the introduction for this series and introduce the rest of the main cast of characters that it’s going to work with: Break, Sharon and Reibun. Obviously not the most exciting episode of this excellent series, but still a really good one.

Here’s one thing that I don’t get though: why the heck does Reibun look like a grown up Gilbert? And if it indeed is Gilbert (hinted at everywhere by the promo art) and lots of years must have passed since Oz was cast into the Abyss, then why hasn’t Sharon grown up as well?

In any case, it’s interesting how Oz and Allies aren’t exactly allies of Break, Sharon and Reibun, but instead they’re just two parties with the same goals, and they were actually nearly enemies if things would have gone a little different. There’s going to be an interesting tension between them for the rest of the series this way.

We learn quite a few things in this episode, including what Alice has been hiding: the fact that she lost her memory. This is why she couldn’t remember strangling Oz when he found the locker, since that memory of her seems to have been erased. It’s interesting how she never wondered why she ended up right with Oz of all people: it’s because he met her before when she was in the abyss, through that watch of his. After that point, something must have happened to wipe out her memories that way.

At the same time, Oz also proves that he’s quite a bright kid in this episode: he’s observant and quickly draws conclusions based on the things around him. That could prove to be interesting in the next couple of episodes, and as an added bonus he seems to move more and more away from your average wimpy lead this way.

Oh, and on a side-note: why exactly is the animation of this show so hated? I mean, I know that it isn’t the best animation out there and all, but I see no reason to dislike this show based on the animation: there are no distorted faces due to inaccuracies, there aren’t many still frames, the character-designs are distinctive and not copy-pasted. What more could you want? What makes the artwork in this show so “atrocious”?

Short Synopsis: ‘boob-san’ organizes a rematch between Iceman, Dan and Sela.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Now I know for sure: this show is weird.

If the woman with the huge bosom at the end of the previous episode wasn’t enough: it now turns out that she’s a famous shoe designer with a feet fetish… yeah. She even goes as far as selecting one of Dan’s friends to accompany her because his face resembles a foot. Not only that, but she also designs shoes for Bigfoots…

The result was an episode full of ‘big’-jokes around her.

My question now is: why the heck am I enjoying this show so much? The premise gets more ridiculous with every single episode, and yet I’m really digging the chemistry between the characters so far. Dan’s ramblings don’t get on my nerves at all, and in fact are hilarious at times. I like how this episode emphasized how broken mechas remain broken until fixed (compare that to your average mecha-series, in which the machines magically fix themselves at the beginning of every episode), and it was especially fun to see a stressed out Miyuki as she tried to get everything fixed properly before the above-mentioned rematch.

I am curious though: where does this series think it’s going in the end? Up till now, there hasn’t been any major storyline popping up: all we’ve seen is a bunch of hints: what role is the moon going to play in the end? Is Coco simply there to give Dan some background or is there more to her? Will this turn into a basketball show with mechas, or is the basketball simply going to be a vehicle to the real meat of the story? What is going to be the role of the little princess that we’ve been seeing now and then?