Eat-Man

Eat-Man is one of those shows that you'll pick up on whim based on the title alone and then the pace will either cause you drop it or you will slog through until the final couple of episodes because that's where any of the overarching story is.

Story: 3

The story is rather poor being a very episodic show. Until the last 3 episodes, there is almost no plot progression. The general plot for all of the other episodes follows around some girl that Bolt Crank has met this week and he will do some "mercenary" work which is just odd jobs.

Characters: 5

The characters are ... interesting enough with our main character Bolt Crank having a fairly unique power. He can turn metal and other items that he ingests into more useful items like guns. Seems like a very helpful skill if he ever needed to walk in somewhere unarmed. The girl of the week can be interesting with the soldier girls and the doctor woman being my favorite. All of these stories are self contained so you could watch episode 1 and then skip to episode 9 if you really want to avoid all of the pointless stuff and meeting Bolt Crank more.

Sound: 6

Sound is fairly good with that 90s synth and style to it. If you like generic 90s background music then this will be perfectly fine. The opening is lackluster with no visuals other than credits and the ending is the same way. This was a bit strange but the songs themselves are fine.

Art: 5

You can really tell this show had a low budget compared to other anime that Studio Deen was making at the same time. Rurouni Kenshin was airing at the same time and that looks fine to this day if you don't mind the 4:3 aspect ratio. The art in Eat-Man is fine and if you like 90s science fiction anime then this will feel right at home but it wasn't the greatest looking anime airing at this time. Also for some reason Bolt Crank has his mouth slightly open most of the time for no good reason. Probably a good thing for memes since some of those faces are pure gold out of context.

Enjoyment: 6

This is a show you can kill some time with and the story is very straightforward most of the time. Its not a hard anime to enjoy. The biggest barrier to entry is the age and how its not as refined as modern adaptations. Its also supposedly out shined by its own sequel Eat-Man 98.

Overall: 5

You could do a lot worse than watching this anime. You could also do a lot better. Its not a waste of time but it is one of those things that will never gain any real popularity at this point so there is hardly anyone to talk about this anime with. Its just a very slow show that puts its best foot forward at the very end which makes it just okay. Its an okay anime from the 90s and in most cases if time is a big factor, your better off watching something else.

Eat-Man will be one of those anime that is just forgotten to time by the general anime watching community and that's okay.

I'm writing this review after watching both Eat-Man 97 (this) and Eat-Man 98. When I began watching it, I had different expectations, but I soon learned that this series was not made after the manga, but instead it was random stories by a different person who uses Bolt Crank as a centerpiece of his stories.

So this is an anthology series loosely based around Eat-Man's character Bolt Crank. Each episode is its own story and they aren't necessarily very engaging, at least not for me. The personality of Bolt Crank is more or less in line with what the original character is - silent, stoic, enigmatic, ... mysterious, hard to read and hard to predict. On a few occasions he is shown smiling or making weird faces, which, I learned is not canon for his personality.

As for the stories, I found them to be rather boring for the most part, but Bolt Crank is an interesting character and somehow he kept the plot going. I ended up watching the better portion of the series on x1.5 speed, if it wasn't for the protagonist, I would have probably dropped it.

I decided to write this review after seeing the sequel, because I thought it will give me a better idea on the character and the universe and I was not wrong. If you decide to watch this series, definitely watch the sequel right after and form an opinion only then.

Overall, I think the series is not horrible, but the lack of continuity between episodes really made it hard for me to stay interested, it's not a bad series, just difficult for me to watch, you may feel differently. I kind of recommend it, but with a grain of salt, beware.

If you are interested, see my review for Eat-Man 98.