Higashi no Eden Movie I: The King of Eden

Higashi no Eden, the series, was original, fun, and even interesting. The series really started to gain momentum as time passed on, and by the end I was very interested in what would happen next. Sadly, this movie was a let down.

The original series definitely had some issues -- poorly done CGI effects, awful English (and I'm not even talking about the dub), and strange art decisions (Saki's eyes, for instance). All those things remain, but now they have taken away what made the original good. Higashi no Eden redeemed itself in it's interesting characterization and a plot that was pretty captivating, when it was ... comprehensible.

The movie drops all of that. Instead it focuses on the Eden of the East employees watching Saki run around trying to deal with memory-erased Takizawa all over again. As if we didn't have enough of that. Most of Takizawa's charm is lost when he loses his memory and he just doesn't act quite the same anymore. Plus, the nagging fact that he doesn't even remember anything that went on during the series (from the selecao plot to Saki to, well, anything) makes the whole thing feel like you're playing catch up. And that leads to the next point.

The plot. It's quite bad. Which is impressive because it's almost nonexistent. For some reason the writers thought it would be a good idea to introduce a time skip since the series ended, but then go ahead and do flashbacks/summary of what went on in those 6 months. So... what was the point of doing a time skip at all? Finally, once you get past all the re-cap stuff, the plot basically amounts to Takizawa remembering a little bit of his life, going on a wild goose chase, and then realizing the dire situation they are in. Then the movie ends. Yep, they finally set up the plot to move forward and then the movie ends. Oh dear, oh wow. I have to click the little rating buttons above to score "plot", and the score of "2" is "dreadful." I'd have to say that's pretty accurate.

Overall, this movie was not enjoyable. The series definitely had some interesting aspects, but the movie did not capture any of them. Standing alone it may be the most pointless thing in the Higashi no Eden universe that ever happened. 90% of it could have not been shown, and we wouldn't have missed much. The other 10% was just setup for the next movie which is pretty ridiculous.

I can only hope the next movie is better.

As I stated in my Eden of the East review, I enjoyed the premise, but didn’t really enjoy the plot progression. While a lot of the series went nowhere and seemed to stand in one spot with nothing happening, The King of Eden takes that formula and ramps it up two-fold.

The series ended with a bang and then cut off. So, I figured the film would pick up where the series left off, but instead it picks up six months later and introduces an idea totally new to the series, Takizawa is an amnesiac. Wow, so because the series kind of wrapped up with Takizawa ... learning everything about his past, I guess we need to start fresh again? And it’s just as compelling as it sounds. The movie follows Saki as she tries to find Taki, and Taki doesn’t know Saki, and they run away from police, and there’s some missiles…And that’s it. In eighty minutes, exactly jack-shit happens. We’re introduced to one new character, a villain who is not a villain, more like a stalker with villainous intent. He’s taken down so easily it almost feels like a joke.

And that’s about all I can say about the film since there is nothing to it. It bridges the gap between the series and the second movie but doesn’t come into a life of its own. It doesn’t even seem to need to be existing. There’s so much that could happen that doesn’t. The first hour and eight minutes or so are just pointless and seem to be bringing the series back to the beginning rather than moving it forward. The last few minutes are good, but then, as with the series, the movie cuts off and that’s that. After absolutely nothing has happened, the movie ends when things start to happen. It’s kind of annoying. And the problem is that the things that are happening don’t really make much sense. Why is everyone transporting missiles with their number atop it? What are these character’s intentions and what are their plans going to actually accomplish? Because the series never gets in the heads of the bad guys and tells us in-depth what their plans are, we are just made to assume that they are doing something bad. There are a few explanations, but nothing is really, really fleshed out. While everyone was sitting around doing nothing, maybe the bad guys could have been focused on.

And that’s the problem with the series as a whole. A cool premise that is rotted by the terrible pacing and terrible focus on things that don’t really matter all that much. It’s kind of boring really. The characters of the series aren’t all that exciting, so you don’t stick around for them. The plot is plain boring, but maybe you stick around in the vague hope something will happen? Sure the animation is good and the sound is good, but that doesn’t keep you watching.

King of Eden is nothing. It’s just there. There’s no real reason it exists but to cash in on the Eden of the East franchise. It progresses the plot a tiny bit, but otherwise remains stagnant and the few new things and new developments feel trite.

I can only hope that Paradise Lost will be a good ending to the series and make up for this failure of a movie.

Okay, why did this get a movie? I mean, I know the T.V. series ended badly and I probably wouldn't mind a little bit more or even a better ending to get a better conclusion, but was this really necessary? I don't think a way to conclude a series is by making a movie out of it when movies require conflict and this is exactly what this movie had. It was a sucky way to conclude a good-but-not-great series.

So, the movie starts off with Saki, in a taxi in New York. But that dang rude Taxi man goes off on her for some reason, drops ... her off somewhere suddenly, and leaves her there, leaving her phone and passport in the car. Then, everyone starts staring at her and humiliates her. When she finds her family and friends, she starts hugging one of them and crying. Wow that took a little bit of time to get to a conflict of this movie already, huh?! 😲

Here are my problems with this movie, the characters. This movie focuses more on Saki when I thought the main protagonist of the series was Akira. I know Saki was one of the protagonists, but she wasn't quote as much in the series as Akira was unquote. But I don't like how this movie focused on Saki more when Saki isn't even that great of a character in the first place.

Of all the characters they had to choose, they chose Saki. First of all, she likes to whine and mope about things; second of all, she can get a bit mean on occasion. I didn't think making her the main protagonist would be a good idea. I liked her better as being just a love interest for Akira. Akira used to have a story just for him in the series, but now he's become Saki's sidekick, which makes Saki the second main protagonist.

As for Akira... why did he erase his memories? Why did Juiz change his name to linuma? why and how did he disappear? Is it just because he went off to New York on purpose? Did this movie answer all these questions?

The characters are inconsistent to the ones in the series in terms of what role they play and their personalities and are now shadows of their former selves. I noticed that the few producers who did the T.V. series have not done this movie, and it probably would've been better if they came back to do this film. Even the voice actors sounded like they were struggling to make their voices fit their now inconsistent characters.

Next is the story, the movie does not have much of a plot; the only plot it has is Saki trying to find Akira, which lasts all of like 20 minutes. The dialogue is clichéd and there's no point to this movie other than it's about Saki trying to find Akira and get her passport and phone back. The movie starts putting me to sleep with its uninteresting story and focusing on the painfully annoying Saki instead of Akira, who was supposed to be the main protagonist in the first place, and since he disappeared, the movie had to ignore him for a long while.

It was a struggle to watch this dull film. It was too slow, the pacing was kind of all over the place, and there is not enough action in it and what I mean by that is that the way the movie is that the structure in this movie is missing some of the important ingredients every movie/TV show needs just to be some kind of silly slice-of-life drama and it would've been better off as a manga, as long as it doesn't mess up on the things this movie has messed up on. I also hate slice-of- life because most of them don't structure the ingredients every movie/TV show needs. They can be slow and just would rather focus on the drama and the characters and not bothering to put any important elements in them.

And no, don't give me that excuse of "It's a slice-of-life, you're not supposed to worry about plot, and it's supposed to be relaxing, happy and carefree." No. You can make a good slice-of-life while making it flow well.

So, let's get to the good points to this movie. There are several funny scenes in it, I liked the merry-go-round part and music, it was nice to see Akira and Saki happy and calm and talking about catching a gold ring on a merry-go-round, I empathized with them there. But that's about it. The characters' personalities as a whole were not funny and neither was the conflict in this movie or whatever things they probably played for comedy.

This is the kind of film that is forgettable and I would probably pretend it's never happened. Though, I would like to try and grab a gold ring while on a merry-go-round.

The story was just more boring than the series. The series has mystery surrounding how everything works and the discovering the system and secrets of the Selecao operation was pretty interesting. The movie has no such interest factor. Yes, Takizawa loses his memory again, but I feel like I'm rewatching the first part of the series again seeing him puzzled and Saki slowly helping him remember who he is. Basically, the movie just has a lot less going on.

The worst part of the movie is the collection of characters. The Eden of the East crew feel like they are just there. They're at the head ... of the company but they don't do anything. And how did they get so many workers in the first place and work the operation smoothly when most of them have the social IQ of a neet, which is what they were. It's just grating how a crew that contains an absolutely useless Oosugi is perfectly leading a company. Like how did they get there?

The guy with glasses and black hair has too short a temper. Saki just listens to the black haired glasses guy scream at him over the phone ordering what to do. Like wtf basic respect with your friends you're not even capable of that? Pants guy just came along the group and acted like the token fat smart guy of the group that tries to act cool but fails. (Steins Gate?) I guess the worst part about the characters is that they were just there, and not doing anything. Saki didn't mature at all. In the series it felt like she was trying to become a little more independent. In the movie that progress is stunted: he completely relies on Takizawa. She also does the emotional character speech that's completely illogical but I'll do something because my feelings are too strong. (this happens when she tells black haired glasses guy he would save Takizawa by acting rashly because she feels bad for him, which only endangers her and thus the whole ass operation of saving Takizawa in the first place) Finally, seeing Takizawa having amnesia again gave be déjà vu boredom.

Basically my gripe with the movie is that nothing happened and that the characters were uninspiring.


Tl;dr Worst than the series in every aspect except visually