After watching two episodes, I was ready to shelve Eden of the East for a marathon. It wasn’t bad, but aside from the animation quality, it didn’t strike me as anything promising. Memory loss. Biblical allusions. Male nudity. None of these turn me on. I shall address each in turn:

1. Male Nudity

Everyone seems to love the naked guy in the first episode. Great. That’s progressive. Female nudity is trashy, yet male nudity is artistic and family friendly. Thing is, these tools only appreciate male nudity for what it represents, not for what it is (unless they’re gay). Heterosexual males don’t want to see other naked men. Women aren’t aroused by naked men either, as exemplified by the above picture. After all, women hate sex (except lesbians). Don’t believe me? Here’s a sampling of the women seeking men ads on Craigslist:

• Good girl seeking a good guy
• ms right is seeking mr. right
• Spacey girl looks for understanding guy
• Looking for an honest man
• Lookin for a nice man!
• Looking for a monogamous man
• Looking for the Wall Street type
  
• White girl’s looking for a $upportive Japanese boyfriend
  
• the ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands

No wonder they’re single. They could learn a thing or two from the women seeking women ads:

• Cute local Female seeking HORNY KINKY FEMALE
• Wanna play with some boobs in Midtown
• Discrete tongue action N.S.A.
  
• In need of some amazing sex
• Can I get these sucked tonight?
• Looking for a Third
• On my knees and between your legs

And people wonder why I think lesbians are awesome.

2. Memory Loss

Another show about memory loss. Whoop-dee-doo. Eden of the East — a tale of memories. Good luck getting someone less boring than a heterosexual woman to care.

3. Biblical Allusions

I’m fine with allusions to the extent they serve a compression function. If the events of your story are similar to the events of a more famous story, why explain the whole thing when it’s much easier to reference the famous story? I draw the line when people start playing the trivial parallels game:

Hey, let’s all be douchebags and draw trivial parallels between every minute detail of Eden of the East and Jesus’s life!

No thanks, if I want a story that has everything to do with Jesus, I’ll download the Bible. Allusions are fine when they make the message easier to express or understand. If the work to figure out the message is worth more than the message itself, I’m not interested (with one exception).

Let’s see…there are 12 Selecao…OH SHIT JUST LIKE JESUS HAD 12 APOSTLES!

Because the story wouldn’t make any sense if there were only ten. Let’s ditch the philosophy for a moment and do something useful: math.

• 11 episodes
• 12 Selecao
• 5 Selecao introduced through 6 episodes
• 7 more to go in 5 episodes

The numbers in this show will probably suffer the same fate as the numbers in Black Cat: no screen time except a token appearance towards the end. If they hadn’t blown their budget drawing perfect 3D renditions of Washington DC, they’d have enough money to make a full season or two to cover everyone.

In addition to the above reasons not to watch the show, I had every slot in my lineup filled for the season:

• Must Watch: Cross Game
• Sleeper Hit: Pandora Hearts
• Guilty Pleasure: Queen’s Blade
• Sequel/Adaptation/Remake: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood
• Giri: K-ON
• The Swooping Descent of the Dark Emissary! The Propagation of Malice: Sengoku Basara
• Shot in the Dark: Valkryia Chronicles
• Clean-Up: Asura Cryin’

Then, as I was giving the show a final chance before shelving it, a bomb was dropped. Suddenly the show was awesome.

IT’S A GAME!

No, this is not a spoiler. It’s the true essence of the show, and it should’ve been revealed in the first episode to prevent anyone who isn’t gay from thinking it sucks. The rules:

• 12 involuntarily selected players get 10 billion yen each
• Each one must use to money to try to “save” Japan
• Once a player’s money runs out, he’s killed
• If a player goes one month without using any money, he’s killed
• If the money is used in a non-savior-like way, the player is killed
• The killing is done by an enforcer, who is one of the 12 players
• A player survives if he is the first to save Japan, and the rest are killed
• Only one player may survive the game

Now we’re getting somewhere. In the Clean-Up spot, Eden of the East replaces Asura Cryin’, which is on hold until further notice.