God Eater

Most aspects of this show are questionable. Some of its parts were interesting, while other things did not impress me, such as the narrative. The subject matter "humanity on the brink of annihilation" is now a fairly common theme. I have watched countless variations of that, and it rarely engages me in any significant way anymore. It does have some interesting ideas, like showing us in this show (if I understand correctly) that slowly but surely, humanity has gotten to where it currently is on its own. This idea is somehow better than just an explanation like some monsters just happened to show up. Plus, through these "flashbacks," we gradually learn other interesting things that give the narrative some rather interesting depth. There are also some twists, some of which can be described as interesting, others as slightly clichéd, although I still have to admit that it can be surprising. The fight scenes are not so bad; sometimes they are even quite good, although the concept of "god arcs" did not grab me. The characters are not so bad either; the main male protagonist is not so bad at all, and over time I have grown to like him quite a lot; however, I find Lindow the most interesting and probably the best character. Plus, I also found Soma very interesting. I could write a whole chapter on the animation itself. It has moments where it is terrible, the movement of some of the monsters is pretty awful, and the characters themselves are not very nice to look at either. However, the monsters have very interesting designs, they look scary, and some shots of their environment are very good. So it has its really intense moments, especially in the treatment of the exteriors, and even that metal floor, which there is a close-up of at one point, really looks like a real metal floor. As far as the final impression goes, it has gotten progressively better over the last few episodes, although somehow I do not feel like it is that much above-average that I would want to award four stars, so I am just awarding it 6.4/10. (2015.07.19)