Higashi no Eden Gekijoban I: The King of Eden

I was disappointed by the ending of the Eden of East series because it leaves you nowhere. This movie sequel picks up a few months later, with everything in a similar situation, wanders around for a while and leaves viewers exactly where they started - nowhere.

The movie is shockingly lazy. First off, for no reason that I can see it reuses the amnesiac trick from the series, although with even less motivation for doing so. In fact, motivation is lacking from many characters; who do things with seemingly little rhyme or reason.

Basically, this is a continuation of the TV series that is perhaps the equivalent of three or four episodes plus some padding. Except it actually progresses the overall story *less* than a single episode of the series did. There are some cute ideas, but some of these, like Juiz's increasingly human responses, don't go anywhere. Perhaps the idea is some of this stuff will be used or explained in the next movie, but all that means is that the TV series should have been longer and given viewers a complete story.

After this, I have no hope that anything is ever going to be satisfactorily resolved.

After preventing Japan's destruction, Akira Takizawa made one final request to become the "King of Japan," before he erased his memories once again and disappeared. Leaving Saki Morimi with his cellphone, the only clue she has in regards to Akira's whereabouts is the message, "I'll be waiting where our journey started."

Six months later, rumors have spread about Akira, and Saki's search leads her to New York City. However, Saki is not the only person who goes to investigate-with several billion yen burning a hole in their pockets and a challenge to "save Japan," the remaining Seleção are not far behind. Some are willing to help Akira achieve his goals, but a few are making dangerous moves in order to eliminate him and achieve their own picture of a better Japan. With rising stakes and new revelations, the game is still on.

If you liked the series. You may like this.

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.

This is part one of basically a two part movie. Not a lot of the 'mythology' is answered in part one, it's more about being in New York City. I'd say the animation is slightly better than the series animation. The first half of the movie is slower because it's all about getting the principles back together and getting them up to speed, so the second half is when we start to progress the story and get back to the game. When the film ends and they head back to Japan in part two.

It's part two when basically everything is answered, Takizawa's mother and how they separated, the voices behind Juiz, why Takizawa was picked for the game, the game ends,Mr. Outside, The supporter, Saki, etc. Also in part two at the END of the credits, there is one new scene that addresses an issue from the series.