>>515 I feel that EatMan comes off as heavily nihilistic. And so I think the main reason EatMan was so hard to take in is because its nihilistic worldview resides heavily over the story.
Although many episode serve as a parable there is no overarching theme or message that the show has to deliver. If anything the episodic nature of the show is used as a way to show the cyclical and meaningless nature of life. All the moments in the anime are quickly forgotten and nothing that happens has any effect on an existing overarching story.
As well as this Bolt never really changes at all. Early on they reveal that he was some kind of freak weapon made in a lab, but besides that nothing is revealed about his past and they never mention it again.
And besides Bolt all the characters are fairly 2 dimensional and there is never an attempt at making characters 3 dimensional. I'd say there are two types of character in this anime: those who have are driven by their desires and those who have no desire. Mercenaries like Bolt and Heart are people who have lost any desire and so they wander the world acting as tools others can use to achieve their own desires. Yet people like Bolt know first hand that desire is a type of ignorance that only leads to more desire and so on. And this is shown through all the recurring characters whose desire either leads them to suffering or a point at which they only desire more.
Bolt helps people achieve their goals, but it is often implied that nothing he does really helps anyone face reality. In one of the last 98 episodes he gives the robots back their memories and lets them continue living on believing they are human. This implies that Bolt does not save anyone, he merely lets them live in their own fantasies, or dreams. I believe this is partly why the program in the episode where the little girl dies says that Bolt is the only one who gets her. Because just as the programs keeps people in a dream Bolt lets others live their own dream. And why when he fails to save the little girl he renounces his title as a mercenary when he failed to keep the little girl in her dream. In the final episode of 97 Bolt is forced to take down the ship that is the dreams of many. The flying ship is comparable to the titanic which was known as the unsinkable ship. In fact the flying ship in Bolt is even explained to be able to keep afloa
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