/cel/ - Retro Anime & Manga

>>505
what does he eat?

>>506
what doesn't he eat

>>505

I remember this being advertised kinda alot back when it came out but nothing since.
Never saw it so maybe ill put it on my list of stuff ill get around to eventually.

>>506
(you)

So I'm watching this now and I truly have no idea what it's even about. Episodes have a plot of some kind but as I watch it I can barely work out what Bolt's objective is and why he's doing any of it, hell he doesn't even seem to get paid for what he does.

I just finished Episode 4 and from what I gather, he finds a village that is full of refugees from a country that was invaded by a dictator, who has taken all the men prisoner and the guerilla army that is in the village wanted to get a certain prisoner back and uses the life of a girl in the village as "payment" for Bolt, so he helps said prisoner escape from jail and then kills the dictator (I think), brings the prisoner back who then finds the girl has been raped (I'm assuming, might've been consensual) jokes about how she had fun while they were doing the hard work, girl then kills everyone in the room except for Bolt and the prisoner, Bolt asks her what is she going to do for the village, then leaves with the prisoner who Bolt then kills in the final part because I guess he works alone?

This honestly isn't that great, there's not a lot of action and his gimmick of eating things to replicate them doesn't really come up that much. He'll eat a gun 3 minutes into the episode and then it'll reappear 12 minutes into the episode and if we're lucky he might take it out again 19 minutes in, I honestly just find it boring. A shame since I thought he might be a Vash type of character who tries his hardest to eat as much shit as possible to ensure he's always prepared for any situation when he could take out a comically large bazooka or something when needed.

The only episode I've liked so far has been the first one for being pretty straightforward, everything else has been kinda obtuse and I really don't like that about it. I guess I'm retarded.

Also, the 1080p blurays look like upscaled from a laserdisc or something.

>>510
Thanks for giving it a watch but sorry to hear it hasn't gone down very well.

What I think makes this story likable is mostly the slow/quiet atmosphere and the story telling. It's more like Cowboy Bebop than like Trigun in that its storytelling is episodic and a lot of it builds off of the setting rather than speech and action.

Anyway Im pretty sure the point of episode 4 with the dictator is that the dictator basically didn't care if he were to be killed because he knew that once he died another dictator (the general of the guerilla army) would take over and everything would start again. Knowing this Bolt let the girl kill the guerilla leader possibly breaking the cycle. The reason he killed the other mercenary is because he wasn't a real mercenary to Bolt. Bolt believes that a mercenary is essentially a man who is not bound by moral desire, but will act upon instinct and honest moral judgement. His whole gist is that he was basically some kind of messed up lab attempt at making a new kind of weapon (as shown in episode 2), but that he rejects this past which is why he went back to the island to finish all of the other creatures. Rejecting this past he wanders the world as a mercenary acting on his instinct and morality doing as he sees fit. Also about the eating thing: the size/power of the tool he can create is proportional to the amount of metal he eats. This goes with his whole observe before action thing as he usually spends the episode surveying the situation, eating bolts the whole time, before eventually making a decision on how he will act, which usually ends with him using all the bolts he has consumed the whole episode to create some kind of big weapon for a climax.

>pls read below if not anything else
Also since you are watching the 97 one (he has red spectacles) I know it may not seem that good right now but I think the 98 Eatman will be more up your alley. The themes are much more concise and there is a lot more action. But seriously the action is so much better in the 98 one. They explore his power further and he is able to do a lot more cool shit like creating machines from his arm and summoning giant moving metal monstrosities like hes clayface or something. Also I think the animation was uploaded in higher quality (which makes sense since 97 was more of a trial)
>pic rel is Eatman 98 (black spectacles)

To me 97 Eatman (the red spectacles one) is to 98 Eatman as the Patlabor OVA is to the first Patlabor series: a trial that sets up atmosphere, characters, and may come with some good storytelling, but because it is a trial it doesn't reach the depth that its later installments do, since it is more of a trial rather than a fully fleshed out work.
However I will still shill 97 Eatman because I think it does what it does well and lays good groundwork for the 98 Eatman.

>>511
Tthat makes a lot more sense, thanks for that synopsis. I think I'd prefer this show a bit more if it wasn't quite confusing with how the plot goes. In general, I'm not a fan of slower shows and something like this was never going to go down well with me, but it's not like it's all bad. I watched Episode 5 and 6 after that post and enjoyed Episode 5 quite a bit, I'm still wondering if Donna's mother actually died or if she went on to be a bigger star since as the episode was ending you saw a much larger establishment that was using her mother's picture as a neon sign, as if it's being used to advertise her being there. Perhaps I'm looking too much into it thought. Episode 6 however, was somewhat confusing and I'm still not sure why we needed around 3 minutes of a child laughing and running on a white background, still not sure how Bolt and Lili escaped. I'm assuming by pretending to be naked clones and crawling away or something.

I can appreciate a show like this even if it's not something I personally like. It reminds me slightly of Casshern Sins which was another show I felt had a somewhat obtuse way of telling a story, but at least with that show I could find a decent plot synopsis for each episode whereas Eatman seems very obscure. Still, if watching this can work as a compliment to Eatman 98, I'll gladly finish it to see how 98 goes. Hell, maybe I'll dislike 98 and see 97 is a better light, it's happened to a lot of media before with me. I'll update this thread when I finish Eatman and again with my Eatman 98 opinions though.

>>512
Cool Ill be down to hear what you have to say about the rest. Also I like your theory on Donna's mother being still alive and leaving the dad to become a bigger star. It makes more sense knowing the daughter is doing the same thing.

>>513
As I finished Eat Man, I do think I have the same opinion I had of it before, although rewatching scenes to understand them again does help I do find myself somewhat bored with it. However, I can easily see the appeal for people who enjoy slower, more thought provoking shows. The final few episodes were really good I though, I especially liked Episode 11 set on the beach in a virtual world. It's times like these I wish people would write up synopsis of these episodes so I could fully understand them, the woman in the black forest was death itself which was interesting to see, especially with how it was taking everyone the Doctor cared about but I do wonder what the Doctor was, was she a person or a part of the program?

Overall, I feel if I was smarter and could appreciate much slower anime like this, I would've really enjoyed it but most of the time I felt like I was reading meaningless words while things happened and when it all came together at the end I didn't really feel that much from the anime. It's not bad by any means, but I do wish it went another route instead of the one it did. If someone said this was a favourite of theirs I could easily see why, but couldn't say the same myself.

Also, Bolt without his glasses!

>>514
Well, I finished Eat Man 98 and....it's was honestly just as boring as Eat Man 97. Honestly, I'd say it's worse because at least with 97, the plot was confusing enough that I'd want to figure out what exactly the plot was, but with these episodes I just lose interest the second they start.

I really don't know what makes this anime so boring, the concept is interesting enough but it's executed poorly I find. My favourite episodes were Ambrosian Days, I enjoyed the characters, the premise and it felt it had a lot going for it that it was actually interesting, I liked Vanessa and her grandfather, I liked the sword that was used as a plot point, I like the kids that Vanessa was trying to help. It was a fun episode that really did have a lot going for it that made me wish others were similar. I did also like Bodyguard, where Bolt had to defend a tower for one hour although the other episodes were okay but I really just didn't care for it at all. Even when I was watching the final episodes today I just couldn't care what was going on, something about a presidential assassination or something. I just wasn't taking it in at all.

I really don't know what else to say for the anime, usually when I watch something that I didn't *really* like or something I know isn't that good I say it's "fun" because it can be, but for this it's just mostly boring. Maybe it's the episodic nature of it, maybe it's the storytelling? I don't know, but I probably wouldn't recommend this to anyone else beyond the Ambrosian Days episodes. Sorry OP, it wasn't my kinda anime.

>>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 afloat because of the people who believe in it. The psychocrystal that is its engine is said to feed off of the mental energy that is produced by those who believe in it. Even those who went to destroy it went because they were following their dream of destroying it, which only fed the crystal and explains why no one, but Bolt, a mercenary and master of dreams could destroy it.

However by destroying the floating ship Bolt contradicts his own role by destroying the dreams of many, in order so that that one girl can achieve her own dream. And yet the captain explains that it is sometimes necessary the goal which one set at the beginning. Indeed this is true as whenever Bolt gives one person their dream he breaks the dream of another. And in this way Bolt is both the doctor program that keeps people in their dreams and Death who takes people back to reality.

This all relates back to the nihilism of the anime as it basically states that reality itself is just a false dream controlled by forces, like Bolt, which make or break dreams, as they see fit. Beings like Bolt understand the meaninglessness of life which is why they are free to wander without being tied down by any of the dreams that others are tied down by. In this sense Bolt only exists for others which is why he himself seems empty.

>>516
>*That it is sometimes necessary to go against the goals that you set at the beginning

Sorry I hardly read through this before posting

>>516
Thanks for the write up, that's actually quite interesting and I never saw the anime in this light before. I can respect it a lot more from that.

I never really felt any nihilism from the anime, it just felt like a world that's not that different from our own and Bolt was helping random people as the story dictates, but the way you word it actually makes a lot of sense since the episode plots don't really matter it's more about Bolt trying to solve problems to fulfill the dreams of the people he helps.

>>518
I think what you're saying about the setting being similar to the real world is exactly right and partly why I believe it is nihilistic.

Because even though the anime takes place in a futuristic world, that at first seems different from our own, somehow its essence is similar enough to the our real world to be boring. But I think this is part of what gives EatMan a nihilistic vibe. It's not trying to take the viewer on an otherworldly adventure, rather the adventure is so founded in reality and humanity that it gets repetitive quick. Maybe part of Eatman's message is that there are no fairy tale like adventures out there, only harsh reality and dreams which deny reality's harshness. Bolt himself says that only someone who has eaten metal while crying can truly know what adventure tastes like.

Truth be told when it comes to these kinds of shonen reading the Manga is the best idea. Lots of things lost in transcription.

Specially with those early digital EFX that are frankly puke inducing. Fascinating that stuff like this was contemporary to SE Lain's pure digital production.