Dropped: God Eater--Not That Kind Of Newtype

During the most recent episode I hit the point where I had this show on in the background while doing other things and wasn’t paying attention to it at all. That’s a good sign that I should stop watching it altogether.


I’m not sure when it happened, but the different aspects of this anime blended together into a passive watching experience that left no impact on me. The novelty of the animation style has worn off (the character design is very interesting, but the wasteland-style backgrounds don’t add much to it), the characters either act as one-dimensional anime cliches (I’m the stoic captain who smokes! I’m the angry female prodigy who doesn’t wear a bra!), or exposition dumps (check out that island we’re protecting that no one mentioned for three episodes), and the mechanics and tutorials carried over from the game drag down the little bits of story that are there.


I can see why this was popular as a game given the giant monsters the main characters fight, but this adaptation falls into same pitfalls as almost every other video game adaptation I’ve seen. It’s interested in adapting game mechanics to keep it accurate to the original, but that flies in the face of making it a coherent animated show. Yes, the character has a cool transforming sword. I would rather watch him use it than have background characters explain to him what buttons to press—I mean, what triggers to use to activate its powers.

Also, there’s still no sign that the story is going to be explained beyond the science lab flashbacks. Only one of those was really needed since the audience is already aware of the outcome, yet the show keeps using them as if those segments are somehow building suspense.


Just as frustrating is the fact that the main character appears to know literally nothing about this world, yet the show has given no reason as to why that is. I understand needing to explain parts of the world to the audience, but making the main character ignorant of everything that is going on makes me question how in the world he got into his position in the first place. Why did they give a giant transforming gun sword to a person who is unaware of basic facts about his world?

Then there’s the production problems surrounding the series, with the possibility that the delays may stop it from even being able to air its final episode. I’m not invested enough in this to begin with to wait even longer to find out how it ends, so I’m dropping it here. The slight bit of interest that I had in playing the game before watching this show is gone now as well. If this anime was meant to be a promotional tool, it did not do its job very well.

Images from Daisuki.net. Please support the official simulcast.