The Garden of Eden isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
What They Say:
A human girl secretly raised by robots starts to uncover the dark secrets behind her lush, utopian world where humanity has all but vanished.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
I’m a sucker for pedigrees. So two years ago, when Netflix announced a new original series by the director of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the composer of Made in Abyss, and the character designer of Cowboy Bebop, I was sold. For the past two years, I’ve been anticipating this beautiful new world from a dream team that sounded ideal to me, truly an Eden of anime.
Of course, such expectations are rarely fulfilled. The names attached to this project were really the only thing that made it seem especially promising. Although the initial key art gives us a look at its admittedly gorgeous background art – appropriate for a series with such a title – once we started seeing actual footage from the series, it became clear that this would be following the trend of many Netflix anime, both true originals like this and series they simply license, in being a CG production. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as evidenced in several recent series, including some that Netflix has been involved with in one way or another. They tend to work best when not featuring purely human characters, and in that sense, Eden is actually a mostly perfect opportunity for the technology. After all, nearly all of the characters are robots, and for them, it works extremely well. Unfortunately, the protagonist Sara is very much human, and the animation style does her no favors.
The nature of humans and robots is a major theme of the series, and empathizing with Sara is crucial to being swept up in her narrative alongside a world of robots to accept the message that humanity has its merits despite the horrors it has unleashed upon a once beautiful world. Had she been traditionally animated or given a very high level of care to her CG modeling, it might’ve been easier to recognize her as the epitome of humanity in this cold metal world that would’ve been just as well served by looking exactly as it does, but instead, she just looks like an anime character put into a video game.
It bears repeating that the world itself is every bit the lush utopia advertised, which is just as essential to conveying it as the Eden that perfectly programmed and eco-friendly robots could maintain in harmony with nature without the interference of humans. But just as the series falls short of conveying why humanity is truly valuable in this apparent utopia, it doesn’t quite explain why curbing pollution is only possible with no humans alive if society has advanced technology to the point of creating self-sustaining robots that don’t harm the environment for centuries. There are a lot of big questions presented that could lead to important discussions, but it ultimately pushes them to the side to fall back on tropes of a man who lost his family taking revenge on humanity before being reminded of how wonderful love can be.
The personalities of many of these robots do indeed feel like the played-out stereotypes of “beep boop I am a robot,” which is a wasted opportunity in a high concept world featuring a cast almost entirely of robots. The only real exceptions to this formula end up being originally human or based on existing humans. Perhaps this is an argument that the world needs the nuance of true humanity, but it’s not as if the standard robots lack human qualities. On the contrary, some of them are the warmest characters of the series. They just also happen to be written as caricatures of “how a machine would think.”
You’d be forgiven for coming into this series wondering if you accidentally hit the new season of Love, Death & Robots instead. It could easily fit within that anthology in terms of themes, story, and aesthetic. In fact, from the first indications of what the series would be about, I drew very strong parallels to the second episode of Love, Death & Robots, and those comparisons still stand after having watched the full series. The two series have lined up with each other in interesting ways, with Netflix announcing Eden weeks after releasing the first season of Love, Death & Robots and then finally releasing it weeks after releasing the second season.
There are similarities to many other works (and, in the most bizarre of coincidences, the phrase “Eden Zero” features prominently with no relation to the series Edens Zero that has an anime airing now and coming to Netflix later this year), but the same could be said of many stories. When something has such a blank slate like this, it’s nice to hope for it to really take advantage of its originality and innovate, so it’s a little unfortunate that Eden plays it so safe and follows the most expected path more often than not, but some aspects of its world-building, design sense, and overall presentation still help it feel somewhat fresh even if the underlying story beats are very familiar.
As mentioned previously, director Yasuhiro Irie, directed my favorite anime of all time, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Kevin Penkin is someone whose career I’ve been following closely since his score to Made in Abyss put him on my radar as an incredibly talented international force in the anime industry (and depressingly enough my age), serving as a composer, conductor, arranger, lyricist, and musician on an increasing number of high-profile anime and video game projects that continue to showcase him as a phenomenal artist. I was fortunate enough to meet both of them in 2019, and they’ll continue to be names that will demand a look at whatever they’re working on.
Cowboy Bebop character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto doesn’t get to shine as much as he should here because of how the CG character models lose the definition behind his designs. He also worked as a mechanical designer, which makes sense given the ratio of robot characters in the series, but it is disappointing to see how the humans end up looking, since you can see that Kawamoto style behind the CG, just not enough to survive the transition. Similarly, there’s nothing weak about Irie’s direction throughout the series, but some of the inherently awkward motions of CG models combined with equally awkward writing choices hinder his ability to truly impress.
By far the strongest element of the entire production is Penkin’s score and the musical performance of his team (including a 3D-printed electric violin). There’s seldom a moment where the music isn’t enrapturing the audience with profoundly sublime transcendence. It’s like in a music anime when the audience is so affected by the music being played that it has a palpable impact on the world around them. These aural characteristics that have become signatures of Penkin’s work truly lift you up into a wondrous new world the moment you hear them. It’s an appropriate effect for a series with this kind of setting and premise, but sometimes it scores a mundane scene that doesn’t warrant such grandeur. The emotional resonance of the soundtrack outshines that of the actual writing to such a striking degree that it paints an almost embarrassing view of the latter. This may be a half-accurate representation of the relative mediocrity of the series, but the other half of the equation is purely the music being on a higher plane of existence.
While the Japanese cast features the likes of veteran seiyuu Kouichi Yamadera, the dub goes much more extravagant with a blend of up-and-coming live-action actors, A-list stars like Rosario Dawson, David Tennant, and Neil Patrick Harris, western animation and video game voice actors, and standard anime dub voice actors. This seems like stunt casting, and that label can’t really be dismissed when names like that find their way into works like this with established talent pools well-versed in the specific skills needed for the process. However, between Netflix not really using that casting to market the series at all and the dub coming from Michael Sinterniklaas and Stephanie Sheh at NYAV Post, easily among the most talented, hardworking, and genuine people in their industry, I can appreciate simply utilizing talented actors with some iconic nerd credits in our increasingly popular little medium if the budget allows for it. Since GKIDS gets most anime films and has NYAV Post dub pretty much all of them these days, those two have become the ones who work with that level of celebrity more than anyone else in anime dubbing today, and I can’t pretend they’ve ever really dropped the ball.
In Summary:
Two years of anticipation for a brand-new story featuring a dream team staff and eventually a high-profile cast was never going to end with a product that lived up to expectations. Eden doesn’t come close to living up to the sum of its parts, but what’s more important is that it’s not particularly effective at executing the very themes it presents as its identifying philosophies and ruminations. It introduces concepts rife with potential but settles on easy answers and overused – occasionally obnoxious – tropes all the way through. The CG animation style fails to capture the critical humanity of the few human characters, but looks spectacular on the robots all around them, and the environments are as breathtakingly stunning as you’d hope for a series presenting a utopia it deems worthy of calling “Eden.” Even if the series overall is mostly underwhelming, it was a worthwhile endeavor if for no reason except for the positively spellbinding musical score that further cements Kevin Penkin as a world-class talent.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Netflix
