I’ll start off by apologizing to my secret santa. Despite your intriguing recommendation I was only able to make it through half of my recommended title(s). I was recommended Eat-Man and Eat-Man 98 and I just only finished the first series.
HOWEVER the secret santa made such a compelling argument for watching both that I intend to go and start Eat-Man 98 in the future. I hope they won’t mind me quoting them but to be exact: “There truly aren’t many examples of two seasons of an anime that are so similar in concept yet so different to watch.”
That definitely intrigues me because I did not terribly enjoy Eat-Man. I thought it would be interesting to watch an older series I had not heard many people talk about but I did not find much that will leave an impression on me.
Bolt Crank, despite the cool as heck name, is bland and not very compelling for a guy who is kinda just the coolest. Like he should be the coolest badass around but he’s very understated and a little too quiet. Which isn’t a problem on it’s own, of course. Sometimes you need characters like that and sometimes they work really well! It’s just in this case I found Bolt didn’t have much chemistry with most of the one off characters who showed up and frankly most of those characters were more interesting to watch.
The setting is something I particularly enjoyed though. Though it’s very much sci-fi, the mixing of fantastic elements reminded me of the Nier series. Though I may have found myself often disinterested in the protagonist I was at the very least interested in seeing more of the world this series took place in. The vignette format did a wonderful service of not needing everything to be explained and left up to your imagination.
Another point I will praise (and that was brought up as a selling point by my secret santa) was the soundtrack. I find myself somewhat bored with Yuki Kajiura these days (not that she can’t still knock my socks off from time to time) but to hear an older soundtrack from her that I’d somehow never listened to despite her being a part of the reason I grew to love OSTs so much was astounding! Though it still had a lot of her classic elements and motifs, there was an air to this soundtrack that I have not heard much in her work. Perhaps complimenting the unique world the series is set in, the OST felt mystic and unique to match.
If I gained nothing else from watching this first series, I’ll at least have some new bangers added to my regular OST repertoire.
That being said, I am disappointed she does not score the 98 series as well. I have not yet watched ti so I cannot say if the soundtrack will be even half as notable but my expectations are quite low in that regard.
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Sorry my review ended up being so half-assed! It’s been a few years since I’ve blogged about anime and lately all I want to do is watch vtubers. Oh well, please still accept my humble impressions. Perhaps I’ll come back and write about 98 when I finally get around to watching that.
