God Eater

Episode 11

After two breathtaking episodes, I can say that God Eater's triumphant return was no fluke. This show has returned on a high note, and its beauty, horror, action and intrigue are here to stay. This week's episode, titled “Operation Meteorite,” details a surefire plan to slaughter 1,000 Aragami and gather enough of their valuable cores to build humanity's ultimate stronghold, Aegis. But like most plans involving the Aragami, things go awry. This week follows two careful plans, one in the past and one in the present, as they spiral out of control.

Remember Johannes, the Far East Branch Director and also one of the scientists that sort of accidentally exacerbated the Aragami problem in their research? Half of this episode is devoted to explaining the missing piece of his backstory between then and now. We know that his wife, fellow scientist Aisha, died in childbirth, leaving her son and God Eater Soma behind. What we didn't know until now was just how gruesome that event was. There's the downside of God Eater's visual and audio depth—it can really convincingly pile on the gore.

I had forgotten that Aisha agreed to be the subject of her own experiment, injecting Oracle cells into herself and her unborn child. The dramatic irony is that we know this experiment was a success, giving rise to Soma as the first God Eater. But the process to get there involved an excessive amount of gore. Childbirth is already one of the most frightening moments in a woman's life, and this scene graphically exploits that fear. God Eater has never been for the weak stomached, but these new episodes have turned the gore up to 11. “Perhaps [Aragami are] a program God created to weed out mankind,” Paylor tells Johannes as he prepares for Aisha's impending birth. Paylor's spiritual awakening is pure theatricality, and we soon discover that the “safe birth charm” he gave Johannes is actually packed with the anti-Aragami material gleaned through their research, but it's also foreshadowing their doom. No matter how carefully they prepared for Aisha's labor, nothing went as planned, to say the least.

Meanwhile in the present, Lindow, his God Eater team, and his sister Major Anamiya are preparing for their most aggressive assault against the Aragami yet, Operation Meteorite. The first part of this episode is the calm before the storm, with an excellent downbeat electronic soundtrack slowly increasing the tension that our characters feel as they use their downtime in mundane ways: to have dinner with family, to crack open a cold one. The predictably gorgeous dawn sky on the day of the operation spells out hope, and at first the operation is awe-inspiring to watch. Every God Eater has come out to participate, (with detailed character designs courtesy of being pulled from the video game series), and at first everything is going wonderfully, until the chaotic Aragami suddenly change course to the northwest town that Lindow has focused so hard on saving. This focus on direction echoes the scene with Lenka and Lindow and the compass, and Lindow's words to give it to somebody else who needs to find their way. In a series of beautifully animated zoom shots, Lenka realizes he needs to be the one to help Lindow stop the Aragami from advancing any further, and we end on one of those striking cliffhangers God Eater is so fond at throwing at us.

Will the past repeat itself, or will humanity find a way to see out their plans without the Aragami butting in this time? Even with a cliffhanger, this episode feels like a complete circle, neatly paralleling the past and present, paying off this tense buildup with a promise of action.

Rating: A

God Eater is currently streaming on Daisuki.

Lauren writes about anime and journalism at Otaku Journalist.