EAT-MAN
(1997)
EAT-MAN
(1997)
Episode titles and cast lists are given on the video covers, but they almost never actually match the names and titles which are shown on-screen. I don't know what's up with the inconsistencies, but wherever possible I have used the on-screen spellings. |
| Glass Walls | We Who Are About To Die... | Room of Promises | Professional Courtesy | After The Rain | The Gene Window | The Cemetary of Temptation | Silence of the Icicles | The High and Lonely Sky | Fragments of a Dream | Paradise | Endless Tomorrows |
GLASS WALLS The Eaten List: Mark Mitchell's "Cheap-Ass Gun" | A piece of glass (which apparently doesn't taste so good) |
Notes & Nonsense: The beginning of the Lavion arc, with extensive narrative exposition regarding the airship at the beginning of the episode. Culenne is cool.
WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE... The Eaten List: Gasoline | An enormously huge gun that doesn't fire ordinary metal bullets |
Notes & Nonsense: Hmmm. Hmmm. Am I reading too much into it? Yes, almost certainly. But those with a fondness for that sort of thing might possibly believe that this episode holds certain hints regarding Bolt's enigmatic origins...
ROOM OF PROMISES The Eaten List: A D'Soriet Consortium rifle | Nuts and bolts, seasoned with gunpowder |
Notes & Nonsense:
Bolt's prolonged stay at the Hotel Promise seems more a like a long holiday than a business trip. And you haven't lived until you've seen Bolt Crank chasing a camel while grinning like an idiot.
PROFESSIONAL COURTESY The Eaten List: An Ares revolver (apparently twice) |
Notes & Nonsense:
Why the hell does the episode end with Bolt shooting Sto and then turning to camera and smiling like a maniac? It's bizarre. And what exactly is going on between Justine and Doug (or Justine and anyone else, for that matter)? Parts of it are possibly a little confusing.
AFTER THE RAIN The Eaten List: A radio |
Notes & Nonsense: Bolt gets on well with cats. They seem to like him, which surprises me.
THE GENE WINDOW The Eaten List: Lily's expensive gun |
Notes & Nonsense: Note to anime producers: The Gene Window stands as a PERFECT example of how NOT to begin an episode. Five minutes of Jessica Prohonoff's silhouette jogging is NOT the way to grab viewers' attention.
CEMETARY OF TEMPTATION The Eaten List: A huge aeroplane-and-god gun (twice -- once in flashback) |
Notes & Nonsense: An unsettling mix of misguided violence with philosophy and theology; a disturbing portrait of a madman beyond redemption, and all that junk. Bolt continues his trend of grinning like a lunatic at inappropriate times, and displays a talent for cracking jokes about the blokes upstairs.
And check the references of the guy who runs your local church very carefully. Taking Communion isn't that great an idea if it's poisoned.
SILENCE OF THE ICICLES The Eaten List: A gun. The same darn gun he produces nearly every episode, so they don't have to produce new animation. |
Notes & Nonsense: Inspector Crank of Scotland Yard! Quite unusual for an Eat-Man tale. No action, no young star-crossed lovers in need of assistance, no cocky hotshot rival Explorer... it's a mystery story. Bolt shows off his skills as a detective.
THE HIGH AND LONELY SKY The Eaten List: Bolts | Motor Oil | A Really, Really Big Gun (which shoots a grappling line)|
Notes & Nonsense: So demolition's a big business in Bolt's world, eh? Wonder if this is the sort of thing that ties into Margot's profession...?
FRAGMENTS OF A DREAM The Eaten List: Bolts | A Really, Really Big Gun | Er... Something? Maybe not. The last few scenes are a bit confusing...|
Notes & Nonsense: Hello? The name of the show is Eat-Man, so how come Bolt barely makes an appearance this week? Oh, well. Once he does get going, this stuff rocks. Interesting to see how Bolt deals with failure. But what the hell happened at the end?
Bolt finds himself working more or less as a janitor in a pub somewhere in the city of Darjan. 
Here he meets a man named Mark Mitchell who has hired an Explorer, Culenne Garbo, to assassinate a local yakuza boss (Renoir Han). Culenne is reluctant to dirty her hands with murder and attempts to take on Bolt as her sidekick.
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 4/5. Nice intro to the series.
Bolt accompanies famous scholar and biologist Dr Alessa Rupert to a deserted island which was long ago used as a breeding ground for genetic experiments. Alessa is part of a military expedition (led by Major Oribis) hoping to capture any remaining creatures which might be of use as biological weapons. But tanks and guns aren't much use against a monster with an appetite so similar to Bolt's...
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 3.5/5. Nothing too special, but some nice moments (particularly Alessa's line about how no creature could live on a diet of metal...!). And it gets an extra half a point just for the potential importance of the setting...
Bolt is the thirteenth Explorer hired by businessman Raymon D'Soriet to resolve a conflict between the D'Soriet Consortium and the Hotel Promise; D'Soriet claims that the hotel (and the cursed painting within) belong to his Consortium, but Lady Anina (whose grandparents owned the hotel before they passed away) insists that the hotel belongs to her... as soon as she fulfills the condition stipulated in her grandfather's will. Anyone for stainless steel wedding cake?
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 3/5. Nothing special, but not bad.
Young sweethearts (maybe) Justine and Doug get caught up in the war between Dwide and Krotaria when Bolt is hired by Lex, the leader of Ares (Dwide's guerilla army). Bolt's task is to rescue Explorer MacGuyer Sto, who was captured during a botched attempt to assasinate Zormin, the president of Krotaria.
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 2.5/5. A few noticeable flaws, but not a heap of rubbish. And MacGuyer Sto is an intreresting character... at least, he is until Bolt kills him for no good reason and laughs about it.
Hanging around outside a strip joint in the rain, Bolt meets up with aspiring dancer Donna, who works within. She invites him to move in with her, and gets him a job at her club, where her only real friend is Bart, the lighting guy.
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 3/5. What's to say? Doesn't rock, doesn't suck. Somewhat character-driven; not much happens. Except a lot of exotic dancing.
Bolt accompanies "Lily Swanson" in an attempt to retrieve some belongings of her late father. But who's that weird comatose chick in the lab-in-the-sewers-under-the-garbage-dump (yeah, Dr Prohonoff sure has great taste in laboratory locales) and why is there an army of soldiers trying to kill Lily? (She claims to have "broken something".) And did Lily forget to mention that she's an explosives admirer who seems to have a talent for apparently random sprees of mass murder...?
But beyond that... "I sense that you are the same as I am", Bolt tells Lily. (A): Cool. Another hint as to Bolt's origins, but (B): How could he tell? What gave her away? Very interesting.
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 4.5/5. Excellent. Despite the dull and overly-lengthy opening sequence (reprised with little improvement at the tail-end of the ep) this remains one of my favourite episodes.
A visit to old pal Cyril Dew, priestess of Vishnu, leads Bolt to an insane killer (Ed DeSalvo -- a fellow of great religious fervour... way too great!) and an explosive rendezvous with a curious but pissed-off deity.
Cyril Dew's church of Vishnu fixates on change, transformation, metamorphosis -- which apparently humans can't achieve until death. And yet both Dew and Vishnu Itself recongise Bolt as having already "transformed". Iiiiinteresting.
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 4/5. Bolt blows up God.
Heavy, thought-provoking, moody... one of the "slow-but-strong" episodes.
Griefeld, the warden of Zagard's largest prison, hires Bolt to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding ex-military intelligence officer Tatiana Kozuirev, recently returned from a mission in Estangia. She is soon to be executed for treason. Griefeld suspects that she's innocent and that there's more to her case than meets the eye. He is determined that her life be saved if she is not really guilty of her crime, but Tatiana insists that her execution is just. And meanwhile, someone else has approached Bolt, asking him to kill Tatiana...
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 4/5. Refreshingly different.
Bolt is summoned to the village of Loris by Lucas the Demolisher. An unmanned airship is on a collision course with Loris, and Lucas needs Bolt's help to get up there so he can destroy the ship before it destroys Lucas's home town -- and his girlfriend, Cherie.
Bolt continues to grin weirdly just when you least expect it.
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 3.5/5. Entertaining, but not amazingly fantastic. Good, but it won't win any awards.
The war between Ibronyu and Alkoric heats up when underhanded military politics threaten to tear Ibronyu's army apart. Bolt is hired to protect Ibronyu's Major Mardi Gertz, but can even the World's Greatest Explorer save her once the truth is out? And, more importantly, can Bolt even survive? No, probably not.
One Person's Totally Subjective Rating: 4/5. Starts off slow, but the episode's climax has to be seen to be believed.
After a strange encounter with the Lavion (which may or may not tie in closely to the end of the previous episode), Bolt wakes up -- badly injured and with no memory of his past -- in an island hospital. He is in the care of Doctor Jessica Wobart, having been found unconscious outside the Black Forest by a little girl named Milly Foster. Bolt creates a life for himself here, truly knowing happiness for the first time in the arms of Jessica. 
After getting the sack from his job as a construction worker (for goofing off too much) retired Explorer Bolt eventually consents to accompany a shipbuilder named Latacia (she did bring him back to life, after all!) up to investigate the Lavion, an airship which was destroyed but still won't fall out of the sky. Latacia hopes to discover the Lavion's secrets and recreate the unsinkable airship's majesty. But there's more going on up there than we expected, and it involves a man named Captain Howell who seems to be awfully knowledgeable...