English Dub Review: Eden Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Two farming robots A37 and E92 find a human called Sara Grace inside a capsule, but most machines consider humans to be evil. The two robots escape and raise her in a settlement that doesn’t abide by Eden Three’s belief of humans as evil. Years later Sara ventures out after hearing a cry of help and go to Eden Three to find other humans. However, she stumbles upon Eden One where an AI, Zurich, tells her that the other humans are asleep and they need the password in order to wake up from the cryogenic sleep. Sara escapes and tells her robot parents then they follow a robot carrying food thinking that the other human who woke up is alive. However, they find out that he woke up four hundred years ago.

Sara heads back to Eden Three only to get captured by Zero, the leader of Eden Three. He reprograms the robots including A37 and E92 and Sara fights against the security only to prove Zero’s point in humans being evil. Sara escapes to Eden Zero where she finds several recordings from the robot Emily and Zero’s true identity. Zurich informs her that humanity’s time is nearly up. Sara goes back to Eden Three and faces off against Zero using an old giant robot. After getting Zero to realize his true identity he saves her from falling and Sara wakes up the humans with the password. Sara later reunites with her robot parents.

 

Our Take:

Sometimes a family can be two robots and a small human child. Eden is a short season with four episodes about Sara’s journey to Eden Three and waking up the rest of humanity from their cryogenic sleep before time runs out. The worldbuilding of Eden was beautiful with the lush vegetation and reflective robot buildings. I liked the reference with Eden and the apples throughout the series. Eden is the paradise of the world and apples being the fruit that fuels both robots and Sara.

Now the animation in Eden is a bit stiff with some of the character movements. However, I did like the light show that Zurich enabled in Eden One. That was beautiful. The transitions in between the present and past are a bit confusing going from Sara’s journey to Dr. Fields’ past as a human. The first episode made me think that he was alive as a human in the present. It was effective until the reveal that Dr. Fields woke up years ago and he is actually Zero. Admittedly that gave me mixed feelings and does leave a lingering question on how he woke up from his sleep.

Eden is a family show and with it comes the simplistic good versus evil theme with humanity and robots. It’s nothing new in terms of plot. At least their execution on the family theme was good with Sara and Dr. Field’s families. That first episode of A37 and E92 caring for Sara and keeping her hidden despite knowing the risk of reprogramming was sweet. Then there are Dr. Fields’ memories with his family and the burden of being the only one left after his ailing wife and daughter pass away.

However, the conflict portion of the series was lacking, to say the least. I didn’t expect her to fight off the robots like that after her robot parent’s memory was wiped. Its only purpose is to show that humans are evil to the robots. Furthermore, Eden failed to keep the tension of humanity expiring after the cryogenic sleep timer runs out. The show instead has a huge robot war between Zero and Sara which felt longer than needed. Then it goes into a scene of getting Dr. Fields to remember who he is and his family. Sara’s actions do resolve with the humans waking up because of the password, but the satisfaction of how it happens is just flat. I will admit I thought that the two AIs fighting was amusing.  I do like the parallel to the realization that Zero is Dr. Fields as the timer hits zero too.

Sara Grace is a naive protagonist who is more of a child than a teen with how she gets caught in the beginning. Granted she’s the only human around and her robot parents are limited in the matter of human emotions. At least her relationship with her robot parents is heartwarming. Their sacrifice to protect Sara was good for the emotional breakdown that Sara has after she escapes from Eden Three. Then the ending where she reunites with them while they’re planting apples is a happy ending but that’s all there is to it.

Even though the transitions were confusing, Dr. Field’s story still remains intact as a deeper story for the adults watching who could empathize with Dr. Fields’ desire to care for his family. He’s the creator of the Eden Project however the riots occur to get limited seats in the cryogenic system and the higher-ups fail to honor their part in providing a seat for Liz. Therefore he’s unable to save Lia from her illness. The death of Ashley and Lia hit him hard and you can see that in the recordings from the robot dog Emily after Dr. Fields wakes up. Especially with the drink in his hand that just screams alcohol with his disheveled appearance.

Disillusioned by the past actions of the leaders and waking up to a world without his loved ones, Dr. Fields makes the decision to not wake up the other humans and turns himself into a robot. I have to suspend my disbelief for his robot transformation and the sealing of his memories. Then there’s the happy ending where everyone lives, even Dr. Fields as the robot dog as Sara reunites with her robot parents. It’s an open ending and it could lead to another season on the after-effects of humans waking up from their cryogenic sleep.

Overall it was a nice family show with robots and humans as a family. However, there’s plenty of other shows or movies that had better execution of it.

Score: 6.5/10