Eat-Man '98

Original Title: イートマン '98
Romanized: EAT-MAN '98
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Bolt Crank is a mysterious man with a mysterious power: he can eat metal. More usefully, he can reproduce anything he eats from his right hand. Obviously this is a handy ability, and it's no coincidence that Bolt is also known far and wide as the world's greatest mercenary. Bolt has a habit of crossing paths with troubled people and messy situation, but in the end, everything just has a way of working itself out when Bolt is around.

Episodes 1-2: Somebody is killing scientists in cold blood, and the police are at a loss. When Bolt Crank shows up in town, he's immediately a suspect, but seems more interested in solving the crimes than participating in them. So who is responsible?

Episode 3: A small backwater town wants to hire Bolt to help them with a problem--a local corporation is looking to erase them. In addition to their own army, these guys also have hired Hard, known in the area as the best mercenary in the world. May be time for a showdown...

Episode 4: This time, Bolt is only protecting one scared girl, and only for an hour. Of course, there is an entire army after her... but why?

Episodes 5-8: In a desert kingdom, the king has fallen on poor health. The search for his successor becomes increasingly desperate, but the kingdom's magical dagger, which transforms into a powerful sword in the hands of a truly brave man suited to be the next ruler, just doesn't like any of the potential princes. Meanwhile, Bolt gets friendly with a junk dealer and his adopted daughter, who also happens to be a small time demon hunter. When a very big demon threatens the kingdom, off she goes to join the volunteers, and Bolt might just tag along to see what's going on. Between demons, political pressure from the outside, and turmoil within, this kingdom is just the sort of place that Bolt seems to thrive in.

Episodes 9-10: Bolt is attempting to collect on an easy bounty: bring a girl back to her very powerful father. But she doesn't want to go back, and apparently daddy has erased the memory of her past lover. Even more interesting, there may be a past connection between her, her father's only employee, and none other than Bolt Crank...

Episodes 11-12: It's election time, but the candidates have more than questionable vote counts to deal with--somebody is trying to kill them. An ambitious reporter is trying to get the scoop on the story, but in addition to finding out exactly which of the many interested parties may have hired the assassin, she's also going to have to cross paths with both Bolt and his old "friend" Hard, both of whom are involved in (apparently) trying to stop the mayhem.

Quick Review

Rating: 2 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2005-10-28

Eat Man '98, follow-up to the even more obscure original Eat Man, is a jarring aggregate of unconnected stories that jumbles fantasy and cyberpunk vignettes into one confused series. Individually several are at least watchable, but though the idea of stringing together wildly unrelated (in both plot and style) stories with a single wandering character is unusual, Bolt Crank is as annoying as stoic-as-a-brick-wall anti-heroes come, alternately doing nothing at all and killing many, many people. The first and fifth story arcs are decent cyberpunk, and the long fourth arc in the middle of the series is a passable if slightly slow fantasy yarn with solid acting and lackluster visuals, but all would've been better had Bolt been absent entirely.

In all, though parts may be worth watching, it's a hard series to recommend as the good episodes come with ones that are not only uninteresting, but entirely unrelated to the ones you liked. On the other hand, if Bolt's sort of overcool anti-hero is your thing, you might get a kick out of the variety. At least the previous series isn't a prerequisite, as it's just as unrelated.

US DVD Review

The DVDs are minimal but at the time of their release impressive in their own way; there aren't any special features, but you got all 12 episodes on one reasonably priced 2 disc set in an extra-thick clamshell case, a rather novel idea back in 2000. The video is very crisp and smooth, and the audio is clean (the disc has Japanese audio, as well as the English dub in the first two episodes). On the down side, although it does include the complete Japanese credits for each episode, there are no translated credits to be found anywhere. Go figure.

Content Guide

Varies a lot by episode, but overall some relatively bloody violence and a very high body count (Bolt kills entire armies), plus a small amount of nudity in the first episode might bump it into the 16-up range, though Bandai's 13-up is reasonable and some episodes barely qualify for that.

Violence: 3 - Not gratuitous, but plenty of it.

Nudity: 2 - Very brief, in the first episode only.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - A small amount of physical romance, also in the first episode.

Language: 1 - The sub is pretty clean.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a comic series by Akihito Yoshitomi (available from VIZ) that is more interesting all around. There's also the prior Eat Man anime series (which would've been Eat Man 97, had it been named the same way as its follow-up), which was available briefly in the US on VHS from AnimeVillage but is hard to come by now. And no, neither of them relate to this series, except for Bolt Crank.

Availability

Available in the US from Bandai on one 2-disc subtitled-only DVD set (except for the first two episodes, which also have an English track), now out of print. Was also available on 6 subtitled VHS volumes, as well as dubbed VHS for the first volume only, all long out of print.

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