So what does it do and why do I think it’s interesting? Well, first off, it takes any digital image and using the internet, it gives you facts about whatever is being viewed. In the screencap above, it’s giving some facts about a bridge.

Below, the application tells you what kind of home theatre equipment Akira has.

It can also give you details about a person based on their clothes and faces:

Something like this could be really helpful for people who are lost, or are just curious about something. It could also potentially cause some big problems. The way I see it, if something like this was ever made, we’d all get flooded with targeted ads in our daily lives, and not to mention invasion of privacy. If technology got to the point where a program could tell what kind of person you are based on your dress and who you are using face recognition, then it’d only be a matter of time before ads on the street switch to display something that it thinks will interest you when you walk by.

Random people on the street would also be able to look up info on you just by pointing their cellphone at you. I guess this could be helpful for someone looking to pick up a date for the night, but I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t want random strangers knowing their name, age, occupation, etc.

Well, hopefully when something like this does come out, the programmers would have enough sense to limit the kind of information it can find. Otherwise, it’s a pretty nifty thing to have.

It’s really hard to explain what Eden of The East is about since I’m not really sure myself. So far we have been introduced to a young lady name Saki Morimi and a guy named Akira Takizawa (or so his passport says). The two of them met in Washington DC when Saki threw a coin over the fence around the White House (hoping that it would make it into a fountain) and gets questioned by police as to what she was doing. Akira then shows up butt-naked waving around a gun and cellphone so the police chase after him. Later on, we find out that Akira has lost his memories and has no clue who he is, but manages to find some clues (including what his name is) in an apartment listed on his cellphone. Later, he and Saki meet up again and they head off to Japan.

Through conversations between Saki and Akira, we learn that they live in the near future (probably by a few years) and that Japan is currently experiencing problems with terrorism in the form of missile strikes. However, the majority of those missile strikes have caused no injury since they targeted uninhabited areas and since they always occured on Mondays, the incidents are known as “Careless Monday”. In Japan we are introduced to a detective that has the same phone as Akira. It turns out that both of them are from some organization that has given 12 people 10 billion yen and the task of saving Japan. The phones that they were given connect them to a woman named Juiz who basically manages their money and does whatever they want (like purchase a mall, or call an assassination).

The end of episode 3 saw the detective fail at trying to steal Akira’s phone (and his money along with it) and reveal who Akira really is: the perpetrator behind the Careless Monday incidents and the one responsible for the disappearance of 20,000 NEETs (people Not in Employment, Education or Training, basically someone who is useless to society).

Based on the first three episodes, I’m assuming Eden of the East is going to be one of those mystery anime with some romance thrown in (obviously between Saki and Akira). Right now, anyone watching the series probably has as many questions as I do, but I guess that’s the point of a mystery. It’d be interesting to see what kind of person Akira was before he erased his own memories.

Some of the things that put me off watching this series at first was the animation and the incorporation of English into the show. When I saw the trailer for Eden of the East, I thought Saki looked like a frog (seriously), and when I heard the story started out in America I thought there was going to be a lot of “Engrish”. After two episodes I got used to how the faces looked, and the rest of the animation is actually done pretty well (lots of detal and colour). The Engrish that I was expected turned out to be understandable English, which is the first time I have EVER seen an anime (in Japanese) with good English. With that being said, I think Eden of The East might turn out to be a really good anime depending on how the story develops. Hopefully the writers decided to write the story all the way to the end instead of just writing the first half and winging the rest.