7 Seeds

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Survival, post apocalypse mystery with some horror, comedy, romance and drama. And all of it done well, with complex and heavy topics discussed in a relatable way.
Its really something out of the ordinary, the story develops well and the mysteries are gripping and smart with aspects of science but understandable.
Simple art, but strong expressions and amazing sceneries.

Individual and interesting characters with thrilling, emotional and crazy backstories but also just regular people like us, with (mostly) realistic reactions.
Each arc tops the last and it never gets boring.

Please dont get discouraged in the beginning or spoiler yourself!!
Theres an unfinished netflix anime but its only watchable if ... you dont know the manga (i first watched season 1, then started the manga).

M*ngaowls and m*ngasee123 have the official translations...

"Set in a post-apocalyptic future, long enough after a meteorite hits earth that new species have evolved, '7 Seeds' follows the struggles of five groups of young adults to survive after they are revived from cryonic preservation."

I've contemplated back and forth on whether I wanted to write a review on this series. It's storytelling and world building is so complex and intricate that I've felt overwhelmed by how I could even begin to describe my love for this manga. However I'll try my best, since I really feel the need to convey what a special series this is.

7 Seeds is nothing short of a masterpiece, interweaving stories of more than 30 characters in truly unexpected and surprising ways. With each group you come to meet overtime you learn more and more about each character, their motivations, and how they fit into ... this post-apocalyptic society. Even the flashbacks to characters that were once dwelling in certain places were still intriguing and fleshed out the world of 7 Seeds even further.

This manga was dark, morbid, and bleak while still being able to give you a ray of hope at the same time. There were moments where my jaw hit the floor or where I could not stop crying. Despite this, the tone of the series never felt like it was bogged down with nihilism and cynicism about whether human could successfully live together where the previous way of life has been destroyed. The characters of Hana and Arashi being the main reason we are able to consistently have a slight positive outlook.

It also doesn't shy away from the long term trauma that certain events can cause in a person's life. Ango and most of the Summer Team A being the biggest example of how government control and lack of human empathy can make even the most devoted people turn on their superiors. On the opposite of that spectrum we also have Haru, who suffered great loss on his own in the new world. Unlike Summer Team A, he internalized this trauma and kept it with him.

Real quick, I would like to mention the character of Natsu. I knew right away that people would most likely hate her character, since she's a timid girl (nothing is worse than that apparently). However, I really love Natsu's characterization and how we see her slow and steady growth to become a bit more confident throughout the series. People don't change personalities instantly, even when they have willingly expressed wanting to change. Being thrown into a post-apocalyptic world where you have no idea what happened to your family and have to fend off dangerous new creatures probably won't lend itself well either. I would argue Natsu would represent a large majority of how people would act in that situation.

I could go on and on about how good this series is but I hate reviews that are more than 4 paragraphs long so I'll leave it at that.

The art, characters, and writing are phenomenal. Every new arc makes it hard to put the series down. This is in my top 10 manga series of all time.

If you woke up from a cryogenic sleep in a hostile dystopian world with the order to rebuild mankind from the ground up, what would you do? Within that question lies the foundation of 7 Seeds. What would a person do under these circumstances? Even more, what would a person without any survival experience handle a more primitive lifestyle with dangers around every corner?

As questionable as it would be if the government chose inexperienced and traumatized people to save mankind, it’s interesting from a psychological perspective. Because some of these people can barely take care of themselves, and now they have even more weight ... on their shoulders. Every character belongs to a group of seven, hence why it’s called 7 Seeds. With all the existing groups comes a large scale of characters, and it’s handled well. Most if not all of them get some amount of development, with the ones mainly focused on ending up as multilayered and have experienced some sort of growth. Each group is also very diverse with how they tackle survival which I liked. It created conflict between the groups which makes it feel all the more satisfying when they finally put their differences aside to instead work together.

The characters are the center point of 7 Seeds, it’s core. But that’s not to say that a good story becomes insignificant, and here is where the manga stumbles quite a bit in my opinion. It ends up being very formulaic, with a format it continuously uses over and over again. With few exceptions, the whole story of 7 Seeds can be summed up as follows. Find a location, learn something new, overcome some sort of hurdle and then leave to find another location. Any sort of progress towards rebuilding humanity takes a backseat, for most of the manga that is. There are attempts for sure but for one reason or another it never works out in the end. So it’s back to square one which I have to admit that I wasn’t very enthusiastic about. It can also drag on for far longer than it has any right to. Making some parts feel very sluggish and uneventful. The different formulaic arcs have at least world-building and character growth coming with it. So it wasn’t too much of a waste of time. But I personally would’ve loved to see any progress or at least something to spice up the story structure a bit.

Art-wise it was pretty polished with the character designs being pretty consistent (although hard to tell apart sometimes) with some very solid environmental art here and there. It’s not always consistent however. It could often be simplistic with plain white backgrounds and things like hair and clothing lacking detail. However, at its best it is solid, but dips in quality more times than I think it should’ve.

All in all I think 7 Seeds is at least worth a chance. While at first I found it to be extremely mediocre, my opinion has now changed to a more positive side after reflecting on it. Even though I didn’t find all the characters very memorable there’s some genuinely great development for some of them which were definitely a high point. It’s a solid cast overall and made this an alright read. It’s just when the story comes more into focus that it loses that appeal and boredom seeps in. The slow pacing and reused formula definitely didn’t always help either, but that’s a very subjective critique that might not affect you the same way. I can see why so many praise it, but that’s not to say there aren’t flaws to be found. If you don’t like your manga being slow paced or mostly character driven with weak story progression, then look elsewhere. Everyone else, take a dive in.