Eden: It's an Endless World!

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Eden is the best completed manga I've read up to date.

Why?

Because Hiroki Endo's post-apocalyptic tale has got almost everything that can be considered good in manga in spades: great story, gorgeous art and near perfect characterization. Imagine a well thought-out, mature story clashing seamlessly with art that manages to be both realistic and beautiful and characters that almost seem more real than the people one encounters in their daily lives. If painting a picture in your mind of a manga with such merits proves to be too difficult for you, grab Eden and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Science fiction is a major element in ... Eden's story. In Hiroki Endo's hands, though, the act of toying with wild speculations about the future has not gotten out of hand at all. The story is set in a world that has undergone a large disaster, but that disaster wasn't an attack from outer space, a sudden detonation of the world, the work of a mad scientist, or any other pompous crap like that. Rather, Endo has chosen an evolved killer virus as a means that almost lead to the end of the world; something that people living in a world riddled with various epidemics, deadly or not, can surely identify with. The workings of this closure-virus (as well as other scifi-esque stuff that comes up later on) have been explained thoroughly enough that the reader can easily grasp what's going on.

But Eden is much more than just another heap of end-of-the-world-scifi-shit. It has a lot of drama stemming from the interactions between the characters, a touch of romance and happiness even amidst the harsh realities of a world gone from bad to worse, and even an occasional spark of humour.

The tale's maturity comes from the way these different aspects are handled: carefully and with a clear effort regarding good taste. The world in which Eden is set is brutal and cold, but it doesn't preach about bottomless gloom and doom and hopelessness and depression and whatnot. Yes the world is sometimes harsh and uncaring, but in Eden, there is room left for the good things as well.

Just like all the good stories, love and romance and dramatic relationships have their place in Eden. Following along Endo's decision to keep things from flying off the handle, there are some hugs and kisses (...), but not in ridiculous abundance. Love happens, just like hate, friendships, sadness, happiness and other kind of shit happens. It isn't overly highlighted or downplayed, it's simply there with all the other aspects of life.

The less serious side of Eden starts to become more prominent as the story goes on. At some point the readers find themselves seeing sexual jokes, chibi characters and some other silly characteristics of manga art more and more often. Some people have found this upsetting. I liked it. It made me laugh. I also think that paradoxically, a dose of good humour brings more credibility to a story dealing with serious issues rather than a no light in sight-type of tragedy.

A common way of defining whether a story is mature or not is to measure how much it has blood, gore, violence, sex and all that type of jazz. Though I'm not one to promote that way as a measuring stick for how grown up the story is, Eden does show its assets in this regard as well. If Endo wants to give us gore, he gives us showers of blood, shredded limbs and cracked bones instead of some lame stumps a la Claymore. Also, one of the ugliest torture scenes I've seen in manga. And when it's time for sex, we see passionate screwing, kissing, and gropin' in place of the usual cheek smooches and blushes so typical in common "romance" mangas. And just like with all the other faces of Eden, realism is the key word here: in no point does Endo slip into sloppy tastelessness with his more graphic imagery.

Imagery, which is, as I stated early on, simply gorgeous. Endo manages to capture that unique beauty in Japanese style of comic-writing, be that in the characters, sceneries or anything else, without drowning us in saucer-sized eyes or over-groomed scenes. Realistic beauty. Wait, is that even possible? In Eden, it is.

Other aspects adding on the reading pleasure include clean panel arrangements and the author's interesting essays at the end of each volume. Like cherries atop a well creamed cake.

As per everything else, not all is perfect, or even excellent, in Eden. I could go on about some of the manga's minor issues for a paragraph or two, but it'd be a waste of time. The occasional bore of reading long lines of science jargon. A misplaced joke here and there. Some over the top philosophy. Consider it a cow chip next to Mt. Everest.

The bottom line? Go read it. Rite nao.

The first chapter is one of the best first chapters I've ever read. It intrigued me so much that it kept me reading this... thing... all the way through.

Although the first chapter was a banger, Elijah Ballard was not. Elijah is so damn annoying and uninteresting that it ruins the experience. He has so much screen time—like 10 volumes of protagonism—and in those 10 volumes, almost NOTHING really happened. I'm only counting scenes involving Elijah; obviously, the story still develops with Propatria, Maya and the colloid, but at a really slow pace because we really need to show how a 15 year old kid and ... a 25 year old prostitute fuck, and we need to see how Elijah cums in his own face as a joke, and we really need to see that, we do.

A lot of explicit sex is shown (especially underage), when it's not needed. I find it a bit disturbing because it feels like it's just for fan service. There's even a fourth-wall break with a fan service joke about some female character stripping. The glorification of prostitution is also something I didn't like, but that's a lot more personal.

25% of the story was somewhat interesting, but the other 75% is just Elijah. I got really tired of him. The ending is fine, I guess, but the first chapter set my expectations so high that I don't think this manga delivered on them

I don't know how to review manga, but I want to still share some of my thoughts on Eden: It's an Endless World! This'll be spoiler-ish.

I was suggested this fairly intriguing looking manga by a mysterious forum user. It was in response to a forum post I had made on here, I wanted to read something truly apocalyptic. Where humanity gets obliterated to hell and back. It could've very well been that for a good while. No, no such luck. So that's why I am more than glad I skipped ahead to see the ending. ( No one in their right mind should waste their ... time reading such a long tale if it might not even be headed in a desirable direction...)

This is a POST-APOCALYPTIC manga. That's what Eden ultimately is. I could insert some biased criticisms about it's natalistic and not so... dark ways of thinking, but they're reasonably presented that it would be pointless. I am just let down that I didn't get to see some deliciously grim destruction and rape of mankind.

Apocalyptic to me is when literally all hope is squashed through and through, and it focuses on it's eve. The end of everything. Post-apocalypses don't have this, and as a result more often than not give me boredom with all the what ifs and what not attached.

I guess... it was refreshing to see the gnostic influences. They're I imagine uncommon in manga.