It isn't often that something can present a chaotic world filled with cruelty, yet still inspire a belief in humanity, but if anything Eden manages to do just that. This isn't to say the story rallies us behind a hero, but rather disregards the notion that mankind needs a hero. The people in Eden have to cling to something vaguer, and more desperate; they have to believe that even if they hate and kill, there's still meaning to be found in protecting those who are important. The protagonist, Elijah, has an incredible journey through the story. From someone more innocent, to someone who acts on realizing how horrible this world can be: "the world is cruel, part, where Propatria acts, and Agnosia, which does not have the influence of the organization. By having constantly seen the struggle of revolutionary groups striving to achieve an egalitarian world against Propatria, but in the course of the manga the virus evolves into Disclosure ("revelation", "divulgation"), completely changing the focus of the manga. In fact, the very name of the virus refers to a given revelation, as if the author were telling his reader that the focus has changed. Eden was based on Gnosticism, a doctrine, as a religion. From Gnosticism I have taken much of the plot, which follows the idea of ​​a "corrupted" world, which will never be good for human life. It is as if humanity needs to search for a better world, and all this is introduced by the Closure virus, which devastated the population as a prologue to the end, followed by Disclosure, which opens the door to humanity's "salvation". The manga is not explicit about what happens after Propater arrived at Eden, but during some passage of time, Ennoea married Hana, had three children and achieved global influence by becoming one of South America's primary primary cocaine exporters. Rather than witnessing or explaining this change, the narrative passes to Elijah Ballard, Ennoea's middle child and son. Elijah appears to be following a course of actions similar to his father's. Due to his father's wealth, Elijah grew up shielded from the world's prevalent violence. Given that he's the child of a genius, and presumably, a conqueror, his actions are muddied by something of a complex. Psycho for Hire: The unnamed assassin in volume 7. Considering NOMAD is a mercenary organization, Kenji would be a heroic variation on this trope.

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. Worldbuilding: The manga not only showed the consequences of the major events with the protagonists, also, we saw how them affected the rest of the manga´s world, highlighting the excellent interconnection of the subframes presented. All these subplots are important in the main one. It also shows us the impact that technological advancement had on this post-apocalytic reality through cyborgs, the new distribution of territories in the world as the case of the Propater organization, the reality that most of this territories had and the conflicts between them. I liked how the manga didn't gave completely the reason to any of the bands involved, so we are talking about a mature story and with a true gray morality. The manga brings a lot of information and culture in itself, giving everything to the reader in a fluid and easy-to-understand way. Also, very well your premise. Helena: "You were raised to be so big and strong thanks to the sacrifice of girls like her. Your father must be awfully proud!" The only real issue for me is the world's significant population increase. At points, the first graphic novel hinted that humanity was down to two people, but now it seems like those pesky buggers are running around everywhere. I know there are plausible explanations for this, but I can't help but think that the author just changed his mind and decided to write about something else.

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STD Immunity: Notably averted. Several character, major and minor, catch some form of [STDs over the course of the series, and Endo had footnotes, asides and entire panels explaining the need for proper protection and cleaning to avoid STDs. Still here? OK, let's dig in a bit deeper. The series is perhaps best described as Ghost in the Shell turned up to 11. Eden is extremely violent, filled with explicit sex and nudity, lots of philosophy, even more religion, and moral ambiguity in ways that would make Alan Moore proud. Characters are regularly killed off, beaten, wounded, tortured, crippled, and raped by villains and heroes alike; and The Messiah, despite the religious overtones, is a minor character. Endo, if you knew this was going to become a bump on the road in the long run then why opt to make this so heavily mired in the fauxscientific. a fine example of balls-to-the-wall cyberpunk would be Shirow Masamune's Ghost in the Shell, wherein he goes into dizzyingly succinct depth about how he envisions a japan that's not grounded in present times and tries to convey the silliness of sudden drastic changes in modern society that would entail either mass skepticism or unanimous acceptance, each depending on the sign of the times to determine which is more amiable and attuned to the world as it is at any given fixture. Hiroki Endo's Eden does not do this at all. He tries to capture the dreary aesthetic of post-economic bubble japan circa the late 90s through a bevy of variegated stances, for one there’s the political framework of a slew of governing bodies that reeked of unbounded corruption and bore a tint of manipulative mannerisms that those in charge of running the country at the time never admitted to. similarly, the globalist faction Propatria does this albeit to much broader degrees. now, its discrepancy in relation to GITS' is as follows: GITS has every reason to wax philosophical while not needing to go ham on the technobabble throughout its runtime whereas Eden plays into the conceit that it may be obliged to do the same. this is where things begin to go awry. GITS has few unchanging rules to its structural components so working with those rules all while revelling in self-indulgence is fair, but in the case of Eden you’ve got so many different tenets that often act disproportionately to one another so they clash. a lot. hence creating an induced fear of imbalance, with contradictions and inconsistencies becoming increasingly prevalent as more and more of the world therein starts to unravel. 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.

But then, the story starts to saturate with fight scenes. Deaths no longer matter. Along the way, so do the characters. The MC becomes a guy with a gun fighting because... who knows? No-one explains his motives.Book Ends: The covers for Volume 1 and Volume 18 are of Ennoia and Hannah lying on the flood next to wires and parts of Cherubim. i hope more of the inner workings of this phenomenon is explained later on but for some out-of-touch reason, i keep getting the irreverent hunch that deluding myself into believing i'll get more coverage of that as i make ordinate progress across the manga's run is conceited and asking too much of the author." Younger Than They Look: Sophia looks like a teenager but is really 41. It is mentioned that using cybernetic bodies this way is illegal. Then again, what do you do when you in your late teens place your brain in a body that doesn't age? Thanks to this type of characters, it's evident why the main characters of the first part of the manga didn't have a major characterization and development combined with the time skip and the multiple Diabolus Ex Machina. of them executed appropriately showing the impact of them in the story and the characters involved. The manga can be somewhat crude with the way in which the characters suffer and die from these topics, although that is the grace of it, showing us what are the consequences of these issues without mincing words, something that many works do not dare to do, or even censor part of them. To make an example, the first part of the manga was presented in my country, Peru. They showed how the terrorism made their cocaine traffic, causing a lot of slavery and, also, the massive migration of people from the provinces to the city of Lima, which increased prostitution and drug use here, also, how the goverment (minsteries in this manga), took part of this to obtain much more economical benefits from the current situation.

Hadaka Apron: Elijah, of all people, does this to Miriam. Apparently Helena though it was funny, and Elijah didn't catch the sexual subtext. Then Feng walks in the door, and Elijah goes to get it... He later stops acting stupid and insists on wearing only the apron while he lives with Miriam and Feyman. It's all part of his plan to use Miriam as bait for Propater. One might wonder if he could have found a less lecherous way to get her to leave...Heroic BSOD: When Elijah realizes that Manuela used her own daughter as bait, he despairs. When he realizes said bait was meant to die, he completely loses it and kills Manuela A little later he's hit by the guilt. Marihan's BSOD is longer, but not as prominent. Speaking of the characters, there are hundreds of them, constantly being introduced and killed off (usually with a headshot). If your memory is not that good or you don’t keep notes there is a high probability you will be lost when it comes to who did what, when, and how. Yet, it’s exactly this complexity that makes it feel so elaborate and holistic. Even if you don’t remember half of them by the end of the story you will still feel like you were immersed in a living, breathing world because of its size and scope. In all this is a great work of fiction recommended for anyone seeking something more mature and better planned than the typical teenager with superpowers who saves the world with asspulls and resurrects dead people as easy as changing a shirt. An easy entry to the top 10 manga of all times. The art is great when it comes to weaponry or machinery and fine when it comes to human figures. I know many who consider it to be bland since many of the characters look the same, but nobody can claim it is crude or minimalistic. It’s extremely detailed when it needs to be and fine when it doesn’t.

Porn with Plot: There is a plot that requires an extreme attention to detail and knowledge of quantum physics and familiarity with other works by other authors in different genres (none of which are easy to understand) There is sometimes explicit porn or, in fact, a whole subplot about the face of underground porno industry.None of this hamstrings Endo in advancing the manga's themes. No longer following a larger army, Elijah has become detached from the driving forces of his world. From this vantage point, where economic power is remote and only tiny clues suggest the agenda of political movers, the characters are given a wider angle from which the series' motivations can be viewed. In an encouraging change of pace from what is in a lot of manga, this prolonged physical relationship is consentual, loving, and says something about the characters. One of the participants is rather young, but the presentation reflects an adult experience. That's not to say that there isn't a lot of happy sex manga, just that there is a LOT of sexual manga that is not happy. Ironically, despite being quite explicit, the scenes are surprisingly unobjectionable. Not every female character is the manga in brilliantly well realized. A few are defined by their relationships or roles, but that's true of all characters present. Here, there is rich perspective from both parties. You have to read into the implications to find something offputting about this. There has been a subtext of the manga that Elijah has been bouncing between questionable mother figures. Now that he's taken the expected step of sleeping with one, the Oedipal implications are still a bit disturbing. Loads and Loads of Characters: Ennoah, Hannah, Elijah, Sophia, Kahn, Wycliffe, Kenji, Helena, Katchua, Maya, Mana, Letheia, Arona, Wendy, Fong, Marihan and Mishima, as well as an even larger assortment of minor characters. Even the manga's syncretistic ambitions are going in a different direction than Gnosticism. Rather than reconciling the material and immaterial worlds, it is exploring forgiveness for corrupted courses of action that seemed to be the right thing to do at the time.