One Down: Manga Impressions

Image from http://www.mangaupdates.com

Reading manga is a tricky business.  After all, it requires time and dedication that even I don’t have to slog through 68 volumes (wow!) of One Piece.  So, when starting a new manga, I pick up the “Volume 1” from the store, read it, and based on my first-look impressions I mentally rank it relative to other manga on my “To Read” list.  Oh, and this is actually pretty much spoiler-free.

The latest manga which I gobbled up was “Eden: It’s an Endless World!” by Endo, Hiroki.  First of all, this was a Volume 1 that I picked up through the graces of the remainder of a Barnes and Noble gift card.  I was late for something extremely important (that I can’t remember now, so we know it had to have been important) and I picked up the book with the nicest cover art.  I like to give the inside of the volume a look usually, but hey, some randomness isn’t bad for me.  Because of this randomness, I got this twisted little gem of a manga to read.  There are 18 volumes in this completed work, which started in 1997 and ended in 2008.  A 10 year run is impressive for any manga artist, but it often mucks up a series’ continuity, or in other words, it makes it tempting for publishers and authors to stretch a story, messing with the original intention of the work.  However, a nice feature of Volume 1 reviews is that I don’t have to worry about that nonsense, because in Volume 1’s mangaka are still busy creating a world or telling a story, and can’t be bothered to even think about filler.

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Picking up the Eden Volume 1, the first thing a reader flipping through would notice is the detail and business in Endo’s art.  This is offset in part by very clear paneling and scene framing, which is so evenly divided that it looks more American than any manga I’ve read before.  The author meticulously adds individual leaves and fronds to plants, cracks in concrete, segmentation and perspective in architecture, and individual wires and cogs for machinery.  The detail lends to a realistic style that generates a western feel to the whole work.  There remains a Japanese-feeling fascination with mechs, but the questions the manga has posed so far about the role of AI and robots in its world are very existential, dark questions you often find in western media.  However, you could easily draw parallels between this manga and the Japanese work Ghost in the Shell, which I would argue directly influenced Endo’s work, due to the timing of the series’ creation and the themes.

I don’t want to treat the plot at length here, as the construction of the first volume would make that super spoiler-y.  Not only that, but the plot construction doesn’t leave the volume much time to establish its overall plot early on.  What I will say is that I love the setting and the characters, and I hate the plot.  My displeasure stems from a two really stupid narrative tricks that the author uses.  One is flashbacks, but they’re okay, I guess, because the characters are so interesting.  The other is often found in manga due to how they are usually written as pilot chapters that get continued or discontinued after evaluating their success.  However, this tends to invalidate early chapters, and I almost always wish that the author would rewrite the early chapters to give the work a seamless continuity without ridiculous jumps in the story.  However, now that the first volume is done, as long as the author hasn’t written those in throughout the story, it seems like an exciting and promising character/survival-driven plot.

The manga seems preoccupied with the theme of corruption.  The virus that supposedly wiped out all the humans on Earth corrupts the body and makes it turn into a literal shell of its former self.  Every primary character, some afflicted by this corruption virus, tend to experience a corruption of their ideals, or are tempted to stray from their status quo and morals.  Children are corrupted, the land is corrupted, bureaucracies are corrupted, and AIs remain alarmingly uncorrupted.  Later in the volume, it becomes clear that even the setting is the corrupted shell of the turn-of-the-century modern world.  In one sequence, the author explicitly mocks fashion advertising, and allows the reader to decide what they think that juxtaposition means to the characters and to our contemporary, real lives.  What I like about the manga’s treatment of these themes so far is its thorough questions about whether humanity, nature, or artificial constructions are the pure substance or the corrupting force, or if either truly exists.  What

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I mentioned how great the cover is, earlier.  Many covers don’t have much to do with the themes of the work inside, and some truly great covers are among them.  However, it tickles me when a cover is sharply designed, has bold and creative coloring, and showcases its characters in a light relevant to the story.  Generally, I look for a cover to be attention grabbing and show care and attention by the artist.  All of the covers of -Hitogatana- tankobon are perfect examples of what I love in a cover, Onigunsou’s a cover art genius. 

The Eden cover is quite brilliant in its own right.  The characters laying in opposite poses forces you to turn the cover around to really give it a good look, but the scene is framed in a circular manner, so it never feels confusing to rotate as you please.  It shows the two initial characters in a sort of somber, reflective rest, with a Ghost in the Shell-esque AI head in the center of a mess of wires.  The orange “EDEN” in the center is really striking, which is a great hook, essential for a cover that reflects its somber contents.  The backdrop is primarily cool grays and light blues, even the characters clothes and some of the wires are blue.  That makes the golden tones of the oranges and even the characters’ skin are standout against the blues and muted accent colors.

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So, after waxing way-too-wordy about that gorgeous cover, I’d say this manga is worth buying the first volume of to determine how you feel about it.  I’m going to keep collecting this series, and while I know not everyone will feel the same way, I think all manga readers should give the first volume a good hard read.

Skyler is a periodical writer for the RedShirt Crew blog. He is well versed in sci-fi and fantasy and munches through manga with truly alarming efficacy. This one time, one of my friends said he saw him punch out a wild boar. True story. You can find his work here on the blog every Thursday.