A Manga of Endless Quality
by Breeze Grigas
We all know manga, or at least we have an idea in our heads about it. We think cartoonish stuff about robots and magical girls, or ostentatiously dressed ninjas in unending action sagas, generally aimed at the younger teenage crowd. Then there are the mature works for the older folks with some extra violence, sharper art, and more intriguing, solid writing like Berserk, Hellsing, and Trigun, a personal favorite. Then there’s the other kind of manga: the kind that’s mature in a different way. The one that tells a story that leaves a lasting impact, and tackles concepts and types of characters that others do not.
Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! is one such manga, though despite critical acclaim and universally positive reviews, it’s never been widely noticed, for some reason. Personally, I only found out about the existence of this ten-year-long, eighteen-volume behemoth through a website-generated recommendation. It was described as a “postapocalyptic cyberpunk geopolitical thriller,” and the cover for volume 1 was really nice, so I bought the first batch of books, thinking, “Why not?”
Well, now I’m up to date on Dark Horse’s thirteen published volumes and I can say Eden is definitely one of the best series I’ve ever read, with art that’s almost mechanical in how consistently detailed it is. It’s the story of a truly “endless world,” showing that even after a virus wipes out 15 percent of humanity, life still carries on in all the beautiful, sad, and brutal ways it did before. Spanning across dozens of characters and subplots, this manga gives you a very complete and real perspective on its setting, cast, and goings-on. While gang violence erupts in South America, Uyghur terrorists attack China in the name of independence. While a virus starts turning millions of people into crystalline husks, a drug lord’s son lives in a brothel, trying to grow up in the best way he can.
That’s not to say that Eden is dry, a constant downer, or incredibly heavy all the time. There are many bouts of awesome choreographed action, explicit romance, and even spurts of comedy. There are cyborgs with blades and guns built into their arms, big robots, mental battles between hackers, car chases, nuclear explosions, and all sorts of other things you’d find in shows like Ghost in the Shell and 24 too. However, Eden makes sure to stay personal and focused, and never gets caught up in too much sci-fi jargon, shock value, or over-the-top shenanigans.
I think Eden’s strongest and most defining feature overall is the way it presents itself. It shows such a wide scope of events, characters, and emotions in a way that goes against what I’ve become comfortable with in storytelling. To put it plainly, this manga’s presentation is “raw.” Good and bad things happen constantlyintermingled with each other. The “heroes” do “bad” things at points, and the characters you would normally identify as “evil” are usually just people like the rest of us. These people are born, live, and die, making the decisions they see as best while they’re still breathing, and that doesn’t always lead to what they may or may not deserve.
A particularly powerful scene for me was when the teenage main character, Elijah, kills the two loved ones of a brutal, wanted drug lord before his eyes as the three are about to flee the country, leading the man to commit suicide. Earlier, the man had attempted to sell his daughter, and that led to the girl’s avoidable death. The man wanted to escape the violent place he grew up in with his brother and girlfriend, and Elijah wanted justice for his daughter, who’d needlessly suffered. Who was right? How will Elijah change from there on? Situations like this are what make Eden’s story and characters so compelling.
It’s a series that presents the harsh, mundane, and sentimental with equal weight, and it’s up to the reader to come to their own understanding and opinion of what’s transpiring. These similarities to real life are what make it so easy to get emotionally invested in these characters and plotlines, while at the same time potentially being made dejected by them.
I can’t recommend Eden: It’s an Endless World! enough. It’s something legitimately special, a kind of story you find very rarely, especially in this medium. Parts of this manga might upset you, and it may do bad things to those with weak hearts, but the overall experience is as rewarding as fiction gets.
Volume 14 won’t be out for a little while, so now’s a good time to start at volume 1!