Manga Review: Eden: It’s An Endless World, Vols. 1-7

Eden: It’s An Endless World, Vols. 1-7

By Hiroki Endo
Published by Dark Horse
Rating: Mature

Eden: It’s An Endless World begins, appropriately enough, with a retelling of the Old Testament’s best-known story. Ennoea and Hana, our Adam and Eve surrogates, live in the overgrown ruins of an isolated city. They believe they are the sole survivors of a pandemic that has swept the globe. (Think scleroderma on steroids, and you have a pretty good idea of what this petrifying disease does to its victims.) With the sudden arrival of a serpent, er, military forces, their idyll is shattered; Ennoea and Hana are forced to abandon their paradise for a nasty, brutish world still reeling from the aftermath of the plague.

The story then leaps forward twenty years to focus on Ennoea and Hana’s son, Elijah. Elijah is desperately searching for his mother and sister, who have been kidnapped by Propater, a mysterious, supranational alliance that controls the northern hemisphere. As he tracks his family, Elijah falls in with a motley crew of anti-Propater guerillas (NOMAD). After a four-volume story arc exploring the Propater-NOMAD conflict, we abandon the Propater frontlines for a back-alley tour of South America’s underworld, where Elijah’s father has established himself as a worthy successor to Pablo Escobar. We’re introduced to a new set of characters—pushers, pimps, prostitutes—and a new conflict—this time between rival drug cartels—with Elijah once again in the middle of the maelstrom.

As you might guess from the plot summary, Eden reads like something cooked up by Michael Crichton, Michael Mann, and Kofi Anan after a wild night of drinking. You can almost imagine the conversation that inspired it:

Crichton: What if I wrote a book about a nasty disease that wiped out 15% of the world’s population?

Mann: Sounds cool, dude. I think that evil South American cartels would definitely try to exploit the situation for their benefit, don’t you? Maybe you should include feuding drug lords in your book—you know, for a little atmosphere?

Anan: And don’t forget the social commentary, Mike. I’d add a subplot about an evil, paramilitary force that battles the U.N., N.A.T.O., and the World Health Organization for global supremacy. Oh, and subplots about Islamic rebels in Afghanistan and oppressed indigenous people in Peru.

Crichton: Oooo… I like it! Very topical. We can call the territory controlled by your evil paramilitary force “Gnostia” and all other areas “Agnostia.” Pretty clever, huh? Now all we need are some evil cyborgs and genetically engineered monsters that are practically immortal.

If this sounds like an unholy stew of religious imagery and Hobbesian allegory, it is. But Endo is a terrific artist with a knack for creating memorable characters, two skills that offset Eden’s third act detour into Noble Drug Lord Cliche. Endo’s clean lines and chaste toning yield some beautiful panels, especially in the first volume of the series. His action scenes, too, are expertly rendered. They’re simultaneously thrilling and grotesque, vividly capturing the dynamism and brutality of hand-to-hand combat. More importantly, Endo makes us care about the outcome of these battles by creating characters that the reader… well, I won’t say “identifies with” in the sense that these characters inspire empathy. They don’t. Most are violent, misanthropic, and flawed, with little regard for others. Yet their fierce determination to survive and their desire to find dignity in dehumanizing circumstances make them compelling and believable, even when Endo’s narrative is not.

Several fans have surfaced on message boards to assure frustrated readers that Endo “stops trying to remake City of God“ in future volumes. I certainly hope so, as I felt volumes six and seven just weren’t of the same caliber as the first five. Here’s hoping that Endo hops off Bus 174 soon and gets back on track with his sci-fi parable.