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Manga Spotlight: Eden: It's an Endless World Volumes 6-8 Volume 8 to be Released August 1, 2007 Released by Dark Horse Manga

Eden: It's an Endless World has gone in the direction of a Scarface for the contemplative. Especially in its recent street level, drugs and prostitution centric phase, the objectives of the manga's lead are driving him down into a personal descent through the inferno of a violent and elicit world. While creator Hiroki Endo is drawn to severe demonstrations of stark reality, the manga's philosophical side make for a literate work. In place of action heroes or even everymen caught in larger events, the parties involved are educated and introspective enough to recognize the devil's deal made in stepping over bodies to achieve what they believe to be a greater good. The manga scratches the primitive itch for something tooth and nail, while being provocative. Paired with an attempt to construct his themes around Gnostic ideas and the manga's direct and aggressive Endo's to the topics of religion, race, politics and sex, the manga produces the full impact and thoughtfulness that could be hoped for in an intelligent thriller. Eden is one of those smart, splattery manga from the senein Afternoon anthology, like Blame, Blade of the Immortal (Samura provides bonus illustrations for the manga), Parasyte or the works of Shohei Manabe. Each of those creators brings an entirely distinct approach to building something out of visceral shocks and heady ideas. Sex and violence are still cardinal features of Eden, but the shock value of exploitation material is astutely utilized to make thoughtful points in a discussion concerning the cause and implications of that violence. Akin to Katsuhiro Otomo's work on Akira, Hiroki Endo maps the components of manga onto topography that resembles that of European comics, such as the works of Enki Bilal or Alejandro Jodorowsky. Clean lines form crisp illustrations, which in turn suggest an objective view of what is often either a striking image or advancing towards a striking sight. This is the kind of endeavor that can really only be pursued in comics. The medium's flexibility is not just leveraged in what can be done physically to people and landscapes captured on the page, but in how the format can support the scope of a work like this. Compare the movie Akira to its manga version in terms of breadth or look at what needs to be reined in on even a big budget CGI movie. That Endo has been violently exploring his themes for 9 years and 16 volumes says as much about the tradition as what he can fit into an illustrated panel. The plot is staged in a qualified post-apocalyptic world. Ennoea Ballard and Hana Mayor grow up in the research collective called Eden. At the time, it looked like the human species was in danger of dying off from a pandemic disease that caused full body calcification. With a disabled scientist as their dying guardian, the would-be Adam and Eve discussed the metaphysical implications of the species' apparent demise until Eden's isolation was cracked with the arrival of representatives from The Propater, the new global power that immerged from an alliance of western nations and Japan. 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. The action of Eden is motivated by vague, but firmly held notions of an ideal. Unlike a lot of apocalyptic survivors, young Ennoea and Elijah did not grow up in an environment of scarcity. Consequently, basic material needs were not an aspect of their personal development, and neither was greed. They might be honest and bright, but when the honorable impulses and altruistic ideas are put into practice, they become entangled with Freudian conflicts and messy reality. As soon as Elijah enters into the fray, his resources, his connections, and especially and demonstrably, his intelligence lead to success. However, one of the sharpest factors of Eden is that its heroes are ultimately not omniscient. Not only do the consequences take the form of the shady business rules of blow back, Elijah regularly pushes events in the wrong direction. The painful truth in how Endo allows events to proceed is that achieving a victory might also be setting up a tragedy. Even the Eden faithful have been divided on what the series has done lately (though, volume 8 might change that to some degree.) Half of volume five was one of the series side treks into the background of its supporting characters. In this case it was Sophia, whose name is one of the series' less than subtle Gnostic references. Raised by an ineffectual father who attempted to offer her his aesthetic appreciation but with whom she could not connect, a promiscuous mother who would not show her affection and a physically frail grandmother who shared her strong feelings of failure and mistrust, the infanticidal person produced from that environment is as unnerving the focus of a Michael Haneke movie. The latter portion of volume 5 was a mini-climax of sorts. Elijah aided the NOMAD terrorist/mercenaries with hopes of fulfilling his own objectives, rescuing his mother and sister from Propater. The results were one the series' bitter mixes of success and failure. As volume 6 opens, Elijah has been arrested for his participation in an operation that resulted in the deaths of a number of police officers. Separated from NOMAD, a number of supporting characters slip away. While the series previously dedicated substantial space to fleshing out the background of characters that were later sacrificed, presumably the series is not entirely writing off its investment in characters like Sophia, mentally damaged Japanese fighter Kenji and Azerbaijani military man Khan. Still this is an abrupt deviation from the presumed direction of the series, and one that, through volume eight, has already been running almost as long as the previous status quo. The series' first volume jumped from Ennoea to Elijah, and already, at that point, it started requesting faith in its creator. With little devotion to definable formula, a habit of sidetracking, and a lead constantly adapting to changing situations, the series stands out as a distinctly author driven narrative. There is not a predictable quality other than the nature of Endo's approach. Left bleeding on the streets, Elijah is picked up by a prostitute who was previously, unhappily, picked up by Elijah and NOMAD on their operations. Living in a brothel and contending with local drug-lords, the series progression from strike and counter-strike to cops and robbers is a stark one. For one thing, it is a lot more personal. Rather than heated battles where one military force can't afford to offer their target too much deep thought, the players in this new landscape grew up together, know each other, or at least have a sense of who the opponent is. Literally slumming with drug addicts and drug pushers is a seedy turn for Eden, and not one that would be expected from what is ostensively a sci-fi work. The drugs in question are chiefly heroin and cocaine, and even considering some gang muscle with cyborg augmentation, there's nothing that substantively separates its time frame from a modern context. Yet, sci-fi was never the manga's strongest suit. No one who read Eden to this point is going to accuse Endo of being much of a futurist. Occasionally he'll produce a startling idea, such as the pandemic disease. Staples of science fiction, such as AI systems or cyborgs marked by wire veins around their eyes are consistently included, and he'll occasionally get caught up in explaining a concept such as Propater's aeon bio-engineered shock troops. More often, the details that he's intently inspecting are not especially speculative. The manga's Propater controlled nations might be entirely different from the current political state, but Elijah's South America resembles the modern, globalized world. Even accounting for the fact that the North American edition is running a few years behind the original publication, Endo does not seem to be projecting too far in advance when he forwards the notion of multi-ethnic cabals linked by a shared agenda. When characters speak incredulously about the increase of North Africans in South America and the new introduction of mosques, Endo seems a bit behind the times. The further problem with his approach to the discussion is that while Endo might be interested in a newly globalized world, he is not terribly interested in how it is done. He'll include a widget to stage a set piece, such as someone reading a potentially target's reactions by checking the flow of their vascular system through cybornetic eyes. If the reader will just accept something as possible, he will not elaborate on it. In terms of that globalized world, few scenes of enabling technology are included in the manga. The premise of the series relies on information technology, which does not seem to be Endo's forte. The means by which he gets around this are rather cheap. While illustrations feature current technology, such as a pair of characters communicating with bulky head-set ear pieces and microphones, dialog suggests newer inventions exist, as when an investigator states: "it's a microchip. very anachronistic." 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. Especially as the direction for the phase has solidified, it demonstrates itself NOT to be a side step for the series. Examining the noble motivations of antagonists and seeing that they are still more ambiguous than just bad people wanting to do good things has had implications on the trajectories of Elijah and Ennoea. The drama of these small but deadly conflicts has proven to be, not only compelling as they happen, but valuable to the larger series. A step into the dark side and a more compromised standing is such an obvious direction that it would seem to be inevitable. Yet, seeing Elijah's specific reactions and non-reactions is striking enough to cause a considered halt. Elijah started off smart, sensitive, and basically a cipher used to test philosophy against the situations of Eden. What he proves physically and ethically capable of gives the always biting series new fangs. It's one thing for a dangerous veteran to coldly do what needs to be done. It is another for Elijah to outdo the criminals with which he is contending. This phase of the manga opens with the first of a number of instances where Elijah is severely beaten. While the manga had been full of war atrocities and horrific wounds, the drug gang conflicts of this phase shift the character of the violence. In terms of presentation, grand choreography or chaos have given way to a structure in which a victim is approached and either executed or beaten. Particularly when a known character is targeted, and the event has permanent consequences, the horror of what the series has been doing all along is underscored. Endo makes a point to ensure the gore is uncomfortable to look at. Unlike some graphic violence in the manga tradition, he does not cross the wires and make it attractive. He is, however, drawn to creating dis- filled situations: dismemberment, disembowelment ect. Listing out every severe act of violence in a given volume quickly gets ridiculous. Not counting all of the fluids on the pages of a heroin withdrawal sequence, a given volume might start with a bloody drug-deal gone bad, quickly encounter a child tied up and beaten, prominently feature a raid on a compound in which naked men and women are sprayed with bullets and climax with a close range bullet wound to the head and knife through a skull. Considering that this is a far from comprehensive survey of the volume's contents and that the volume in question is not one of the series more shockingly carnage laden ones, you can get a sense of how prolific the bloodletting can be. However, Endo does not build the story around these events. Because it isn't the ends of the manga, the disturbing imagery occurs in service to larger goals, rather than taking over as the focal attraction. Like its bloody fighting, sexual nudity has persistently been part of Eden's carnal world view. Used to speak to the depicted people or situations, such as Sophia's rebelliously promiscuous youth or prostitutes in an army camp, the representation was unerotic, and matter of fact. This phase and volume 8 specifically gets more personal with the subject, and feature chapters worth of explicit sex. Genitals are voided in the manor of Japanese censorship, but there are two characters, naked, in various positions for a good long while. 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. Volume eight features a number of four panel gag strips concerning Elijah's life with the prostitutes. A few have bitter edges or offer insight on very incidental characters. Yet, the title page is the naked rear half of a woman in high heels, carrying a Zaku's axe. If you don't know what a Zaku is, award yourself a gold star. Zaku's are the mass production robots used by the antagonist army in Gundam. It's like sporting a TIE-fighter ornament, or maybe, at best holding a light saber. It screams "nerd." Between the cunnilingus jokes, and jokes about spitting semen into Elijah's face, and bending him over so he shoots semen into his own face, the level of discourse calls the underpinnings into question. Those four panels strips just echo the direction of the sex chapters themselves and seem to pool excess ideas from the main content. In the heat of intercourse, comedy is used to prolong the scene. Eroticism is taken as far as it will go, then someone breaks out a stop-watch. And then, that joking attitude on the part of the author's voice expands to surround the wider relationship once it turned physical. Endo is able to integrate situational humor into the sex without departing from the objective standpoint of the illustration, but in looking at the events around it, he does bend the presentation to find humor in the frustration of falling in love with a prostitute. By staying objective when the moments are funny to the participants and exaggerating the design when the participants wouldn't find the moment amusing, the manga appears to be dipping into this mindset reluctantly. While the work has been unblinking rather than dour, the tone has been serious. By making winking jokes, it strays a beat off tempo and calls into question Endo's ability to make the erotic or relationships interesting. Reviewing this in light of other segments of Eden, as well as his Tanpenshu short stories, it begins to look like Endo's works need a relationship with violence in order to function optimally. A valid criticism of Eden would be that the manga raises provocative questions, and then takes a good, long time before elaborating on the points of discussion. While these themes are waiting to be developed, the work begins to look like a large, volumeless plain. Sophia's story and Kenji's story, and Elijah's ruminations fit beside each other, but do not initially stack and deepen each other. Except, while there is no suggestion that Endo is working from well architected plans, a comprehensive argument does eventually accumulate. It might take volumes and mountains of plot sediment to accomplish, but symbolism and themes are eventually realized. With Elijah's time in a brothel coming to a climax, he's given the opportunity and motivation to act on his own initiative. The results call to mind symbolic foreshadowing that has sat in the background for a long time, relating to what the character was doing when he was introduced. He's alone in the wilderness, except for his AI robot, in a manner similar to his father's time in Eden. Looking for food, he spots an awkward looking bird, and snipes it with his rifle. When he arrives at his prey, he hears the bird's chicks and realizes the mother's actions were a feint to protect her young. At that time, Elijah was alarmed by the consequences of his hasty action, and reeling, began futilely debating with his robot about the kindest way of addressing the orphaned chicks. Though the character has lost plenty of his initial boyishness in the intervening volumes, the foreshadowing of the bird incident has substantial implications now that Elijah has begun willfully pulling triggers again. In comprehending Eden's themes and the author's intentions, the work is as much muddied as it is enhanced by the feints towards Gnostic themes. With names like Sophia, Maya and the aeons, nods towards Gnostic mythology are prevalent throughout the manga. It takes some mental contortions to accomplish, but the plot can be fit into a model of general ideas about the religion. For example, the track record of Elijah's misdirected attempts to act as savior have might be comparable to the Gnostic idea of an impaired creator. The themes of Eden can be theological, but frequently in the moral and philosophical aspects of the subject. This is not Philip K Dick's VALIS, and the cosmology is not especially Gnostic. An early volume prominently featured Elijah's epiphany that human life is a spark of something larger, but Elijah's reactions amount to a dedication to preserving these sparks in their material existence. In that, there is no suggestion that the material world is a flawed illusion. While the series bristles at determinism, what is seen is couched as human patterns, based in psychology and biology. Despite all of the ugliness witnessed through Elijah's eyes, there is no indication that Eden is pushing toward a point in which this character renounces the world. Without being outright pessimistic, Eden posits that there is no salvation for Elijah's sparks. 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. When Eden does consider the notion of an ideal, it concerns the disparity between what people like Elijah hope to achieve and what they actually accomplish. The gap is not a fundamental quality of reality itself. Contrary to the fundamental principles of Gnosticism, there is no core, spiritual essence. What is done by the characters and the consequences for those actions are the paramount gauge for evaluating the events of Eden. This existential emphasis is concerned with works and plainly materialistic. The ideas of religion and sci-fi can be complimentary, but when the work has naturalist tendencies like Eden, concepts like those of Gnosticism can, at best, function as metaphors. Though the manga does not adhere to Gnosticism, invoking the cosmology functions more as a provocation than a wholesale misstep. Eden reacts well to inspection. If Neon Genesis Evangelion famously deflates when you start chasing its religious symbolism, when you start looking for the parallels in Eden, you might not find Gnosticism, but you will discovers that Eden bolsters its ideas well and the whole is in fact greater than the sum of its parts. Endo produces great moments in which the perspectives of the character and the author intersect. These times of clarity accomplish more than just forwarding truisms. Evaluating them in light of the expanse of the manga reveals a rather comprehensive sense of Endo's philosophy. One of these moments occurs in volume six as Elijah is revealing the bits and pieces of his older sister's story. Unlike other flashbacks in the manga, this was a second person narrative. At the time, he is talking to the precocious young daughter of a drug addict working at the brothel. This girl knows that her mother sold her older brother to feed the addiction, but she has some resigned comfort in this world as she understands it. Cheerfully she informs Elijah that when she's older, she'll be a prostitute, but she'll never use drugs. Now that he has assumed the role of a man who is willing to shape events, Elijah takes it upon himself to ensure that the girl's mother obtains help for her addiction and reveals to the girl that his sister was a drug addict who had been admitted into a treatment clinic. This girl is wise to the world, but asks Elijah "Your family's rich, huh? And you've got a mother AND a father/ How come your sister used drugs?" Elijah's considered response is one of the Elijah meets Endo moments that guide the series, and offer directions for locating its substance: "It is same reason as everyone I guess. When we're little, we have hopes and dreams, and the world is simple... but as you get older it gets more confusing until you can't understand the world or its people any more." As Elijah's learns that he can't just extricate himself from the complex adult world that he's joined, that sentiment should prove to be an interesting point of departure. Some create needs to go to translator Kumar Sivasubramanian. Not every translator in the field can capture either the eloquence or the meter and characterization in the dialog as well as he can. In other hands, the series probably not not be nearly as effecting. A bit of blogging a tornado was kicked off when MangaCast noted that Dark Horse's Anime Expo panel indicated that Eden was, as they say in TV "on the bubble." Dark Horse clarified, that the series could use some attention, but it was not as close to the verge of cancellation as many interpreted from the Anime Expo comments. Still, the suggestion sparked a storm of comments that ranged from the rebuttal that female audiences hold the demonstrable buying power in the North American manga market (which certainly appears to be the case) to the insistence that all older audience comics struggle in North America. While female buyers have made the difference in North American manga sales, and of the majority new titles and companies joining the market have been from female oriented genres (shoujo or yaoi/boys love), older age titles for either gender have NOT done well. Josei, the female genre that is equivalent to seinen, for woman in their late teens/early twenties, has not taken off in North America. TOKYOPOP for example made it through eleven volumes of Moyoco Anno's blisteringly cynical Happy Mania and Yayoi Ogawa's Tramps Like Us, but the dedicated "After Hours" line never materialized. Considering the competition for buyers, the hurtle to older audience works, looks to be more pronounced for male targeted ones. With what is judged to be an especially lucrative demographic, that audience is given an abundance of options. For a consumer in their late teens/early twenties that is probably working, the buyer has some degree of financial freedom. A younger reader might have a disposable $10 to buy Naruto, but an older one might have the extra money needed to buy the latest XBox 360 game. And, with that freedom comes complacency. Support campaigns and buzz is less likely to come when the consumer can just move on to the next product, even if that project comes from another medium. These pressures are felt in what is available in the North American manga market. While fight manga for younger audiences have been best sellers brilliantly violent series for older audiences either didn't take off (Baki the Grappler or Tetsuya Saruwatari's Tough) or never made it over (Shama). Crazy stuff like the original manga for Rikki-Oh or Mad Bull have a short chance to make it to the US when Crying Freeman and Golgo 13 don't exactly attract huge amounts of notice. Any fan of campy martial arts would enjoy Fist of the Blue Sky: a pulpy epic set in 1930's Shanghai, but with the demise of the Raijin Comics, few notices the halt of its English language publication. While Eden is not feel good, or dumb excitement, it was a mass market title in Japan. Afternoon is not a niche or outsider periodical the way something like Garo might be. Then again, Battlestar Gallactica is not exactly an underground title either. Given that manga like Baki or Tough have struggled, the older-male audience seems to be the limiting factor, rather than that the series is intellectually as well as viscerally uncomfortable and makes it a point to create situations that confront the reader. Yet, it is an opportunity to demonstrate interest in action media with substance. If you want to support brilliantly shameless carnage, pick up a copy of Dark Horse's release of Reiko The Zombie Shop. If you want to show that consumers don't just gripe about the lack of intelligent action stories, pick up Eden. Beyond the topic of manga sales, there is an unanswered question of whether buyers of genre media or video games will support work that is not a morale boost. Look at the conversation around God of War creator David Jaffe's aborted game Heartland, which was to feature morally ambiguous choices in a war between the United State and China. In the context of manga, Eden is a rare, male-oriented, intelligent, older ages title, and that is going to be an even smaller niche if titles like it are not successful. In the larger arena of popular media, it is the kind of work that everyone says they want to see more of, but which would either not be a approved of by a network/studio exec, or slide past audiences unnoticed.