After the tense political landscape of the previous book, volume 10 comes around to punctuate the themes that nine brought up: all fights come with sacrifice and no one is ever truly safe.
Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Hiro
Translated by:Kumar Sivasubramanian
Adapted by:N
What They Say
By 2112, the Closure Virus has already wiped out about one-third of the world's population, but it mutates again to infect not only people and living creatures - but inorganic matter as well. Dubbed the "Disclosure Virus," this new threat overruns several major cities, creating huge crystalline shapes with the matter it absorbs. With the world's economy also crumbling, the additional pressures send dominant political forces into desperate tailspins.
Nomad sends agents to find Marihan, a minority leader who now holds important information about a terrorist network. Kenji is searching for her, too, feeling personally responsible for her safety - and running headlong into danger.
In Peru, Elijah is now several years older, and he gets involved in yet another Propater fiasco. With his sister still captured, Propater gives him one more reason to seek bloody vengeance when an old friend is murdered.
The Review
Volume 10 begins exactly where volume nine left off, with Kenji on the phone learning about Marihan's escape. Marihan soon gets in touch with Kenji, who informs him that an act of terrorism is about to be committed on the Han Chinese and she is going to try and stop it. Kenji and the Nomad agents go to find both Marihan and a bomb and they find that the only way to make a difference is to put everything on the line.
The first two chapters round off the previous storyline, but they are immediately followed by a four year jump to 2112. A lot of things have changed in those four years: the mutation of the closure virus that has only briefly been seen has turned wide-spread and is taking over whole cities. Elijah and Helena are no longer together and Hannah is shown as having made improvement, but still paralyzed and brain damaged. A new story starts to unfold when some of Elijah's old friends are killed, Propater starts to move further into South America, and the Disclosure virus proves to be more than just a virus.
Endo is the kind of author that doesn't like for his audience to get too complacent while reading his stories. So far in Eden there have been numerous, dramatic shifts in focus which, because they can be a little disorienting at first, force the reader to pay very close attention to the minutiae of each situation as it is being set up. This volume has yet another shift in focus with the four year jump, though as far as shifts in focus go, this one isn't all that disorienting. Probably because, as a reader, you've learned to go with the flow at this point in the story.
After ten volumes of consistently good, consistently changing volumes, it's hard to say what should be mentioned in review. This is yet another great volume that changes things up and goes in directions that you would never expect; things feel old and things feel new. Sometimes you wonder where the main story is, and sometimes you don't care because this new story line is just gripping. That's a very ethereal explanation, perhaps just weird, but sometimes that's just the way that Eden reads. There aren't many other manga out there that will introduce half a dozen new characters, kill off a few loved ones, jump a few years in the future, and wander between four or more story story lines all in one volume. And all the while, it can still easily be part of the grand plot while not really focusing on any one particular element thoroughly. I don't want to overstate this and make it seem as if nothing has ever done something like this before, but it's not particularly easy and is seldom done so well. This volume is a menagerie: beautiful and exotic, strange and curious. It gives you the impression that something huge is around the corner, that all of these pieces are for something bigger that is still a ways away. It leaves you looking forward to some unknown end, but also makes you desperate to know what happens next to a character or plot point until halfway through the book. That's just plain good writing.
Eden is a AAA title. It's deadly serious and effortlessly defies convention as if batting away a fly. This volume, like all the ones before it and surely like all those after, is uniquely different and rewarding. Without a doubt, there is no other manga like Eden.
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