Cage of Eden

Cage of Eden is something you’d get by tossing Lost, Jurassic Park, and Battle Royale into a cheap blender, with heaps of fanservice seasoning on top of it. Reading the manga is kind of similar to devouring greasy junk food; instantly gratifying, but insubstantial and probably left you mostly unfulfilled by the end. That last bit is particularly significant. The premise is an instant sell for lovers of roller-coaster suspense story: an airplane carrying a high-school class crash landed on a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere. But, that's not all: before long, the main protagonist has to round up his missing friends,encounter the island's less than friendly inhabitants in the form of various grotesque beast creatures, deal with various people's psychological breakdowns, and figure out the big mystery behind the exact circumstances of their predicament. It's an inelegant mish-mash of the franchises I've mentioned before, while the fanservice (both the violent and lewd nature) could get hilariously over the top: nothing depicted the manga's tone better than the panel where a big wolf thingy devours someone's crippled body, while on the foreground there's a huge pantyshot of a terrified girl.And yet, I'd be lying if I say Cage of Eden isn't an engrossing read. The psychological/emotional level is mostly skin-deep, but the main cast of characters is likable enough to root for, and Yoshinobu Yamada really excels in stringing a series of cliffhangers one after another and a pile of intriguing mysteries on top of each other... This, unfortunately, brings us to by far the Cage of Eden's biggest flaw. Normally, I don't like spoiling or even hinting a mystery/suspense series too much, but in this case it felt absolutely imperative for a potential reader to know what they're getting into. So, here goes: Cage of Eden's ending is wildly unsatisfying, left a lot of plot threads unresolved, answered the central mystery in a baffling manner, and in general displayed a shocking lack of long-term planning.Some series could get away or even enhanced by an open and ambiguous ending, but something like CoE really has no business playing "the journey mattered more than the destination" card. A lack of proper resolution is a death knell to a series so reliant on clifhangers, and as it is, most readers would soldier through 21-volume worth of constant build-ups and excessive fanservice hoping for a big pay-off that doesn't exist. A bit of a shame, really. Cage of Eden is trashy as hell, but most of the times it's a fun and exciting kind of trashy. It deserves a better closing, at the very least, and I could only wonder if perhaps too much energy is spent on drawing all the boobs instead of, you know, making a plot outline.

I started reading Eden no Ori, or Cage of Eden 4 years ago. My first impression of this manga is that of mystery, excitement, and shounen-ness. I remember I was fascinated by discoveries that the main characters had, and was able to enjoy the story to its fullest. Of course, that was when this manga only have 40 chapters and during a period when I was fond of an overabundance of fan-service. 4 years later, I have become a much more mature person, one that is able to critically judge the merits and weaknesses of a story. I again picked up Eden no Ori, finishing itin one swoop. I hope I can write a somewhat objective review on this title. Here goes. Eden no Ori is a shounen manga that tires to encompass too many genres and themes in its story. I don't want to spoil the story, so I want go into any details. Suffice to say that it dabbles in Action, Adventure, Mystery, Romance, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Psychological, and Ecchi categories. Now, was it successful? The answer is maybe, depending on how seriously readers want to take it. Art The art is by far the best thing about this manga. It is impeccable. The character designs was excellent, with much varieties. The background was drawn beautifully in a consistent manner. The only drawback that I would contribute to this section is not the art itself, but the amount of fan-service it has. Normally, I wouldn't mind an appropriate bit of "healthy" fan-service, but it is clearly too much in this manga. It is getting to a point that it distracts the readers from the main plot. Thus, I have decided to take the liberty of docking two points from the otherwise perfect score. 8/10 Story In a sci-fi, adventure story with so little based on our real society, it is difficult to write a solid story without any plot holes, if not impossible. Thus, the goal is to create a story that involves as little illogical elements as possible (in the context of the story). In this respect, Eden no Ori did not achieve a convincing success, neither did it fail. I could identify several gaping plot holes, and/or clues that were not followed up on in the story, not to mention the numerous small unreasonable parts of story development. However, Eden no Ori does not have a bad script by any means. I was able to enjoy the richly creative story till the conclusion, with my critical thinking organs half turned-on. This opinion is strongly supported by the satisfying ending. Even though it does not achieve the mind-blowing conclusion that some manga did, neither did it seem unbelievably stupid, like so many more other manga. In the end, if you aren't nick-picky about minuscule details in Eden no Ori, you would find yourself a overall satisfying story. 7.5/10 Character In terms of shounen male lead, Akira Sengoku is an interesting character who is resourceful, genuinely compassionate, charismatic in his own way, and not endowed with an overpowered ability that is so typical of shounen. Likewise, many other members of MC's entourage show interesting characteristics that feel very refreshing to the readers. For example, we have Mariya the genius nerd, Miina the cute little kid, and Yarai the badass fighter. On the negative side, while some members of the huge female cast are actually useful (to the story as well as to the team), other members are simply there to be fan-service for the readers. I know that I have already docked the point for fan-service, but I will do it again here because it is such a big problem in this manga. Perhaps ultimately, us readers are to be blamed for our idiosyncratic taste in panty shots and G-cup boobs. After all, mangaka has to draw what the readers demand in order to keep up the sales of their manga. 8.5/10 Enjoyment Enjoyable enough that I was able to read from chapter 100 to 185 once I have decided to read it again. It is richly imaginative, vividly sketched out, and a story that does not disappoint the readers in a major way. 8/10 Overall For fans of adventure-shounen and/or mystery-adventure and/or psychological-mystery-action manga, I would highly recommend it. 8/10

This Manga had a lot of promise to it right from the start,The thing that gets you hooked on this Manga is the mystery behind the island, Everything thing in this show just makes you ask WHY? The use of characters on this Manga was really fantastic, It had every type of loveable guy to every-type of hated character. The only thing that let this manga down was the ending as it was asked to finished the show in 3 chapters , when there were more than a handful of questions not answered, the author tried his best but did not get to all lose ends leavingthis manga with a questionable ending , hopefully one day this manga will get the justice is desired. **** Update almost 10 years after this review ... Make an anime ! Change the ending *****

I really don't like when people are writing reviews by the truckload after only reading the first dozen or so chapters of the manga. And considering the age (and the scores) of the reviews currently present on the site, all of them seems to be from the time when only the first half of the manga was available. That explains all the 9s and 10s. Heck, I would've give it a 9 or 10 around the 30th or 40th chapter. But after the strong start the quality only goes down until the end, which is quite honestly the worst trainwreck of an ending I've seenin a long while. So, let's get started. Story - 3 (Poor) The set up is good. A bunch of high-schoolers stranded up on a strange, mysterious and quite hostile island. Add together the first season of Lost and the Lord of Flies and you get the early chapters of Eden no Ori. Awesome? Yes. Promising? Yes. The problem is, that the manga never really fulfils this promise. In the early chapters there's no real story to speak of: our heroes move from one place to another trying to survive, while constantly expanding the settings and the characters. However, this becomes kind of stale soon enough: in every arc, the manga introduces a bunch of characters, some good guys and a greater number of douches (yes, it's that easy to distinguish). By the end of the arc, the good guys usually survive and join up with the protagonist team (and becoming insignificant almost instantly), while the baddies get eaten by something nasty. Rinse and repeat for around a hundred chapters. There are a few surprises along the way, but what keeps you reading is the number of mysteries piling up. You want answers. You want explanations and conclusion for the also increasing number of plot-threads. And this is why I gave such a low score: you'll get NONE of these. The explanations come in a form of science, that does not work that way. Some plot-threads get completely forgotten (Hades for one). And as for conclusion, the last few chapters were supposed to be the big reveal, putting everything to place and explaining all the mysteries. Supposed is the keyword here: they explain nothing. They just add to the number of question marks. The entire conclusion is illogical, rushed and nonsensical in general. I could rage on for pages why and how, but I don't want to give away any specific spoilers, so I refrain from doing so. Now add complete asspull plotwists, cardboard cut-out, cartoonishly evil bad-guys, ridiculous monsters, science defying the laws of nature, abundant fan-service and the fact that all of this is played 100% straight; so you are supposed to take everything here seriously, when some parts would be just too stupid even for a parody, and you get the reason behind the score given for this segment. Art - 8 (Very Good) Ok, I admit that this is not my field of expertise. I'm a writer, but I couldn't draw anything to save my life. So maybe I go too easy on the manga in this aspect, but I loved the art. The ancient mammals really came through as fearsome animals. The surroundings are also really atmospheric, sometimes downright eerie. My only serious complaint would be that while the main characters are well-drawn, some of the sidecast (especially the guys who are only around for one arc) are not so, and sometimes I got them mixed up. But with this huge cast, that's forgiveable I guess. Charactrer(s) - 4 (Decent) Decent, although barely. The characters are flat and never really get any development. They're go through this typical shounen change: shit happens, and they are suddenly either become complete jerks, or heroes. Now, in the first part, this isn't too much of a problem, since it's somewhat compensated by the number of characters getting introduced constantly. However around the time when the survival part ends and the evil doc comes into the picture, the constant flow of new charactes stop and the manga focuses on the already existing team. And this is where it becomes painfully obvious, that beyond the little background info shared in their own arcs, there's nothing else going for any of the characters. The relationship between them is just as stale, as the characters themselves. Take the "romance" between the protagonist and his main love interest. Both of them are donkans. Yay. At one point, while protecting Rion's (supposedly) unconscious body, Akira literally shouted this in one of the antagonists' face: "This is my woman! Got a problem with that?!" And even this didn't pushed their relationship even an inch forward. No comment. Enjoyment: 5 (Mediocre) Well, on an average at least. The survival part is friggin' awesome, I loved every chapter of it. After that, as the story was becoming more and more idiotic and I lost interest. In the last few chapters the only "enjoyment" I got was awkwardly laughing between facepalms. So starts out as 10, ends as 1, thus on average 5. Overall: 6 (Overall) It's a real shame what has this manga become in the end. When it started it had some much potential, showed so much promise. Hell, it easily could have been a timeless classic. But as time and chapters passed by, it descended lower and lower in the abyss of asspull and bad writing. I could still kinda-sorta recommend it as long as you don't have any expectations. It's awesome in the beginning and even later it's still kind of fun for a while.