Mother Keeper

This manga is set in a post nuclear apocalyptic society centered around the city of Eden. Inside Eden life is still pretty good, but outside is a hellscape, and Eden simply does not have room for everyone. Those in the outside form a resistance with the goal of taking over Eden. This manga specifically follows a resistance fighter named Ricalna who is captured by Eden forces, and then forcefully turned into a Mother Keeper, a cyborg that is programmed to protect Eden’s core. Ricalna is initially hesitant to help the people of Eden in any way and does his best to fight against his programming,but he’s kind hearted and thus when innocents are threatened by the resistance, he can’t help but try to protect them. The first two thirds of the manga aren’t particularly original, even considering that this manga originally ran from 2005 to 2014. However, the execution is decent enough. The moral conflict is cliche, but the execution is solid. Ricalna’s character is a pretty typical hero, but he fits well into the broader story and is likable. The rest of the main cast aren’t that deep but are interesting enough, and Ricalna learning more about them and getting closer to them is handled well. But how the antagonists are handled is overtly messy, in that it tries to portray them as morally ambiguous and at least somewhat worthy of sympathy despite them being absolutely awful people. I mean, once you show a character killing kids for fun or kidnapping and selling random people purely for profit, it’s pretty hard to balance that and this manga got nowhere close. The art overall is only decent, though it works well for the action which came out great. The problem with this manga is that the final third is a complete mess. It muddles the moral conflict in ways that make it overtly convoluted and much less interesting. And in the end, it also didn’t really feel like the manga had anything much to say or any sort of message it was trying to convey. The big twist related to characters is really predictable and not that interesting. The twists related to world building aren’t that predictable and are pretty interesting, but they’re conveyed through rushed infodumps and thus don’t land well. The writing also treats the cast terribly, to the point it completely stomps over any investment the reader has in them. The ending is also really abrupt and completely unsatisfying. tl;dr: An unoriginal manga that’s mostly pretty good, except for the horrendous final stretch that ruins it.