Cage of Eden (Rank 2)

Publisher: Kodansha

Volumes: 21/21 (Complete), In Print

Shounen

Genre: Survival Horror, Ecchi, Scifi

Summary: Have you ever wished your life would change? Akira Sengoku feels overshadowed by his childhood friend, Rion Akagami, who is top at gymnastics and one of the hottest girls in his school. And his best friend Kohei Arita is an ace volleyball player, and tall and good looking. Meanwhile Akira is not particularly good at anything. All of them, plus his entire grade from school are returning from a school trip to Guam on an airplane, when suddenly disaster strikes and the plane crash-lands on a jungle island. Only they soon discover it’s no ordinary island, as they are attacked by creatures that should be extinct! What’s more, the island isn’t on any map! Akira was never good at anything before, but he’s brave, quick thinking and good at winning the trust of others. Is now finally his chance to shine? And what’s up with this crazy island?

Plot Overview: As the story starts, Akira wakes up in the jungle and finds himself separated from the others, but soon meets up with class nerd Mariya and flight attendant Ms. Ohmori. They search for the plane crash site only to find out that although the plane landed safely, the place is deserted and the captain of the plane was murdered. They meet with Rion, Akira’s childhood friend who tells them what happened and how everything descended into chaos and everyone left in groups.

They stay at the crash site for the night for shelter, but giant anteater-like creatures descend on the plane and try to get inside. Akira lights the plane on fire to scare the creatures away and rescue the others. With the plane ruined, they are forced to look for a new safe place for shelter, while they also look for other survivors and try and convince them to work together while fending  off attacks from various other creatures.

Volumes 2-10: Initially the story seems like it’s heading towards a bloodbath as a number of survivors from the crash have gone crazy and are out to show the others that the only rule of survival on the island is the survival of the fittest. And meanwhile, they fend off attacks with varying success from various deadly creatures. But Akira and his group believe that their best chances of survival lie in working together and combining their strengths and they try to convince the others they meet to join them. 

Volume 10-20, the story takes a notable shift as they meet another like minded group while checking out a mysterious man-made structure of some kind in the center of the island. From that point on they have gathered enough people to form a small village, and they organize themselves into making a safe settlement to live in. While they create further expeditions to investigate the other man-made structures on the island, things climax to a big showdown between their group and a stronger group led by a ruthless man who rules through fear and paranoia.

Volume 21: Ending

Review: Overall I thought Cage of Eden had some great strong points, but also a number of parts where the story fell short, too. On the plus side, I thought it was really cool to see a survival horror series where they are trying to survive pitted against various extinct animals other than dinosaurs. Don’t misunderstand me, Dinosaurs are cool and I’ll still watch/read those anytime. But while there are literally dozens of stories out there with man vs. dinosaurs, other extinct animals get curiously neglected in fiction. I always thought it was strange, because there are literally tons of other various bizarre creatures in our fossil records and many of them were just as fearsome and dangerous as Dinosaurs. Anyway some of the extinct animals featured in the manga were really fascinating and terrifying, especially that freaky long-armed bear is going to haunt my dreams. 

As an out of civilization survival horror story goes, it’s surprisingly wholesome. There are many times the series seems to be veering towards murder sprees, but thankfully most of them don’t come to pass. The majority of the deaths actually happen due to the attacks by the extinct animals and the harsh environment and not so much due to murder. As well, the series also has major themes about the virtues of good leadership, teamwork, friendship, and love and overall it isn’t as cynical as I expected from the beginning.

That being said, I was also disappointed how overall the characterization of all of the characters, even the main characters, are all fairly shallow. A lot of the characters can have their personalities summed up into something simple, like computer nerd, delinquent with a heart of gold, optimistic girl and etc. etc. And sorry to say that they all do not grow that much beyond their initial character specs either. Sometimes I felt like forgiving the author since there are about 10 main characters and dozens of minor characters, and it’s clear he wanted the focus to be on the setting and the situation. But other times when he tried to write deeper characters, a lot of times, it just didn’t work very well. Still, the setting and the overall plot was still interesting enough on it’s own to keep reading, so I didn’t mind that much.

The teen girls and the women fare even worse in characterization than the guys, to the point where the series reads fairly sexist. Many Shounen manga have significant female readership, so usually they will add a few girls as main characters who are equals to the guys, and have their own stories. But not so much here, where the guys are almost always solely in the spotlight, and nearly all the girls and women are just there as potential romantic interests. The women and the girls are there to get ogled, lose their clothes and get rescued over and over again. And yet strangely enough, somehow there is very little romance happening in this series. For the longest time Akira and Rion don’t get any closer in their relationship, despite many nudges from fate and helpful advice from the others. And it’s not a harem at all until towards the end, when suddenly all the girls decide they like Akira, which was dumb.

The first half of the manga is about survival and overall, this part was the best. The plots are pretty varied as they face threats, human and nonhuman. They learn a lot about the strange environment they’ve been forced to live in, struggle to adapt and there’s a sort of debate about who should be in charge and how they should be organized. Then the second half of the series is focused very strongly on solving the mystery behind the island by piecing together clues they find. Overall, I was happy with the second half of the journey, which had many fascinating clues. But when it came to the final ending, I felt like the ending fell a bit short. 

While the ending was overall fine and definitive enough to answer the question of the truth behind the island, there were still some major plot holes of things that were never explained. For example, the reason why the plane crashed in the first place is never explained. There are also a number of clues which we were told were important, but are also never resolved either. And a couple of these clues seemed tantalizing and potentially important too. For example, one of the clues they find is a naked mummy sealed in a barrel with a key in it’s mouth. They do find out where the key goes, but the rest is never explained. And I’m still wondering about it. 

Recommended: Overall this popular survival horror manga has an interesting scenario and a mystery driven plot, but also suffers from shallow characters and sexist writing. The abundance of ecchi fanservice may also be a potential turnoff to some as well. But at least the extinct creatures are awesome. And the ending while overall it was fine, suffers from a few major plot holes.

Age Rating: Older Teen: mostly for violence and some gore. Most of the series isn’t that graphic, but then again, sometimes you’ll have characters bleeding from their eyeballs. There is also an abundance of cleavage, underwear shots and female nudity. There is also some attempted rape but not that graphic. There is also one cross dressing boy who manipulates some pedophiles into helping rescue some friends late in the story by leading them on, but at least it’s for a good cause... 

Other Works in English by this Mangaka: DEATHTOPIA (Seinen)

Other Notes: The first 10 volumes of this series are currently free to read with a Comixology Unlimited/Kindle Unlimited Trial.