Eden - It's an Endless World Final Thoughts
Now I like this manga a lot, but at the end it starts to unravel quite a bit. The theme isn't really anything new, but I do love Endo's take on it, with humans being reduced to nothing but data in a sea of information, which to me is nicely non-spiritual for such a spiritual subject. The world is great too, which like a more gritty and run down version of ghost in the shell. The art is great, and I love that Endo is pretty keen to make this as multicultural and inclusive as possible. Also contrary to my experiences with endo's other works, he has characters that are actually really great and well-developed, especially the main character, Elijah. Which brings me to my major pet peeve...
... what was the point of Elijah's story?
Throughout the series we've seen him develop from a naive kid to a criminal comfortable with murder, a symbol of the loss of innocence in such a harsh world, but I do love that elijah still remains somewhat naive in the end, even though it may be a mask to hide his broken psyche. Thing is, we go through his development for... what? In the climatic end his character arc ends in him being nearly killed by drugs and being nursed back by miriam, while it was Enoa who went with 2 of his friends to confront propatar and the disclosure virus. Maybe Elijah was meant to show how humankind and human society inevitably gets corrupted, but to me his story arc just felt like a side activity by the end.
Don't get me wrong, the ending sequence with Enoa was pretty badass, but it felt slightly ridiculous especially seeing that we haven't seen much from Enoa, Tony and Chad. We just see them as suits pulling the strings behind the scenes and then we go from that to seeing them take out what is supposedly one of the biggest drug cartels in the world (that they found) and then a whole battalion of soldiers, which included a goddamn attack chopper? The ending actually does tie up the beginning really well for Enoa, though I have some beef with using a whole new character as the final villain in the last minute.
Another thing that bothered me a lot was also the way Endo used Sophia. The last we saw her she was made quadriplegic by her psycho daughter (to be fair on the daughter, Sophia is kind of a crappy mother), treated as some weird sex doll and then the next time we see her she's going to be the goddess mother for a whole new universe? I kind of get how it ties into her regret of not able to have familial love and her wish to try to mend that part, as well as her being able to accept the misery of the people who chose to be one with the colliod, but that's a lot of stuff for me to infer on without much development.
Don't even get me started on Helena.
TL
R I enjoyed it but the ending just showed that endo tried to cram too many themes and characters but didn't know what to do with some of them at the end.