manga: 7 Seeds vol 1-23
Sep. 22nd, 2013 09:06 pmTo the delight of my twitter feed (or at least, the ones who don't follow 7 Seeds) I have caught up with the scanslated volumes of Tamura Yumi's 7 Seeds. I believe some of volume 24 is scanslated, but I don't think I could handle the tension of trying to read the series in small amounts. I've posted a fair bit on it in my weekly reading posts, but I'll try for something a bit more comprehensive now.
7 Seeds is an ongoing post-apocalyptic shoujo manga (though I believe it was eventually moved to a josei magazine) by the creator of Basara. Both series are set in post-apocalyptic Japan with a drastically altered landscape, lots of women, lots of travel, complicated characters (and make you keep liking characters who do things that would normally make you hate them) emotionally wrenching and often devastating character arcs that regularly put the characters through hell, and all kinds of relationships among a wide variety of characters.
Despite that, the two series are actually almost nothing alike. (Though it should be mentioned that a lot of the character designs in early volumes of 7 Seeds look enough like Basara's character designs to be jarring. Eventually, though, they're tweaked enough to stand apart from their visual counterparts.) While Basara is about war and revolution and defying a corrupt society and forbidden DOOMED romance and gender identity and roles, 7 Seeds is about survival and the discovery of a new and horrifying world and the early steps of creating a society. It's also about psychology and how different environments and rules (and the lack thereof) affect people and their choices. It's also very much about the idea that everyone, no matter who or what they are, is important, and that everyone has something valuable to contribute, not just the people who know how to hunt for food and determine if plants are poisonous and the ones who can build houses, but also the ones who can make you laugh or quote something they read 5 years ago. And people learning the above is also a very important aspect of the series. Also, the ability to find toilet paper and alternatives to toilet paper is very valuable.
The concept of 7 Seeds is that the world's governments know that a meteor is is going to hit earth with enough force to wipe out most, if not all, life. A variety of plans to ensure humanities survival are put forth, and the last ditch plan is to cryogenically freeze small groups of people who will be stored beneath the surface until the systems preserving them determine that the planet can once again support human life, at which point they'll be released. Japan creates four teams of seven people (each team is named after a season-Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and each team member has a name that is associated with their team's season) plus a guide, and also seven storehouses spread throughout Japan that hold preserved supplies to help them create a new society in their new world. The members of the teams are considered the "elite," artists, musicians, architects, scholars, doctors, athletes, people especially trained in survival, etc., but it's eventually decided to send a fifth team-Summer B-made up of people who have trouble fitting into society (and gangster, a runaway, a girl who's almost pathologically shy and timid, etc.) as a "backup" team in case the "elite" aren't able to adjust to the new world.
We're introduced to the series through Summer B, specifically through Natsu, the shy and timid girl mentioned above, and the first plotline introduces us to the idea of the 7 Seeds project as Summer B starts to see the changes to the world. Normally, you'd expect Natsu to be the main character of the series, and to meet the rest of the world through Summer B's travels, but instead we soon move to another team entirely. Unlike most shoujo series (or manga in general) there isn't a clear lead protagonist or main character. While I'd say Natsu and the main POV character for Team Spring are the POVs we probably spend the most time with, the focus frequently shifts between various teams and subgroups formed from teams as they travel and attempt to find the best places to make their homes. For a while (I think about the first ten volumes?) events aren't completely chronological, and where they chronologically fall in relation to other events isn't always made clear right away. This, however, doesn't interrupt the flow of the story at all, and I think it actually adds to it at times.
As I mentioned before, it's a very psychological series, and as a result, not only is it very tense and nervewracking (there are many times I went "surely she won't go there..." and then Tamura did) and there are parts that are rather traumatic to read and lots of what I can only call soul crushing angst. But the good kind? She appears to get most of the soulcrushing angst out of her system by around volume 13 or so (but not the overall tension) but has revisited it a couple times since. There are also various horror elements (note: if you have an insect phobia, it might be best to very selectively read the second volume, or ask someone to give you a summary) and a couple rape attempts, though I somewhat expected that given the premise, and the subject is actually handled MUCH better than elsewhere.
The series isn't light reading at all, but it is excellent reading.
I think most of what I'd want to say about the series has been covered by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oyceter and skygiants in their respective tags and the comments to their posts, but some more spoilery commentary from me:
( spoilers )
7 Seeds is an ongoing post-apocalyptic shoujo manga (though I believe it was eventually moved to a josei magazine) by the creator of Basara. Both series are set in post-apocalyptic Japan with a drastically altered landscape, lots of women, lots of travel, complicated characters (and make you keep liking characters who do things that would normally make you hate them) emotionally wrenching and often devastating character arcs that regularly put the characters through hell, and all kinds of relationships among a wide variety of characters.
Despite that, the two series are actually almost nothing alike. (Though it should be mentioned that a lot of the character designs in early volumes of 7 Seeds look enough like Basara's character designs to be jarring. Eventually, though, they're tweaked enough to stand apart from their visual counterparts.) While Basara is about war and revolution and defying a corrupt society and forbidden DOOMED romance and gender identity and roles, 7 Seeds is about survival and the discovery of a new and horrifying world and the early steps of creating a society. It's also about psychology and how different environments and rules (and the lack thereof) affect people and their choices. It's also very much about the idea that everyone, no matter who or what they are, is important, and that everyone has something valuable to contribute, not just the people who know how to hunt for food and determine if plants are poisonous and the ones who can build houses, but also the ones who can make you laugh or quote something they read 5 years ago. And people learning the above is also a very important aspect of the series. Also, the ability to find toilet paper and alternatives to toilet paper is very valuable.
The concept of 7 Seeds is that the world's governments know that a meteor is is going to hit earth with enough force to wipe out most, if not all, life. A variety of plans to ensure humanities survival are put forth, and the last ditch plan is to cryogenically freeze small groups of people who will be stored beneath the surface until the systems preserving them determine that the planet can once again support human life, at which point they'll be released. Japan creates four teams of seven people (each team is named after a season-Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and each team member has a name that is associated with their team's season) plus a guide, and also seven storehouses spread throughout Japan that hold preserved supplies to help them create a new society in their new world. The members of the teams are considered the "elite," artists, musicians, architects, scholars, doctors, athletes, people especially trained in survival, etc., but it's eventually decided to send a fifth team-Summer B-made up of people who have trouble fitting into society (and gangster, a runaway, a girl who's almost pathologically shy and timid, etc.) as a "backup" team in case the "elite" aren't able to adjust to the new world.
We're introduced to the series through Summer B, specifically through Natsu, the shy and timid girl mentioned above, and the first plotline introduces us to the idea of the 7 Seeds project as Summer B starts to see the changes to the world. Normally, you'd expect Natsu to be the main character of the series, and to meet the rest of the world through Summer B's travels, but instead we soon move to another team entirely. Unlike most shoujo series (or manga in general) there isn't a clear lead protagonist or main character. While I'd say Natsu and the main POV character for Team Spring are the POVs we probably spend the most time with, the focus frequently shifts between various teams and subgroups formed from teams as they travel and attempt to find the best places to make their homes. For a while (I think about the first ten volumes?) events aren't completely chronological, and where they chronologically fall in relation to other events isn't always made clear right away. This, however, doesn't interrupt the flow of the story at all, and I think it actually adds to it at times.
As I mentioned before, it's a very psychological series, and as a result, not only is it very tense and nervewracking (there are many times I went "surely she won't go there..." and then Tamura did) and there are parts that are rather traumatic to read and lots of what I can only call soul crushing angst. But the good kind? She appears to get most of the soulcrushing angst out of her system by around volume 13 or so (but not the overall tension) but has revisited it a couple times since. There are also various horror elements (note: if you have an insect phobia, it might be best to very selectively read the second volume, or ask someone to give you a summary) and a couple rape attempts, though I somewhat expected that given the premise, and the subject is actually handled MUCH better than elsewhere.
The series isn't light reading at all, but it is excellent reading.
I think most of what I'd want to say about the series has been covered by
oyceter and skygiants in their respective tags and the comments to their posts, but some more spoilery commentary from me:( spoilers )
