7 Seeds

This manga is mainly set after the end of the world. There has been a great disaster which has wiped the majority of people out. Luckily, the government was able to predict this outcome. So they decided to use cryogenics to put groups of people into hibernation, and set them to thaw out when the planet is habitable again. The story focuses on the five groups named after the seasons (two for Summer, A and B) and what happens when they wake up. The story focuses on the characters' reactions to their new world, their relationships with each other, and above all, their struggle to survive.

Story: 9
The story is very intense, with lots of focus on action/adventure, and psychological questions. It's very absorbing, and makes crave the next chapter right away. The main idea is that these people are trying to stay alive, so the story is mostly character driven. The narrative also switches back and forth between the events surrounding two of the characters, Hana and Arashi. Though romance is not the main element of the story there is one major character with a heart aching story, and other characters who are growing closer. There is also mystery, as the character try to figure out what has happened to the world they knew, and why they specifically were chosen to be kept alive.

Art: 9
The art is great, but probably not for everyone. The author's style of drawing is light, with many soft and delicate lines. Many characters have huge sparkly eyes, as to be expected from shoujo. Still, all the characters are individualized with their own unique looks. The scenery can be beautiful, or eerie depending on where the characters travel.

Character: 9
I originally had an 8 for characters, but as I read further, I definitely got a firmer sense of who everybody was, so the rating went up. The characters are all very engaging, though not necessary all likable. Each character has strengths, weakness, points of sympathy, and annoying aspects to them. Very full characters is something that makes the story even more likable in my open. There is also a far amount of character development, with certain character growing stronger, and others beginning to doubt themselves. I look forward to learning more about each and every one of them.

Enjoyment: 9
The story has a sense of cleverness, but it's also a page turner. The fact that a story can make you feel thoughtful, while also being entertaining makes it more enjoyable in my opinion.

Overall: 9
Honestly, I would probably give this story a ten...if it were completed already. Later something might happen in the story that will drag my opinion of it down, but as it stands I really love it.

Personally I don't like the art style. It's an older style... but if you really look at the art, even if you don't like the style, you have to admit it's really good. Her use of contrast and the arrangement of panels is very well done. She's good at releasing emotion, not just through dialogue and story, but through her art as well. She obviously knows her tools and skills and so I must admit that it is good even if at times I dislike it. The manga was been in the making since 2001 so the art does change a bit and even improve. Keep that in mind when you start out. It doesn't change too much but the detail gets more complex.

This is the first and only manga that I have been able to like even when I initially really didn't like the art style. It is now my favorite manga.

If you're going to read this manga, know that, although it starts out like a sci-fi adventure, it does get very dark at times (not all the time though). Not just philosophical dark either.

The character development is absolutely gorgeous. The characters themselves are beautifully and carefully crafted and offer a wide range of perspectives. Though it may be confusing to keep track of so many people, it's definitely worth it. The writer does not hesitate to let you know her characters and will even make them hateable which I think is brave. She isn't reckless though, and it's all very believable.

The story is also well developed and well thought-out. I like that she didn't rush into it but took her time to craft the world and the people involved. She must have had a lot of trust between her and the people releasing her mangas. It has a really good pace, it's not too slow or too fast. She's great at giving her readers relief and making sure her story arcs don't have to escalate outrageously to be good. I like how creative she gets too.

If you couldn't tell already, I've really enjoyed this manga. I started reading this maybe five years ago? So it has gotten me pretty hooked. It took forever to catch up to the ongoing but it was so worth it. It's the only manga I really keep track of consistently now-a-days. I look forward to it every times it comes out. Just now I finished one of the chapters and was literally leaning forward at the edge of my seat reading it. Honestly, I highly recommend this manga.

First if you like light and funny, comedy,romance manga than this manga isn't for you. (off course if you want to try something new then go ahead. Maybe you'll like it to.)


I'm not planing to writ a long review or anything. But i just thought that this manga deserve a review since there's nothing out there..
Story.
I'm giving the story 10/10. I know sounds crazy, but what i like about the story is that it's unique and the tension is high. The way the story is written and the way it's told is quite exiting.
Actually i think the mangaka did a great job on the story.
Art.
Well I'm not going to give it a full pot. 7/10 is quite good enough i think.
The details a good. The character is well drawn. So i won't complain.
Character.
Well 9/10 is a great point to give. I like almost every character in the manga.
Still there was some annoying character that makes you wish to trow away the manga and flush it down the toilet. But hey.. Not everyone's perfect.
Enjoyment
Well i have to say i enjoyed the manga really much.
The tension and the trill it gives is to me really outstanding.
So for you who like to read drama,si-fic,a small touch of romance,action,and fantasy.
Don't miss out on this one..

I truly wish an epic story like 7seeds was better known. It's one of the hidden gems of manga. Even many of my popular shoujo favorites feel shallow after this one. It first grabbed my interest due to my love and admiration for the mangaka's other work, Basara, but has gripped me further than I believed an end of the world sci-fi plot could do.

I'm becoming addicted to the art style. It has a strong classic shoujo look but also seems grounded in reality. The characters all have a unique look you can recognize and the world is detailed enough to lose yourself in the story.

The mangaka Yumi Tamura has a talent for balancing epic plots and vast number of characters. 7Seeds is more of a thrilling adventure with a flavorful seasoning of horror and romance. It begins in the present as well as sometimes returning to the past to better flesh the characters and story. Any time the story shifted to a different time or cast of characters, I was never disappointed. The story can be down right tragic and depressing at times, but the hope and the strength of the characters that keep going are even more meaningful because of it.

Though they begin in teams, the groups are not set in stone and characters will often split up due to either choice or disaster and interact realistically with each other. It is also very interesting to me that the groups were not released all at once, so you have people adapting to the environment in different stages. There are a lot of great twists and character development and I found it impossible to put down reading this manga. Now at volume 17 I can only look forward to more and encourage any one else to give the series a chance.

"When you wake up... You might be in heaven or hell, either way, I hope that you will live on vigorously..."

7 Seeds is in my opinion, a masterpiece. I finished it earlier today and now I don't know what to do with my life-.. It was a real roller-coaster of emotions *sniff*. Anyways lets get onto the review.

This is my first time writing a review on here so I apologise for any mistakes before hand.

Story: 10
7 Seeds revolves around 5 teams (Summer A, Summer B, Spring, Winter and Fall) who where put into a cryogenic sleep in hope that they will repopulate the soon to be destroyed earth. That's the basic gist of it but you can read the synopsis lmao.
The story of 7 Seeds is amazing. And not just the plot, Yumi Tamura's unique story telling methods are amazing and help this story truly stand out. There is no set main character in 7 Seeds, instead, the perspective switches between the personal stories of each team and there struggles trying to live in this new dangerous environment as well as with each other. Although this may sound odd the stories flow seamlessly connecting with each other naturally without it seeming forced which brings me to another point in which made this series such a satisfying read, for me at least. Tamura left nothing unanswered/unexplored, everything introduced into the story was given a proper conclusion and was not forgotten, I didn't notice any plot holes either.

Art: 9

I've heard many different views on the art style of 7 Seeds. Many people call it messy and hard on the eyes. This made me sceptical of reading at first because (yes this is quite shallow I'm sorry) I reallyy care about the art in a manga. If it is not aesthetically pleasing to the eye I probably wont read it. But, I can assure you, the art in 7 seeds is beautiful. The charterers are all attractive (it most likely a requirement of the project after all) with distinctive designs. The reason I didn't give it a ten is due to the fact that the panels are occasionally quite confusing and the backgrounds can be a bit blurry (I don't really know how to describe it) but this is only a minor problem and will in no way hinder your experience.

Characters: 10

the character development in this manga is amazing. every and i mean EVERY character had some sort of growth and development and it was honestly so endearing and fulfilling watching them grow. No character was left one dimensional with the characters who did so much evil being seen from a different perspective leaving us wondering whether they where so bad in the first place or in my case crippling depression as I try not to forgive these characters and end up doing so.-

Enjoyment: 10

I binged this in like a week (y'know with quarantine and all) and it might be one of the most enjoyable weeks in my life yet lmao

Overall: 10

I don't know what else to say. Go read it and if you actually do, prepare a box of tissue because this story really hits h a r d.

Well, I hope this helped you decide whether to read or not. Have a nice day

If you woke up from a cryogenic sleep in a hostile dystopian world with the order to rebuild mankind from the ground up, what would you do? Within that question lies the foundation of 7 Seeds. What would a person do under these circumstances? Even more, what would a person without any survival experience handle a more primitive lifestyle with dangers around every corner?

As questionable as it would be if the government chose inexperienced and traumatized people to save mankind, it’s interesting from a psychological perspective. Because some of these people can barely take care of themselves, and now they have even more weight on their shoulders. Every character belongs to a group of seven, hence why it’s called 7 Seeds. With all the existing groups comes a large scale of characters, and it’s handled well. Most if not all of them get some amount of development, with the ones mainly focused on ending up as multilayered and have experienced some sort of growth. Each group is also very diverse with how they tackle survival which I liked. It created conflict between the groups which makes it feel all the more satisfying when they finally put their differences aside to instead work together.

The characters are the center point of 7 Seeds, it’s core. But that’s not to say that a good story becomes insignificant, and here is where the manga stumbles quite a bit in my opinion. It ends up being very formulaic, with a format it continuously uses over and over again. With few exceptions, the whole story of 7 Seeds can be summed up as follows. Find a location, learn something new, overcome some sort of hurdle and then leave to find another location. Any sort of progress towards rebuilding humanity takes a backseat, for most of the manga that is. There are attempts for sure but for one reason or another it never works out in the end. So it’s back to square one which I have to admit that I wasn’t very enthusiastic about. It can also drag on for far longer than it has any right to. Making some parts feel very sluggish and uneventful. The different formulaic arcs have at least world-building and character growth coming with it. So it wasn’t too much of a waste of time. But I personally would’ve loved to see any progress or at least something to spice up the story structure a bit.

Art-wise it was pretty polished with the character designs being pretty consistent (although hard to tell apart sometimes) with some very solid environmental art here and there. It’s not always consistent however. It could often be simplistic with plain white backgrounds and things like hair and clothing lacking detail. However, at its best it is solid, but dips in quality more times than I think it should’ve.

All in all I think 7 Seeds is at least worth a chance. While at first I found it to be extremely mediocre, my opinion has now changed to a more positive side after reflecting on it. Even though I didn’t find all the characters very memorable there’s some genuinely great development for some of them which were definitely a high point. It’s a solid cast overall and made this an alright read. It’s just when the story comes more into focus that it loses that appeal and boredom seeps in. The slow pacing and reused formula definitely didn’t always help either, but that’s a very subjective critique that might not affect you the same way. I can see why so many praise it, but that’s not to say there aren’t flaws to be found. If you don’t like your manga being slow paced or mostly character driven with weak story progression then look elsewhere. Everyone else, take a dive in.

as some of other reviews suggested, this manga is very underrated, or should i say, not known as it should be.
artwork, character development, story, everything about it is amazing. it simply grabs you once you start reading it. i started reading it less than a week ago and already read all available 122 chapters. this manga is NOT just another story of post-apocalyptic world. often it shows you deep psychological picture of people under desperation.
the only regret i have about this manga is that new chapters are coming out so slow and curiosity is just killing me.
important point in my opinion to mention is that this manga is quite long, but it is by no means stretched. every chapter, every picture of this story is meant to be here, and the flow is amazing. you won't even feel the time passing as you read it.

"The World is beautiful..It's a thrilling place"
Wow, I will have the honor to write the first non-preliminary Review ^_^
I only review anime/manga which I find to be a Masterpiece, So Let's start.

TLDR; 7seeds is a hidden gem, which didn't make it's way to the top 50 because of it's incomplete translation (or that's what everybody thinks..I'll discuss how I read it to the end in a separate forum post) 178 story chapters + 4 extra chapters (only 2 are translated that far)

Story 10/10
All of this started when I found this manga recommendation in an article about "best manga that should receive anime adaptation" (I was in the beginning of building my reading list back then), And it should!
I usually don't read the synopsis before the story ,as I want to read the first 1-3 chapters without spoilers, and I advice you to do so to feel it from zero to the peak (It's a matter of taste.)
Anyway, This author is very creative, yet realistic in many aspects.She knows well about culture, science, history, classical music, medicine, forensic medicine, physics, animals and even video games. She also knows how to write good monologues, how to break down a sentence to give maximum feelings of it.
I won't spoil it but aren't those tags enough to get you interested to read ?

Art 8/10
Everyone has a weak point, and it is the art here. In the first chapters the art isn't appealing and it seems below the average, but keep reading then you will find it improving.
The colored covers are amazing, Some of the first pages black and white are well-crafted, The mouth line is cute, Faces (especially the boys) are handsome. One of the things that I found weird is the tears and why They're drawn to like froth? :D

Characters 10/10
The characterization is Top notch,Every character feels so real. This the first manga that make me sad and happy unlike any other one.
Well our MCs are girls and also boys but girls get more screen (ehm..page) time (so the shoujo tag which I suggest to change it to Joesi), Every one with his motives ,skills and back stories.
If you ever to hate a character, There are many many more. From the fool to the intelligent, from the clumsy to the courageous type, from the warm heated to whom with a stony heart and from who have many flaws to whom is nearly perfect.

Enjoyment 10/10
This manga is a masterpiece in its own but I think there's some kind of problem with the scanlation group , It doesn't mean that I'm not grateful for their work, but to find out after reading chapter 96 that the scanlations aren't complete beyond chapter 150+ broke my heart and the upload rate now is one chapter/six month , I spend almost all my rest time for weeks enjoying this alone, I didn't read another manga or watched anime..only this one satisfied me for that period of time.
I went from begging scanlator groups to find alternative solution and I have founded a one (actually very tiring but worth it).

Overall 10/10
This isn't much to be said after this long review . If you're planning to read it, change it to currently reading and enjoy this masterpiece. If not then why not to give it a try?

Hope it was helpful.

First off I just want to say I marathon-read the majority of this manga quite a few months ago, so my memory's a bit fuzzy on certain aspects.

What initially drew me into 7Seeds was definitely the combination of genres; a long-running horror shoujo story sounds fantastic, but adventure, and a dystopian future thrown in as well? I was sold. If it’s the same for you, I’m sure you will love this manga.

The plot is fairly straightforward and unlike many storylines, it’s not clear how and when the story will end - no clear goal has yet been distinguished. The constant elements of mystery and suspense will keep you anticipating the next chapter, and are done well enough so that you don’t get confused by all the separate plots. Likewise, the time dedicated to each group of characters (there are five groups in total), and the characters themselves is used efficiently so that after a few volumes away from a certain group you’ll still remember who they are, what they’re aiming for and how they actually function as a group. But the horror and adventure elements are what really set 7Seeds apart from other manga. There are the shoujo-esqe type characters and emotional plot-twists mixed in with giant man-eating insects, pre-historic creatures and life-threatening diseases. Natural disasters, murder and a warped sense of time among school-life drama and subtle teen-romance.

The characters themselves, and the motives and attitudes of each group are varied, and all endearing in their own unique ways, so there’ll be no difficulty in having a favourite character, group or storyline. It’s easy to tell just by the characters’ appearances what type of person they are and I’ve found no two characters alike in personality. The only problem I found was with the sheer number of characters we’re introduced to, it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to remember the majority of character’s names, if any.

To bring the story to life, the art fits superbly. It’s shoujo-style, there are some sparkles, and there’s yet to be an unattractive character, but there’s no cuteness and no ridiculously out of proportion women. Simply put, the art is beautiful and consistent, the characters, the natural scenery and the ‘monsters’ all look as if they belong in the same story line. It can be beautiful and terrifying all in the same panel, which I believe is a great feat by Tamura Yumi.

Overall, I think 7Seeds is a manga that everyone should at least give a chance, it has so many different aspects to it that everyone would find something they love. Particularly people who want something different from ‘the norm’, horror/sci-fi fans in general will take great pleasure in reading this manga. I have immensely enjoyed this manga and I’m thrilled that it’s ongoing at 15 volumes.

(so far, only up till Volume 8 has been scanlated).

Like I read Basara a few years ago in a marathon I read this manga in a marathon.

Wow, wow, wow I love Yumi Tamuras mangas. I don`t know why, but the moment I started reading Basara and this manga I just didn`t want to let go of the manga and go to sleep.

Now that I read all published chapters I`m amazed.
This manga is one of the best I ever read before its story, characters and development are just perfect! The way it started till the very last moment its just drowning.

With the characters I woke up in the future and with them I survived, lived, searched for answers and found friends.

This is a manga worth every second of reading.

This manga was MIND BLOWING. I have never marathoned a manga before and this just kept me going and going! It took me 2 days to read 100 chapters and I am still hungry for more.

Art - The art is good but I did wish that the mangaka made some of the girls look cuter. The guys are handsome as shiiiiiiiiiiiit !

Characters - All of the character's are amazing ! I have never read a manga or watched an anime before where I was in love with more than 2 character's. The character's all change and develop quite wonderfully ! The courage and bravery shown by many of the character's is remarkable! The ones i'm in love with are: Amaraki, Fubuki, Ango, and Hana. My other favorites are: Arashi, Semimaru, Botan and Natsu, Mark, Maria, Bald guy and the guy with the deadlock hair .


Enjoyment - Well I did marathon it so it goes to show that this manga is SUPER entertaining ! I wish this manga will continue on forever because I just can't get enough of it - can't say this for every manga out there.

Overall - If I had the ability to give more than a 10 out of 10 for this manga I would more than gladly give 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 x 10 ^ of trillion out of 10. This manga makes throws me out into a sea of emotions: Anger, love, sorrow, hope, happy, devastated, relieved, surprised, etc. It is suspenseful and the execution of it is B R I L L I A N T. Absolutely a hidden gem !

If you still don't want to read it then i'm afraid you are missing out on something truly marvelous. Also keep in mind that I never write reviews let alone such long ones.

Are you tired of all the old boy meets girl romance stories? The neverending fight-another-villain of shonen? Sick of stories that seem to have only one main focus?

Then read 7 Seeds!

Story 10/10 : The setting is unusal for shoujo/josei comics and its a shame there are only so few. The main focus is survival, life and death, adventure,mystery, but also social interactions, relationships on different levels,wirking together, overcoming ones weaknesses, discovering what happened, self -reflection and growth. 7 Seeds is so layered and treats each topic with an earnest approach, the research on scientific topics is well done. The story keeps the reader focused and eager to discover more. Sure there is romance and a good deal revolves around the main pair and drives some of the plot but it pales in comparison to the other topics and themes this story also covers. The pace is nice between action and light hearted conversations as well as dramatic events or plot twists. I found it to be one of the best manga i have read so far and it is a story you can read over and over again because it is so faceted.

Art 8/10: Art and style are very much about taste, so if the style doesnt suit you i can see it taking some of the enjoyment from the whole experience, but as it is shoujo/josei, i think it still works well. It would be interesting to see the same story drawn in a different style though. just to see if it had the same effect on readers.

Charactes 10/10. 7 Seeds comes with a wide variety of characters. Some are more focused on, some less. There is diversity from shy to bold, cunning to naive, talented to awkward, alltogether everyone is on some point relatable. there is no real evil/good as each has their own motivation for their actions. A great plus is that we have a diverse cast of well written female characters. Its so annoying to always be served the usual shy, crying, good girl character that is weak and cant decide for herself. Here we have one character that starts as this kind but she is the one you see grow and evolve a lot. Another welcome surprise is that there are no catfights among girls over boys. its is so refreshing that the topic doesnt revolve about some dude but the real problems at hand, like getting food or water.

Enjoyment 10/10. I really liked the mix of topics and themes as in comparison to other shoujo/josei i had to deal with. This one keeps you on your toes as the story unfolds, the characters are diverse and authentic, to each drama there is some lighteharted scene to balance it out, it is just a well rounded, hidden gem !

Overall 10/10. as i mentioned before, this manga is in all aspects outstanding. If you are here for romance, you will like it, if you are here for survival and adventure you ´ll get your fill. if you´re here for philosophy or psychology you wont be disappointed.
Its such a shame that this doesn´t get the credit it deserves. There are some shonen that pick up similar topics like eden no ori, but that never reaches the level of balance and completeness 7 Seeds conveys. It just is the whole package and i cant think of a thing to add. In true fashion of her other renowned epic work Basara, Tamura Yumi created another great masterpiece.

Ill always love and recommend this masterpice . i truly wish there were more works with qualities like this.

I guess the first thing to say about this manga is that it is, without a doubt, one of the most grittiest and realistic mangas I've ever read that still manages to not become a large sinful bloodbath of violence.
I rated the story 10, because of it's originality and the wide range of emotions it introduces. 7 Seeds is original in how it takes the aspect of 'what happens when humans die out' plot line. The story line is incredibly thrilling and suspenseful, as we watch the humans, most of who are only teenagers, fight for survival against terrifying monsters we've never seen before and survive in conditions you'd probably die in. It also becomes very touching as we watch the same people pine for their loved ones, worry about their homes, etc. The story is not afraid to be bloody, it is bloody, and there is no shortage of characters that die in the process. However it manages to keep it's emotional touch, and the experience is extremely rewarding as we see the characters move on.
In the 40 chapters I've been able to read, the story is split so that it can be told by people in different groups, so that we get the big picture. Greed, loneliness, fear, and comradeship are themes strongly introduced in the story. However the largest part is reserved for human strength, physical and emotional, the human intent to stay alive and to keep going no matter what.

The Art, which I rated 8, is a bit old-style, but fairly modern. If you want to compare it, I suggest Basara, another great manga.

Characters are a large part in the story, but there are many times when they are simply following the story line, like puppets. Many characters who appear weak in the beginning, become strong in the end, and the character development is wonderful. Because of the large cast group, there are many characters who aren't fully gone into, however many times because of the actions they take, you care for them anyway.

All in all, 7 Seeds is definitely one of my most favorite mangas and I deeply recommend it to those who love suspenseful stories and who aren't afraid of blood and sadness.

Shoujo and I don’t tend to get along very much. More specifically, high school shoujo romance and I don’t get along because those seem to be the only kinds of shoujo manga that are adapted into anime nowadays. The flitting between abusive relationships seen as totemo romanticuu, or blushy hand-holding gormless teenagers rubs me the wrong way. It’s a shame that anime does such a disservice to an entire subset of manga when it has a much wider variety of titles and genres on display.

Take 7 Seeds, a post-apocalyptic survivalist shoujo manga. What’s interesting about it is it still has a lot of the same stylings of your typical shoujo manga. For example, there’s the heart-skip panel where the layout of the pages are set with on big strip down the middle of flowers and hearts and sparkles and bubbles, which is supposed to represent the heart of the main character skipping a beat. In your usual shoujo high school romance manga, that scene is used when senpai noticed me~! In 7 Seeds it’s used when the protagonist has just noticed that senpai is being eaten by a giant man-eating plant.

When I say 7 Seeds is a post-apocalyptic manga, I don’t mean some pussy apocalypse. It’s not like Akira or Neon Genesis Evangelion where there was a little disaster but people are still going to school. I mean hellfire raining from the sky, land swallowed up by the oceans, entire human population eliminated. Humanity had seen the apocalypse coming, so they set up the 7 Seeds programme. 4 groups of healthy teenagers were placed into stasis across Japan, set to re-open when the planet became inhabitable again.

For a person like myself who has a big hard-on for apocalyptic landscapes, 7 Seeds is fantastic. There’s the requisite first discovery of the tattered remains of cities that have some truly powerful scenes. It can be the big sweeping shots of Tokyo being reclaimed by the land as the skyscrapers become overgrown, to some really simple little things like a subway car collapsing under the weight of someone simply leaning on it, crumpling as though it was made of seaweed from years of corroding and rust. They go a long way to establishing the setting and giving you a proper feel for the scale of the devastation and where the world is at now.

The planet’s ecosystem has been altered drastically and there’s lots of cool ideas brought in to make nature more volatile. Some of it is your standard angry ecosystem such as giant bugs that plants its eggs into your body, but then there’s more insidious versions too There’s creatures that collapsed in the desert and appeared dead, waiting for the monsoon season to arrive again, upon which they would all burst into life and terrorize the poor group that had set up camp in this calm valley. One of the characters accidentally awoke a monster by peeing on it, causing it to think the rainy season had arrived. Its connection to science is pretty loose, but it plays with these ideas of how the rapid evolution in the post-apocalypse could work in enough crazy unique ways that I don’t mind that they’re perhaps a bit silly.

I do have a bit of an issue with how they depict the characters’s state in this hostile world. Considering they spend an awful lot of time crashing through undergrowth and being hurled into the water, it’s surprising how intact a lot of their clothes are. The story seems to gloss over a lot of the general day-to-day details such as how they get food, how do their shoes stay intact through so much travelling, how are they able to transport the amount of gear they would need to survive from place to place, and a bunch of other details. Maybe they raided a surprisingly intact clothes store at some point and their bags are full of spare shoes and t-shirts. Or maybe the people who put these teenagers in stasis in the first place gave them the most resilient clothes humanity could develop. It seems like a strange complaint on my part, but given the manga spends so much time emphasising how inhospitable the planet has become, it pulls me out of the experience somewhat.

The story jumps between the groups within 7 Seeds that have been left on the planet, showing us the different group dynamics and how they each dealt with their situation. There’s also the occasional story that jumps to before the 7 Seeds were released and how humanity started to prepare for the coming apocalypse. You didn’t think humanity only had one plan, did you? The one involving the kids who were all jacked up on steroids and bred to be the best of the best was particularly memorable, especially the grim way the arc ended. I won’t spoil, but it’s one of those endings that makes you put your book down, breathe out deeply and then go outside and watch rabbits frolic for a while as you contemplate how lucky you are.

The most impressive feat of 7 Seeds is that, despite jumping from story to story, it manages to make each individual story compelling. Each one is meticulously planned out. Each character is noticeably different with personality and goals and fears that makes the group dynamics in each story fascinating. The focus on the manga is more on the broader picture of how we will face the apocalypse and how people react in these harrowing situations, but it never forgets that these people are humans. As much as I’ve got that hard-on for general post-apocalypse landscapes, the real meat here is in the people and how they react to the situation. The author is a truly fantastic storyteller.

It’s a fucking long manga by the way. There’s 25 volumes out at the moment and still ongoing, and with anything that long there’s bound to be some nitpicky problems. The art isn’t fantastic. Sometimes the squiggly way the lines are drawn means I can’t tell where one object begins and another ends, leaving me staring at a page for several seconds before I realise “oh right, she’s wrestling a mutant crocodile”. It’s also completely humourless, which might fit something this grim, but when a character is supposed to be the Funny Guy, it never comes across well. There is a way to work dark humour into a story like this, but the author never bothers. Maybe she’s aware she can’t do humour so simply never tries, which is probably for the best.

But these, and the earlier minor clothes problems, are but little flecks of dirt on an otherwise monumental achievement in storytelling and overall grimness. Now if only anime producers would adapt shoujo manga like this more often, rather than high school romance #5019 in which the most popular guy in school inexplicably falls in love with bland shy female lead because he is secretly a vampire walrus or whatever.