INTRODUCTION (NO SPOILERS)

In 2007, this manga received a Shogakukan Manga Award. I believe it was well deserved. It's an outstanding story that covers a lot of ground. For all of the ground it covers it also answers a lot of questions and I bet most readers would be satisfied by the end of reading it, and if not, you can read 7SEEDS Gaiden for a little bit more closure. I was and still am sated by this story and what it provides. You have a thrilling survival adventure that's true to reality in plenty of the ways I want it to be. You have a heap of opportunities to read this with a philosophical lens, and for those who haven't explored deeply on the big questions of life, this can be rewarding as the characters will walk that path with you as you read. It took 16 years to craft this excellent manga and by some close shave coincidence, one year more and it would total the amount of time for something very carefully planned to take in the world presented in the manga.

MAIN COURSE: (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!)
__ [STORY]__ From the very start we're thrown right into a dire situation with characters who wake up confused and paranoid. Not only that, but they lack trust and right away you'll find yourself looking for the bad guy. If you've seen something like The Walking Dead or BTOOOM! you'll find those same paranoid feelings creep into your mind that the characters exude throughout the story. Questions like "Are they safe to be in the group?" or "What if they hurt x?" might float around. It makes sense that you and the characters would feel this way. Wait-where are we? What are these characters here for and why? We're in the ocean? These questions are answered pretty quickly-at least for the first group we get to know: Team Summer B. Now if you put pieces together before you're told they're pieces you'd quickly come to the realization that if there is one team, there has to be others. There sure is, and we get to know about each character in all 5 teams. Each team composed of 8 characters, one of the 8 characters being the assigned guide for each team. We follow one team for given periods of time during the manga and we get to learn about the members and watch the virgin world shape and test their limits. Virgin world? Yeah, the guides know about it. The guides were told the fundamental reasons for why the teams are all on this dangerous world that we find out to be Earth post-meteor apocalypse. As true with humanity, when the clock is ticking they'll stop at nothing to persevere. It was a carefully thought out plan: preserve a certain selection of humans in sleep chamber pods equipped to survive the rough ride of the ocean's wrath until the pods themselves deem it safe to wake them up. Many years after the Earth adjusts to the vast changes caused by the impact of the meteor, the pods wake the preserved sleeping humans inside, and they are burdened with great responsibility to survive and restart humanity. "What if a team is unstable and wants to end humanity for whatever reason?" Much like other holes you could come up with, this was appropriately planned for as well. The mastermind behind this happens to be a wealthy middle aged man named Takashi Sugurono. Now while he might have been a smart guy, he's not a genius, and he is flawed like other humans. We find out that his intuitions happen to fall flat on an area unexpected: Team Summer A. A team that was derived from the 17 years (from birth) of systematic training and schooling of approximately 100 genetically engineered humans. Yes, out of 100 specialists who trained from birth, only 7 of them were supposed to remain after an unexpected final test of survival, proctored by Takashi and their teacher. Now I'm not gonna say how these guys happen to be flawed in a world where you simply need to survive with others, but for various reasons, they are. There are many lessons to be learned and a lot of the basic things are covered: corruption, distrust, sex/rape, sharing resources, conflict, love, tragedy, revenge, friendship, anti-hero, etc. There is one thing that I really, really, appreciate: Takashi planned to have each person be an expert in something, we're not left in a world absent of something even not related to survival, such as the artist. To my pleasant surprise the artist was included in the careful selection of people meant to shoulder the burden of restarting humanity. Yeah I said it again, "the burden of restarting humanity" These characters were also selected in a way that allows for each person to have an opposite sex partner to procreate with. If they survive, that is. If you like the idea of two people being in love and surviving together, this story isn't very forgiving and tests you with edge-of-your-seat moments. "How far would you go for someone you love?" Is a question that's implied throughout the quest for Hana to find her boyfriend Arashi. Both of which, while concerned for the others' wellbeing, don't know of their own status for a long part of the story, making you desire their eventual meeting even further. That in itself could easily be its own separate manga. As you learn about the characters and watch them through their struggles you'll want them to meet each other to see how they feel and interact, and to my great satisfaction they do meet each other after scarce communication left behind and clues of where to go. Surprisingly, this manga doesn't strangle your soul energy and leave you depressed that things could be so cruel. This manga may appear unforgiving at first, but it turns out to be a rather uplifting one. At the end after all the ordeals and challenges they had to face together, the remaining characters meet and set up a long term commune and begin to think about the future very carefully and deliberately.

[CHARACTERS]

(WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!)
Out of the 40 people selected for project 7SEEDS, only a few of them were intended to be genetically apex experts in necessary fields. This leaving a good amount of rather regular people who are adept at certain skills, with the exception of a very few, who seem to be good at hardly anything. It didn't matter which character it was, I found myself cherishing them, relating to them, and I even grew attached to them through their struggles. There are a few characters outside of these 40 that lived before the meteor hit and even those characters were noteworthy and potentially relatable for some readers. It's enjoyable to see strong females worth admiring and men who let themselves be weak in the face of others (the inverse is also still true.) I never grew bored of any character, and this is important because the manga puts the focus on certain sets and even certain characters alone. You get to be with them for periods of time that allow you to grow attached (or hate them, and that's understandable.) There is absolutely character development and it's beautiful how it is executed. I loved seeing Natsu grow more brave, or her playful, boastful, aggressive, tsukkomi Semimaru who grows to love(?) her. I loved seeing Hana simply exist, she's a very strong person and I can't imagine many people withstanding what she did in this book, that goes for Takahiro too, he's my favorite character for this reason: being a very weak, innocent, warm-hearted person, who took on the responsibility of living for his friends and despite the odds he survived a rather lonely, cold existence.

This manga relies heavily on the characters, if you don't like them I think it would be hard to consume.

The characters are what complete this story, had they been mundane or predictable there's no way I'd be writing this review, or my rating being perfect as it stands. The closure in 7SEEDS Gaiden seals the last remaining points.