One thing should be clear: I wouldn't recommend Eden to everyone. While I can't deny that it has a really good setting and some pretty interesting concepts, the pace and the dozens of badly used side characters can be annoying after the 9th cool character comes out of nowhere, introduce a new concept and dies literally 1 chapter after. But let's go for the story.

In a near future, a virus that transforms people into minerals appear and starts to take over the world that is already crumbling from wars and a misteryous extremist religious organization. 2 kids that are immune to the virus are growing up in the facility Eden, isolated from the virus, and scientists starts to study them. The so called organization appears in the facility bringing havoc and is quickly wiped away by the guard robot Cherubim, controled by the boy Enoa (Did I mention that a lot of characters have religious names? Yeah, that's cool, I know). Fast forward some years and we have the main character, Elijah Ballard, a teenager son of the most powerful drug lord from South America, Enoa Ballard (!). The religious organization from before? Called Propater, they rule half of the world and have complete authority over it. I'd like to go through some of the major points of the story so you can have your own conclusions.

#The good points:

• The Ballards development: This is one of the things that I find really good in the manga. For Elijah, we start with your average teenager that doesn't have a good relationship with his father and follow his path to being a determined grown up, terrorist hunted by the Propater with strong convictions. We get to understand a little more about Enoa's feelings, why he acts the way he acts and do what he do. We even see the Ballard sisters way of seeing the world, the family traumas and everything in between the love of parents and dysfunctional family bonds.
• The politics, religious discussions and the decline of our way of living: For those who like to see political conflicts between people with differente world views, the way religion can bring the best and also the worst of people and the way humanity starts to decline after a crisis, this is a full plate. In Eden, drugs and prostitution in the decaying Earth are common things. As a product of globalization and late capitalism, most part of the characters are of mixed race and it gives a touch of reality to the manga. Also, the discussions around drug abuse are quite shocking and have a real effect on history, with Elijah's older sister being a heroin addict (and later in the manga Elijah becoming one as well). Main characters doing casual sex just for relieving the tension of war or pure pleasure and Elijah's first love being a prostitute herself.
• The virus: The virus starts as something that turns people into a mineral form. After some time surviving, humanity finds vaccines and ways to contain the virus, and seeing partially disabled people because of the Closure Virus. The thing is: eventually, the virus mutates to a new form, the Disclosure Virus, which transforms people into a liquid form, then solidifies, then liquid, and then solid... turning them into strange crystals in the end of the process. What the scientists discover is that the virus' crystals, that start taking the world again (because is something entirely new, an evolution of the old virus), is actually a form of collective conscience of those affected by it. The concept is so original and mysterious that you don't know what to expect of it. If you like to read about theory of areas like biology, physics and chemistry then you'll like this as well (even though I couldn't understand most of the theoric concepts).
• Philosophy and religion: I can't extend too much on this since in the end the manga is about the merging of these things, but a lot of philosophical questions about good and evil, the value of life, human and nature intentions and the purpose of humanity's existence in the big scheme of things are addressed in Eden.
• Morality being real: It is awesome to see some gray things and the representation of different cultures not as the bad people, but just as... people. Muslim people fighting an evil christian organization that has people with good intentions, local conflicts between africans, and all in between. The manga portrays the world as it is: people acting as people.

#Now, for the bad points:

• Side characters: As I said before, the author's use of side characters can be... disappointing, to say the least. The feel I get is that no one really matters aside from the Ballard family and maybe Lethia and Maya. Literally dozens of side characters are presented just to die some chapters later after introducing something new or explaining some concept. You could say that it's just a way to show how death is something trivial when you are involved with terrorists and powerful fascist organizations, but I don't think that's the case, it just looks like the author doesn't know how to handle his characters. It is frustrating that characters full of potential die like they don't have any weight on the story and totally random people just live until the end.
• Lack of explanation: Ok, some things don't really need an explanation cause it wouldn't make a difference. And it can be that I'm just dumb, but I felt kinda lost in some moments, especially regarding theoric concepts in the second half of the manga. They just kepting adding more and more concepts, each time more complicated, without properly explaining old things. A lot of concepts aren't even meant to be understood by everyone since it has some hardcore applied science, but in the end I just felt that it had some loose ends.
• The pace: To simply put it, the constancy of the pace is close to 0. Sometimes things are going so smoothly and good to read, and 1 chapter later it looks SO rushed to some chapter later it be so slow that it's boring. As it happens with the characters, it looks like the author has a problem with pace as well.

#To finish it, some points unrelated to those things above:

• The setting: As a brazilian, it's really nice to see some things happening in my country, things of my culture and/or environment that I can relate (for those who don't know, Brazil is HUGE so the cultural differences between north and south, for example, are so big that it doesn't even look like the same country except for the language). Also, it's fun to see a lot of names common in Latin American. I was like: "Hey, that's my friend's name!". It can be something silly, but it's really nice.
• The art: I don't usually care if the art is said good or bad, but I guess it's valid to talk about this here. While yes, I say that the art is good in the manga (especially with the robotic things like Cherubim or the androids and cyborgs) it suffers from the same face effect. The style is realistic (maybe because it's a 90s manga) and can be really detailed sometimes with beautifully drawn faces with a normal human proportions, but everyone looks exactly the same. My guess is that it's probably because of the huge amount of characters, it should be hard to draw a totally different human being each time a new character is introduced (like every 5 chapters). Again, something the author doesn't know how to handle.

Concluding, it isn't a manga for everyone but I guess it's worth a chance, even if it's frustrating sometimes. The 21XX Earth is well constructed, consistent and realistic with destroyed landscapes and nature taking back some parts of the world. If you're a fan of sci-fi, apocalyptic settings or the type that likes big brain endings, then you MUST give this a chance.