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A few months ago, the new 7 Seeds anime launched on Netflix! I watched the first four episodes!
...then I fell headfirst into rereading all 35 volumes of the manga and have been spending most of my unscheduled time doing that for the last two months, finally actually getting all the way to the end, which the last time I did a massive 7 Seeds read had neither been written nor translated. I am happy to report: I love this manga even more than I did before! And I already loved it a lot.
(If you follow me on Twitter, none of this will be news to you, because I've been spamming my entire timeline with livetweets. Too bad! You're getting it again anyway!)
The premise of 7 Seeds: in the near future, the Earth gets hit with an enormous meteor. The government of Japan, in its infinite wisdom, attempts a number of increasingly absurd schemes to try to save humanity; unfortunately, the most absurd of all -- secretly freeze-drying small groups of unsuspecting teenagers in time capsules set to open after several millenia in hopes the Earth will once again be livable by then -- is the one that sticks.
Three of the five groups of kids are chosen through a combination of "which kids are famous?" and "which kids' parents have influence?", which yields a mix of confused and resentful piano prodigies, politician's daughters, tech-start-up wunderkind, and talented high school baseball players, but only one half-trained doomsday prepper.
The fourth group, Team Summer A, actually does get some doomsday prep; unfortunately, their preparation consists of a childhood of intensive paramilitary training followed by a brutal final exam that leaves them all possessed of great survival skills, zero social skills, and an enormous load of emotional trauma. This is understandably concerning to everyone else they meet.
And then there's Team Summer B, the control group -- a last minute afterthought by the designers of the project, who suddenly got genre-savvy and realized that the survival of the human race was absolutely going to depend on a plucky band of misfits.
Obviously, we start out with Summer B; gradually the rest of the teams are introduced and start bumping into each other, and plot unfolds from there, helped along by an assortment of natural and unnatural perils, an escalating series of really dramatic escape rooms, and everyone's colliding character development. Sometimes it is very funny! Sometimes it's emotionally devastating! Yumi Tamura loves bugs, bacteria, and dehydrated dinosaurs! Here's a collection of random panels I gathered during my reread, presented without context:
Horror and hijinks aside, though, the manga does some incredible long-game character development, as well as some of the most interesting work I've ever seen as far as negotiating the complexity of consequence. Two of the Summer A kids, in particular, take their tragic backstory as an excuse to lash out at the various other kids they meet, including a murder and an attempted rape. Both of them, eventually, grow and change and recover, mostly through having the opportunity to meet different people who expect different things of them - and their recovery is important, and it's real, and so are the relationships they build, and it still doesn't mean the hurt and the trauma that they inflicted on other people disappears. It's messy and it's complicated, and all of the characters have different opinions about how the community should handle them based on their own personal experiences with the people involved, but the most space is given to the primary target, who says: look, I get that you've done good since the hurt you did me, and I don't want retribution, but you can't be around me; I will never not be afraid of you. At the end of the manga, it's still unclear whether they can or should be re-incorporated into the community. There's no easy resolution or redemption. There's just growth, and that has to be enough.
I also really like how Yumi Tamura generally handles relationships. Obviously when you have 30 teens constantly getting into various high-adrenaline situations in different combinations there are going to be a lot of Intense Feelings all over the place, and certainly if you mapped it all out you could get a hilariously complicated love polygon diagram, but the thing that makes it work so well for me is that most of the relationships are undefinably intense -- most of the kids have at least three or four different dynamics that sit so exactly on the line between Romance and Intense Friendship that none of the participants themselves are sure exactly where they are, and it doesn't really matter in any case because the friendship is what's actually important.
Only six of the thirty kids in the cast end the manga in anything I would call a tidy pair. Everything else continues in a state of intense ambiguity where nothing is sure except that they Care About Some Of These Other Kids A Whole Lot, Maybe With Pants Feelings But Who Really Knows. Natsu happily pines after safely unattainable Arashi while accidentally becoming best friends with him instead; Ran has a perfectly fine co-dictatorship-with-benefits situation going on but the manga is way more interested in the fact that she's literally the only person her architect rival has ever cared about as a human; Hana and Aramaki both possess the fatal combination of being attractive, competent AND deeply emotionally needy and thus manage to trigger sparkly eyes and dokidoki hearts in literally everybody they meet (who doesn't want to murder them). That's fine! Go to town! It's the post-apocalypse and you're all seventeen and traditional monogamy has no place in the new world anyway; just ask Ayu, who's got a shortlist of candidates to co-parent her first and second children.
Anyway, for the five people who've read the manga, I have some more Shipping Opinions and you should talk to me about them!
Ran/Nijiko: now and forever my ultimate 7 Seeds ship. I shrieked when Ran gave Nijiko a Significant Seashell, I screamed when Nijiko tenderly bound Ran's wounds using the bite of a creepy giant ant and then supported her all the way back to the surface, I haven't been this gay since Utena
Natsu/Semimaru: I played myself; I swore i wasn't going to ship it, and then I wrote myself into doing it anyway on a yuletide fic from a few years ago. Honestly, the thing that sold me is that Semimaru is the only person we ever see Natsu ever be deliberately rude to, and I think that's important in a relationship generally and for Natsu specifically!
Haru/Koruri: this is consistently very sweet, but the point where it got really interesting to me is when Absolute Nonviolence Haru finds out Koruri participated in the collection execution of their terrible guide and blue screens a little, and Koruri's like 'it's ok if you're scared of me! [sweet smile]' and flies off ....
Aramaki: man, how many people have proposed to Aramaki already? Ayu, Gengoro, Hana and Arashi have all definitely made their play and I'm pretty sure Tsunobata's in the running as well; honestly, you could pitch me Aramaki/Literally Anyone Else and I would agree that it's probably canon. He was alone for fifteen years, he can make up for lost time by having five spouses now, that's completely fine.
Ran/Botan - Ran/Nijiko will always be first in my heart, but I absolutely cannot ignore the potential inherent in “I never thought I’d be scolded by an older woman again” and you can’t ask me to.
Natsu/Matsuri - Matsuri is 100% the kind of person who bangs her best friend at every sleepover, convinces them both it doesn’t count as cheating on their boyfriends, and blithely continues to call herself straight for the next ten years.
Chisa/Ban - OK, I realize these two people have never actually had a single conversation on the page. However, much as I love Chisa, left to her own devices she’s just going to reinvent politics and capitalism. A distraction is necessary. Why not fling her against the only person against whom her absolutely matchless social skills are completely useless! Ban is a complete cryptid. Chisa has no effective offense or defense. I feel like her intrinsic discomfiture at the state of his hair might make her lose her composure for the first time in the entire manga. Please, somebody, trap them together in a cave for me until ‘accidentally in love’ starts playing. Let’s make it happen.
...then I fell headfirst into rereading all 35 volumes of the manga and have been spending most of my unscheduled time doing that for the last two months, finally actually getting all the way to the end, which the last time I did a massive 7 Seeds read had neither been written nor translated. I am happy to report: I love this manga even more than I did before! And I already loved it a lot.
(If you follow me on Twitter, none of this will be news to you, because I've been spamming my entire timeline with livetweets. Too bad! You're getting it again anyway!)
The premise of 7 Seeds: in the near future, the Earth gets hit with an enormous meteor. The government of Japan, in its infinite wisdom, attempts a number of increasingly absurd schemes to try to save humanity; unfortunately, the most absurd of all -- secretly freeze-drying small groups of unsuspecting teenagers in time capsules set to open after several millenia in hopes the Earth will once again be livable by then -- is the one that sticks.
Three of the five groups of kids are chosen through a combination of "which kids are famous?" and "which kids' parents have influence?", which yields a mix of confused and resentful piano prodigies, politician's daughters, tech-start-up wunderkind, and talented high school baseball players, but only one half-trained doomsday prepper.
The fourth group, Team Summer A, actually does get some doomsday prep; unfortunately, their preparation consists of a childhood of intensive paramilitary training followed by a brutal final exam that leaves them all possessed of great survival skills, zero social skills, and an enormous load of emotional trauma. This is understandably concerning to everyone else they meet.
And then there's Team Summer B, the control group -- a last minute afterthought by the designers of the project, who suddenly got genre-savvy and realized that the survival of the human race was absolutely going to depend on a plucky band of misfits.
Obviously, we start out with Summer B; gradually the rest of the teams are introduced and start bumping into each other, and plot unfolds from there, helped along by an assortment of natural and unnatural perils, an escalating series of really dramatic escape rooms, and everyone's colliding character development. Sometimes it is very funny! Sometimes it's emotionally devastating! Yumi Tamura loves bugs, bacteria, and dehydrated dinosaurs! Here's a collection of random panels I gathered during my reread, presented without context:
Horror and hijinks aside, though, the manga does some incredible long-game character development, as well as some of the most interesting work I've ever seen as far as negotiating the complexity of consequence. Two of the Summer A kids, in particular, take their tragic backstory as an excuse to lash out at the various other kids they meet, including a murder and an attempted rape. Both of them, eventually, grow and change and recover, mostly through having the opportunity to meet different people who expect different things of them - and their recovery is important, and it's real, and so are the relationships they build, and it still doesn't mean the hurt and the trauma that they inflicted on other people disappears. It's messy and it's complicated, and all of the characters have different opinions about how the community should handle them based on their own personal experiences with the people involved, but the most space is given to the primary target, who says: look, I get that you've done good since the hurt you did me, and I don't want retribution, but you can't be around me; I will never not be afraid of you. At the end of the manga, it's still unclear whether they can or should be re-incorporated into the community. There's no easy resolution or redemption. There's just growth, and that has to be enough.
I also really like how Yumi Tamura generally handles relationships. Obviously when you have 30 teens constantly getting into various high-adrenaline situations in different combinations there are going to be a lot of Intense Feelings all over the place, and certainly if you mapped it all out you could get a hilariously complicated love polygon diagram, but the thing that makes it work so well for me is that most of the relationships are undefinably intense -- most of the kids have at least three or four different dynamics that sit so exactly on the line between Romance and Intense Friendship that none of the participants themselves are sure exactly where they are, and it doesn't really matter in any case because the friendship is what's actually important.
Only six of the thirty kids in the cast end the manga in anything I would call a tidy pair. Everything else continues in a state of intense ambiguity where nothing is sure except that they Care About Some Of These Other Kids A Whole Lot, Maybe With Pants Feelings But Who Really Knows. Natsu happily pines after safely unattainable Arashi while accidentally becoming best friends with him instead; Ran has a perfectly fine co-dictatorship-with-benefits situation going on but the manga is way more interested in the fact that she's literally the only person her architect rival has ever cared about as a human; Hana and Aramaki both possess the fatal combination of being attractive, competent AND deeply emotionally needy and thus manage to trigger sparkly eyes and dokidoki hearts in literally everybody they meet (who doesn't want to murder them). That's fine! Go to town! It's the post-apocalypse and you're all seventeen and traditional monogamy has no place in the new world anyway; just ask Ayu, who's got a shortlist of candidates to co-parent her first and second children.
Anyway, for the five people who've read the manga, I have some more Shipping Opinions and you should talk to me about them!
Ran/Nijiko: now and forever my ultimate 7 Seeds ship. I shrieked when Ran gave Nijiko a Significant Seashell, I screamed when Nijiko tenderly bound Ran's wounds using the bite of a creepy giant ant and then supported her all the way back to the surface, I haven't been this gay since Utena
Natsu/Semimaru: I played myself; I swore i wasn't going to ship it, and then I wrote myself into doing it anyway on a yuletide fic from a few years ago. Honestly, the thing that sold me is that Semimaru is the only person we ever see Natsu ever be deliberately rude to, and I think that's important in a relationship generally and for Natsu specifically!
Haru/Koruri: this is consistently very sweet, but the point where it got really interesting to me is when Absolute Nonviolence Haru finds out Koruri participated in the collection execution of their terrible guide and blue screens a little, and Koruri's like 'it's ok if you're scared of me! [sweet smile]' and flies off ....
Aramaki: man, how many people have proposed to Aramaki already? Ayu, Gengoro, Hana and Arashi have all definitely made their play and I'm pretty sure Tsunobata's in the running as well; honestly, you could pitch me Aramaki/Literally Anyone Else and I would agree that it's probably canon. He was alone for fifteen years, he can make up for lost time by having five spouses now, that's completely fine.
Ran/Botan - Ran/Nijiko will always be first in my heart, but I absolutely cannot ignore the potential inherent in “I never thought I’d be scolded by an older woman again” and you can’t ask me to.
Natsu/Matsuri - Matsuri is 100% the kind of person who bangs her best friend at every sleepover, convinces them both it doesn’t count as cheating on their boyfriends, and blithely continues to call herself straight for the next ten years.
Chisa/Ban - OK, I realize these two people have never actually had a single conversation on the page. However, much as I love Chisa, left to her own devices she’s just going to reinvent politics and capitalism. A distraction is necessary. Why not fling her against the only person against whom her absolutely matchless social skills are completely useless! Ban is a complete cryptid. Chisa has no effective offense or defense. I feel like her intrinsic discomfiture at the state of his hair might make her lose her composure for the first time in the entire manga. Please, somebody, trap them together in a cave for me until ‘accidentally in love’ starts playing. Let’s make it happen.
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I don't know if that's enough to make me read thirty-five volumes of manga when I am behind on everything else about my life already, but I still really approve of it.
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I just really love the variety and richness of the relationships as portrayed, how the story emphasizes that the development of connection and community is as or more important to survival as the skills of acquiring food and shelter and disaster planning etc. One long, hilarious heroic conga line involves Person A in peril, Person B setting off into ill-advised peril to rescue them, Person C who hates Person A but cares deeply about Person B setting off as well because they can't let Person B go alone, Person D who couldn't care less about Person A or B but deeply cares about Person C joining the party as well to take care of them ... this happens like four times with Person D facepalming ever more consistently. The grand finale involves thirty kids in an underground shelter in small separated groups, all coaching each other through the different skills each group will need to escape and shouting support to friends and strangers over walkie-talkie*, and it's vastly logistically convoluted and so emotionally satisfying.
*and by walkie-talkie, I mean inexplicably communication-enabled network of industrial roombas.
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That is so stereotypically not a feature of most post-apocalyptic stories (I think it's becoming more common, but I still perk up when I hear about it, which means it can't yet be the default), I'm delighted. Also your description of the finale.
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o_O
O_o
AND NO ONE TOLD ME?!?!
NOR TOLD ME THE MANGA FINISHED?!?!!!
.......
The interwebs have Failed Me. AGAIN.
..............
(Now mind, I haven't gone back to it since the translations were up to, what, around volume 15. So I've been waiting for a while.)
(STILL!)
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(the anime, for the record, goes up to volume 15 thus far and crams approximately a volume into every episode .... feels a bit like the Reader's Digest version.)
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(Did not actually get to this this weekend, because we discovered the new DC Super Hero Girls (rebooted by Lauren Faust of MLP:FIM) is also finally on Netflix. Plus the five play-dates.)
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Wow, no, we certainly can't.
This... sounds like SO MUCH but AMAZING.