Bryce's Blog

This seem to be going pretty well, huh?

For a quite a while, I was only posting weekly reviews of a show I was following, but, as I have mentioned before, I had finally got my hands on some books that I had been looking to get for quite some time.

So far, I have covered two of them, and three remain.

Today, I will be reviewing one of those three, which is called Cage of Eden Volume 17 by Yoshinobu Yamada.

As I have given a series synopsis in an earlier post, I will not go over it again.

Yarai and his group have finally reached the place where Akira and group reside, which causes some excitement, and even some surprises, among the two groups.

However, things do not remain so peaceful when Yarai and Akira engage in a fight that neither of them wants, and another threat rears its head that may cause further chaos among the surviving members of YaraiÔÇÖs and AkiraÔÇÖs groups.

After having not read the series for quite some time, seeing as it has been a little over a year since I read the previous volume, it should be quite normal for me to be lost about what was going on.

On the other hand, these reviews that I do are there to help me as much as I hope they help others, even if what I present may not be the best out there.

Fortunately, because of my ability to look up my own thoughts on previous volumes and having actually read this, I kind of liked this book.

I really liked how I was able to quickly get back into the series, despite the fact that a lot of time has past since I read the previous volume.

While some of you guys may not be that impressed, considering that I have been able to follow the Railgun manga publication from Seven Seas, which sees only one new volume per year, I can assure you guys that this is not case.

After all, the manga for A Certain Scientific Railgun is still ongoing and Seven Seas caught up to Japan, whereas Cage of Eden ended its run roughly three or so years ago and Kodansha has only released up to volume 19 of 21 volumes.

I wish all series were more like this.

Unfortunately, with the limitations of human memory, and that many of us tend to be lazy, this is kind of hard to pull off, which is why I never really wrote true sequel to the stories I sell online.

Many of them may be linked, such as characters talking about events or characters from other stories, but my stories never really required knowledge from previously published work.

Series like this one, however, do tend to require knowledge from what has happened in previous volumes, though Pandora Hearts is one of those series where skipping any volume is going to lead to confusion.

Because of this fact, I can see why it is important to write series in a way in which things will be missed from skipping earlier volumes, otherwise early volumes are not going to sell that well, at least if the writer behind it is competent enough to do it right.

I also liked how Mariya looked at things in a realistic manner when Yarai handed over what he found at the lighthouse that he and his group explored back in volume 13.

Many times in my life, my elders either keep telling me to think positively or that I should have an optimistic view of things.

However, optimism has its limits, as I have discussed in a post back in December of last year, and precautions must be taken against the risks.

In the case of this volume, when Yarai handed over the hard drive he found, which is probably a HDD, instead of a SSD, Mariya noted that the hard drive looked quite old and that he may not have the necessary things to connect the drive to his computer.

This really reflects things that I sometimes encounter when dealing with people who know that I have extensive knowledge of computers.

Just because we are handed a hard drive to extract data, does not mean that it is possible to do so. Hard drives go bad for various reasons, and when they do, it becomes harder to be able to retrieve the data from it.

Not only can the hard drive go bad, but it can also be hard finding the right cables to connect the hard drive to a computer.

For example, if I were handed a hard drive that mainly connected to a computer through IDE cables, I would not really be able to do so, because IDE has been replaced by SATA, and the easiet way to fix that is to buy a hard drive enclosure that will work with both IDE and SATA drives.

Unfortunately, in the world where Mariya and the rest of the main live, one cannot go out and get an enclosure that will work with the drive like we can in our cities or through the worldÔÇÖs largest and most widely used network, known as the Internet.

I would definitely be hosed if I were in MariyaÔÇÖs shoes, because, like most tech experts, I have no idea how to make hard drive enclosures like how one of AkiraÔÇÖs teachers could seemingly make explosives in no time at all from what was available on the island.

Another nice thing was how MamiÔÇÖs premonition of Yarai and Akira was explored a bit.

Back in the previous volume, I was wondering whether or not MamiÔÇÖs premonition was really about a fight to the death, as it seemed to be, or something entirely, seeing as Mami did not think that the reunion would go too well.

Fortunately, that was answered in this volume at the time that Yarai and Akira engaged in combat to the death.

While this was not entirely unexpected, due to MamiÔÇÖs premonition, things looked vastly different than what Mami saw, which may mean that this particular reunion was not what she saw.

Considering that it has been a while since I read the series, I do not exactly remember when the events of MamiÔÇÖs premonition occurs, but if I had to take a guess, I would say that there may either be a second fight between Yarai and Akira or the new threat that cropped up will lead to what Mami had seen.

Still, I am kind interested in finding out if MamiÔÇÖs premonition will come to pass, or not occur at all.

The thing that I liked the most though is how YaraiÔÇÖs past was explored.

Over the course of the series, Yarai has had that vibe of being one of those people that should not be associated with in every day life, yet he has been very loyal and caring about each person in his group, going so far as to protecting his comrades when they need it and even analyzes everything around.

Seeing this kind of contrast, I was wondering what YaraiÔÇÖs life was like prior to being stranded on the island.

Here, Yoshinobu decided to go over YaraiÔÇÖs past, where we discover that every woman that Yarai came to view as a mother figure ended up dying on him when he still needed them, and that those women were the only ones that really understood him, aside from the women in his group, with Saki Segawa being the one who seems to understand what Yarai is going through the most, at least until Akira came along.

After having read this, I understand why people have come to fear Yarai, even though there is nothing about him that people should be scared of, and I also understand the pain he is going through from having to fight Akira.

After all, if I had to fight to the death with somebody that I consider a dear friend, regardless of whether they are male or female, I would not be happy about it, because without them, there would be one less person around to help me when I really need it.

Of course, in YaraiÔÇÖs case, I think his pain in fighting with Akira is because Akira was somebody who accepted him for who he was, not what he appeared to be or what group he was assosciated with, unlike some people who will no longer consider you a friend the moment you leave their group (e.g. a church).

As a result, I actually feel both a bit sorry for what Yarai has gone through and I am happy to see that he was able to still turn out to be a decent person, as many experts out in the world will say that people are Yarai have been setup to fail, much like many people generally think that age and gender alone is what makes them weak and must be protected.

I sure hope that Yarai does not have to kill his dear friend, and the fact that Yoshinobu Yamada makes me feel this way does deserve some praise, though not as much the praise I would give the staff behind A Certain Scientific Railgun S, considering that I felt more for Mikoto Misaka in anime version of RailgunÔÇÖs Sisters arc than the manga version of the same arc.

Outside of those things, I cannot really think of anything else that I particularly liked.

The fact that I was able to quickly get back into the series after being away for so long and that characters took a realistic perspective with technology, as well as the fact that I could feel for YaraiÔÇÖs situation, made this volume rather enjoyable.

Although I liked the book, there some issues.

However, aside from a few possible minor issues, such as typos, nothing really seemed to bug me too much.

As a result, I will have to say that there is nothing worth mentioning.

Considering that there is quite a bit to like and not much to hate, this was definitely worth reading.

I recommend this to fans of survival stories and Cage of Eden.

As for everyone else, I recommend reading the previous volumes before starting this one, especially if you have not followed the series for a while.

What are your thoughts on Cage of Eden Volume 17? Did you like it or hate it? Was there something you liked or hated that went unmentioned? Feel free to comment.