Cage of Eden

Cage of Eden (original title エデンの檻, Eden no Ori) is a Manga by Yoshinobu Yamada which can be summarized as "Lost, but as a manga."

A class of Japanese high schoolers are on their way back from a trip to Guam when the plane hits a freak turbulence and crash-lands on an unknown island. The place turns out to have an ecosystem stuck some 50 million years in the past, with all manner of dangerous megafauna.

Class clown Akira, who had initially found himself isolated, manages to gather a small group of survivors—a flight attendant, his childhood friend, a reclusive geek, and a friendly delinquent. Together they try to survive in the hostile environment.

However, the most dangerous creatures on the island may turn out to be of the bipedal kind...

There is now a Character Sheet that could use some love.

Tropes used in Cage of Eden include:
  • Absolute Cleavage: Rei.
  • The Ace: Yarai. He's not completely perfect, though, thanks to poor leadership skills and a complete inability to take anyone else's orders...both of which traits, coincidentally, also prevent him from hogging too much of the limelight.
  • A Child Shall Lead Them: A group of adult survivors is under the leadership of a 10-year-old girl. Who's, uh, not actually a girl...
  • Action Girl: Miyauchi, full stop. The other girls aren't quite at her level, but they hold themselves pretty well for people without formal training.
  • Adults Are Useless: With the single exception of Oomori, who has useful first aid skills.
    • Also, all male adults are creepy perverts. The school boys are perverts too but the adults are far more likely to take it too far. Of course, the age difference between luster and lusted-after often doesn't help in the creepiness stakes.
    • Kokone Ugen, the science teacher, is an exception to both the "creepy pervert" and "useless" rules. Although he hasn't had too much time to show off, he has used his skills to make a few good explosives.
    • Yashiro Daigo also has useful skills and knowledge, although he has something of an attitude and is easily mistaken for a Yakuza.
  • Altum Videtur: "Isurugi Miina, Requiescat in pace"
  • Anachronism Stew: It's noted early on that the extinct animals encountered are from too far apart in the fossil record both chronologically and geographically (the very first chapter has fauna both from 57 million years ago and from 2 million years ago; by volume 5 there's been everything from recently-extinct birds to triassic-era mammalian reptiles and amphibians except dinosaurs) to make sense on its own. This is something that gets discussed in-universe as well, when trying to figure out the nature of the island.
    • Justified. As of recently it is discovered that all of the extinct animals were actually genetically engineered by humans of various nationalities.
  • Animal-Eared Headband: Yarai makes Kurusu wear some, telling her they'd protect her from animal attacks, which she believed at first (he reveals the deception soon enough, though).
  • Apocalyptic Log: Eiken's video camera serves as exposition to what the rest of the survivors had been up to since the plane crashed. It spoke for itself.
  • Attempted Rape: Being a beautiful girl is unlucky in Cage of Eden where there's a chance a horny bastard wants to rape them.
  • Back from the Dead: Subverted with Kouhei on the “cursed mountain”.
    • Though a recent chapter reveals he wasn't as dead as previously assumed.
  • Badass: Yarai. Akira qualifies too.
    • Action Girl Miyauchi
    • Though especially Yarai.
      • To make it clear, he once had to fend off three chalicotheres. While carrying someone over his shoulder. With car keys.
      • The only damage he took was from being smashed into a tree to stop them from attacking the rest of his group. It broke three of his ribs. His response was roughly "Pfft, only three ribs"?
      • He made them run like pansies by ripping off one of their claws.
  • Bald of Evil: The artist's utterly bloody terrifying impression of the extinct giant ape, Gigantopithecus.
  • Batman Gambit: Akira pulls one off in order to find out who hit Miina and left her to die.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Kurusu-sensei doesn't suffer any permanent damage from the eye disease despite being the first to contract it.
    • Averted many times over the course of the manga, though; many of the girls take bruises and cuts during battles with the wildlife, and many more are killed in horrible fashions.
  • Big Badass Wolf: Ernest.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Yarai vs Cerberus
  • Big Eater: Akira.
  • Bland-Name Product: Yotsubishi Heavy Industries is a spoof of an actual Japanese heavy machinery company, Mitsubishi (it also does a lot of other things). Hence the logo with four diamonds ("mitsu" = three --> "yotsu" = four).
  • Broken Ace: Kouhei would be a classic example, a smart, athletic, good-looking, and all around wonderful guy who starts off by killing the pilot during a mass panic and slowly goes off the deep end from there.
  • The Cassandra: Subverted with Mami. Her own group doesn't believe her real premonition and is revealed to be a fake to Akira's group. Certain "coincidences" are starting to change everyone's opinions about her.
  • Chaste Hero: Despite Kotomi undressing and flat out attempting to force him to have sex with her, Akira refuses, simultaneously putting Kotomi in her place, while also wondering about what Rion would think if she were to walk in on them in the meanwhile. However, he still displays Chivalrous Pervert tendencies.
    • He's arguably a full blown Chivalrous Pervert, he's just trying to stay loyal to his crush and childhood friend Rion. It helps that they've made it pretty clear to one another that they like each other, from as early as the first 10 chapters no less.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Miina (or her body double) wasn't even properly introduced, yet the double can be seen running, back toward the camera, during Eiken's video recording of the airplane riot.
  • Clueless Chick Magnet: Akira.
    • Mariya too, surprisingly enough. When the girls had a little game where they said which boy they'd like to spend the night with, he got six votes out of sixteen.
  • Crapsack World
  • Cute Little Fangs: Rei
  • Darkest Hour: They've finally come up with a decent plan to stop Cerberus ... and another monster appears.
    • Subverted, at the moment. Kouhei keeps said monster from ruining the plan by dragging it underground (though no one sees him properly. And the people used as bait are burning their shirts to get Cerberus' attention back.
  • Dead Little Brother: Averted with Rei; her brother is shown to be successfully recovering.
  • Delinquents: Both friendly and unfriendly ones.
  • Dojikko: Oomori was one at the beginning of the series, but has since Took a Level in Badass.
  • Death World: The island, of course.
  • Determinator: Akira, and his team by extension.
  • Dirty Coward: Suzuki. Though he seems to be getting better, if Chapter 150 is any indication.
  • Easily Forgiven: Never mind that Kouhei kills a good number of other teens in his group and has others in the group adopt his same mentality and kill the rest, Akira still sees him as his absolute bestest best buddy.
    • Well, not really. Akira's inner monologue reveals that he considers Kouhei's actions to be unforgivable; the malaise and conflict that would have inevitably resulted from the cognitive dissonance had Kouhei (who despite being aware by that point of how much he fucked up was still basically an insane, brain-damaged murderer) joined the group was thus conveniently resolved. And even once the reader discovers that Kouhei is still alive, he doesn't feel he deserves to show himself to Akira.
  • Everything Is Trying to Kill You: On this island, even the flora is dangerous. Plants almost killed the group twice.
    • And of course, one of the biggest dangers to the group of humans is themselves. People who land on this island tend to become insane and lose all sense of humanity for no explained reason.
  • Everything's Worse with Bears: Especially when they're gigantic with long arms and legs.
  • Eye Scream: The characters fall victim to a disease that causes their eyes to become bloodshot, and in the terminal stages to become so swollen with blood that they burst.
    • The giant bird rips out and eats the eye of its still living prey.
  • Five-Man Band: The first five people who get to be together for the first few chapters.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Well, there's not exactly very many friendly beasts on the island. But the one species so far that hasn't tried to kill the humans, the little flying squirrel things, really like Oomori, to the point that one has willingly become her pet.
    • Also, Akira and the alpha wolf of the resident wolf pack seem to have reached an understanding of sorts--the wolves don't hurt the humans, the humans don't hurt the wolves, and they all work together to stop the bears. Well, they would, naturally.
  • Genius Bruiser: Yarai himself.
  • Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Mami to Yarai, after Yarai has a Heroic BSOD. It snaps him out of it.
  • The Glomp: Whenever Rion wants to express her happiness for finding out that Akira is still alive, she does this by literally jumping onto his upper body.
  • Half-Identical Twins: The Narumi twins, Kairi and Airi.
  • Hallucinations: What happened to Akira and most of his group due to acute mountain sickness.
  • Harmful to Minors: Miina (the fake one) witnessed her group's assault and murder of Towa.
  • Hot Teacher: Miss Kurusu.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Kouichi Yarai, the school delinquent, and Motoko Kurusu, the teacher, who has effectively become his tag-along. Played up when he carries her in chapter 19 and the Japanese cover for volume 8.
  • Improvised Weapon User: Yarai's specialty, with particular favourites being his set of car keys and collection of five-hundred-yen coins.
  • Infinite Laptop: Mariya's laptop never runs out of juice, even though he spends most of his waking hours using it. In chapter 54, it is finally subverted when the mystery of its power source is revealed to be a simple foot pedal peripheral that Mariya conveniently took to Guam instead of power plug adaptors. Where he kept the power adapter is another question.
  • Intimate Healing: Rion gets an unconscious Akira to ingest the remedy to the eye disease by chewing it and regurgitating it into his mouth.
  • Jerkass: Suzuki, to the point where fans were actually happy when he was attacked by the bird.
    • Several fans were disappointed in chapter 93 when he was attacked by ANOTHER species of bird, but was then spat out.
  • Jerkass Facade: Yarai. He was always a nice guy, but because of his looks, everyone thought he was a jerk and a deliquent, so he decided to play that role. Only his mother and Kurusu-sensei treated him for being him, rather than going by his looks.
  • Kiss of Life: After rescuing Rion from drowning, Akira has to practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her.
    • Rion later returns the favor by giving him the antidote to a poisonous berry through mouth-to-mouth.
  • Kuudere: Yarai, see Jerkass Facade.
  • Laser-Guided Karma / Karmic Death: It’s a sound tactic when surviving in Cage of Eden to not do anything evil. Cases include:
    • Yoshimoto and Mukouda steal the raft in order to reach a distant island, leaving everyone to die. Turns out it was just a mirage, and they’re quickly eaten.
    • A group of men that raped and killed Oomori’s senpai get their just deserts when several groups of giant predators devour them all because they were attracted by the blood of the people they just killed a few minutes ago.
    • Kouhei. After realizing he has crossed the Moral Event Horizon, he goes on a killing spree and convinces four of his group to adopt the same mentality as he did. Once he meets Akira, he regrets what he has done. As a flash flood threatens everyone’s safety, the group of followers disregard his advice and drown. Kouhei leads Akira and his group to safety, and subverting the trope, he chose to stay behind.
    • Kotomi. Manipulates men and attempted to choke Akira to death after he rejected her. She falls off the cliff behind Akira and dies.
    • Ryouchi. Manipulates women and attempted rape. Gets manhandled by giant condors.
    • Nakamura, Mami the Clairvoyant's manager, and the rest of their group. They make sure their leader's predictions come true by killing some of Akira's group. Then after their attempts to slow down Akira's group and leave them to die, all of them are eaten by crocodiles, exactly as Mami predicted.
  • The Leader: Akira's a mix of Type III and IV. He often preaches by example, and one character even explicitly tells him (in confidence) that he actually induces courage in others.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: Yarai and Sengoku, which we have Nishikori to "thank" for.
  • Like Brother and Sister: Akira and Rion, though the UST between them is obvious to everyone else.
    • Both are starting to acknowledge their feelings for each other in the more recent chapter, so this might be subverted during the course of the series.
    • They have displayed outright affections for each other very early in the story, with each initiating their own kiss scene (even if it was to save the other's life, its easy to tell that they wanted it). Its just that, whenever asked directly, they deny it.
  • Living on Borrowed Time: Kurusu-sensei, thanks to Mortal Wound Reveal -- she's however unaware of it.
    • Or is she?
  • The Load: Mostly averted in Akira's group, as no one wants to slow down Akira and are all willing to do whatever they can to contribute. However as Tooru pointed out, the lack of someone to go "I'm tired, let's stop walking," almost took the lives of everyone in Akira's group when they attempted to climb a mountain too fast.
  • Lolicon: More than a few on the island—all Played for Laughs, of course. There's the perverted monk, who lusts after the schoolgirls (and became a monk in the first place to dodge an Enjo Kosai scandal), but won't even look at the college girls or adults. Then there are three of Nishikori's men, who are convinced to turn on their Complete Monster boss because Miina flashed her panties at them. Miina claims that most of the world's perverts are lolicons, so "He who controls the lolicons controls the world."
  • Lost World: What the heroes have to survive in.
  • Love Letter Lunacy: Let's just say that a group of delinquents mistook a locker that they thought was Yarai's and go on from there.
  • Mad Scientist: Kokonoe Ugen, the science teacher. He was known for blowing up his classroom on a regular basis.
  • Male Gaze
  • Mega Corp: Spiral.
  • Meganekko: Kusuru-sensei.
  • Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Nishikiori, full stop.
  • Murder Makes You Crazy: This is what breaks the ace, Kouhei. Well, this combined with a head injury that damages his ability to feel responsible for his own actions... After killing the pilot during a panic, he feels incredibly guilty and paranoid. When one of the girls he's traveling with claims she saw him murder the pilot, he kills her to protect his secret, and then gets told that she had been manipulated into saying that and hadn't known all along. Realizing that he'd murdered her pointlessly, combined with the brain damage which made it impossible for him to 'feel people looking at him', makes him go off the deep end and kill more people, even when it serves no purpose. He even bullies and tricks the other students with him into doing the same thing so that they end up crazy like him (minus the head injury).
  • Nerd Glasses: Mariya.
  • Never Found the Body: Zaji
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: Several of the survivors treat their predicament as a chance to practice survival of the fittest. Hades beats them all, though. Except for even more Complete Monster Nishikiori.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Oomori can apparently read Latin, something even Mariya can't do, but she hasn't told anyone due to self-confidence issues.
  • Outdoor Bath Peeping: Akira gets a glimpse of Oomori bathing in a river. He later gets a clear view on Mami, as well.
  • Panty Shot: Rion and Oomori frequently expose their panties.
    • Two different guys have seen that student council vice president Hatsuse Shizuka wears bikini panties tied at the sides rather than having an elastic waistband (she didn't show them deliberately). Both felt that this style creates a very, very sexy contrast to her quiet, studious personality.
  • People Jars/Designer Babies: All the extinct animals in the island.
  • Pedophile Priest: Seigou, though he's technically more of an ephebophile (and a relatively harmless one at that).
  • Photographic Memory: Hatsuse Shizuka
  • Poor Communication Kills: Averted; as Yarai's group begins to succumb to illness, he has his lackeys force Akira's group out of the cave that the latter group had discovered and were both sharing. Akira, however, realizes that Yarai is trying to quarantine his own group to prevent the spreading of the sickness, and has his people move out of the cave obediently. Turns out the sickness isn't exactly contagious, though...
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
  • Recycled in Space: Lost: The Manga, at least at first glance. Should be noted that this is in no way detrimental to the series however.
  • Rescue Romance: Isurugi Miina seems to have started falling for her body double, the boy typically referred to as Miina after being saved by him more than once. Akira and Yarai also tend to attract admirers this way.
  • The Rival: Kouhei and Yarai both fit. Kouhei especially, when he teams up with Akira to become Back-to-Back Badasses.
  • Sacrificial Lion: Zaji.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Two new characters who showed up to Akira's camp act this way towards their previous group, after being completely disgusted by the behavior of their new leader.[1] They call him a tyrant.
  • Schoolgirl Lesbians: Oomori became a flight attendant so she could be with her former senpai, whom she had a crush on in school. She claims it was due to the fact that she went all girls schools and is now interested in males like normal. Probably won't stop the Yuri fanboys though.
  • Secretly Dying: Inverted, only those close to Kurusu-sensei know that she's dying, but Kurusu-sensei does not.
    • It is revealed later on that she might actually know that she's dying.
  • Serial Escalation: The new monster that appeared AFTER cerberus.
  • Sexy Stewardess: Oomori.
  • The Short Guy with Glasses: Mariya
  • Shout-Out: Possibly unintentional, but recently, a girl on the kendo team, named Kirino, has been introduced.
  • Shown Their Work: Everywhere. In addition to the extremely well-researched extinct animals, the author displays extreme medical knowledge in the character's injuries. What's more, the villains take advantage of groupthink and other psychological tricks to control their followers. The characters even reference numerous real-life historical events when trying to explain things to the others.
  • Tap on the Head: Happens to Akira on at least two occasions.
    • Averted elsewhere. More than one character has received brain damage from "taps."
  • Teacher-Student Romance: Appears to be one between Kurusu-sensei and Yarai.
  • These Hands Have Killed: Kouhei, after stabbing the pilot.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Just about everyone, and especially Oomori (who at first was scared of a very small furry animal, and later takes a stab wound from Kouhei and then tries to write it off like it's nothing.) Not to mention she willingly swims out to save Mariya from drowning.
    • Mariya, after Zaji's death.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Yarai.
  • The Vamp: Kawana Kotomi
  • Victorious Childhood Friend: Rion.
  • WHAM Chapter:
    • Chapter 61: It's not an island
    • Chapter 82: Zaji dies, Morita Makoto (the guy with the camera) and the real Isurugi Miina are still alive, and their group is heading to a structure Morita saw in one of his photos...a seemingly manmade structure...
    • Chapter 127: The entire island is a research facility.
      • Rather was a research facility - until something went terribly wrong.
    • Chapter 136: The island is part of Japan, and closer to mainland Japan than they thought.
    • Chapter 143: Something was hibernating under the tower with traps and it's now awake and hungry. What is is? A giant mutant Cerberus.
    • Chapter 147: The fake Miina is swallowed alive by the Cerberus.
    • Chapter 149: There is more than one mutant.
    • Chapter 150: Someone's taking care of the second mutant. It's KOUHEI. If that wasn't bad enough, HADES is also back.
  • White-Haired Pretty Boy: Yarai, although somewhat subverted in that so far he doesn't stand out as particularly villainous.
  • Waif Prophet: The real "Miina"
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: "Isurugi Miina".
  • Why Did It Have To Be Bugs?: Maya Miyauchi, normally a Badass Action Girl does not take well to giant dragonflies. (These dragonflies are big enough that Mariya says their bites could even be somewhat dangerous to humans.) And then there are the huge poisonous ticks, and a foot-long centipede that wanted to crawl up inside her sleeve....
  • The Wiki Rule: Eden no Ori Wiki
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: The hallucination was so powerful for Akira that signs of actually being strangled showed up on his neck.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: Rion.
  1. ↑ Their camp was on the verge of dying from an illness, only to be cured by a so-called doctor. The camp's leader asked the doctor to save his daughter's life, but in order to usurp him as the new leader, the doctor left the daughter, as well as the leader himself, to die. And laughed. Pictures of her suggest the girl wasn't yet into her teens.
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