Revenge is a dish best served… naked?
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Mitsu Izumi
Translation: Tetsuichiro Miyaki
Adaptation: Annette Roman
What They Say
Awyn and Vyrde are engaged in a savage battle with angel Vul when a mysterious young—yet powerful—boy appears on the scene. What is the child’s relationship to Vyrde? Do demons even have relations? Then, because the other angels aren’t conveniently showing up for Vyrde to slay, she follows their trail to a neighboring nation embroiled in regicide. Will tenderhearted Awyn be willing to fight back against a cute young princess—who happens to be wielding an angel-powered weapon capable of annihilating both him and Vyrde?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
For all of Vyrde’s bravado and anger, Awyn and her can’t stand against the angel who arrived at the end of the first volume. He is simply too strong, too high and mighty. He screams end boss to me. The protagonists are rescued at the last moment by an anachronistic boy named Iola. He appears to be of the same make as Vyrde, arrives wearing headphones, and seems to know Awyn yet for some reason Awyn doesn’t know him. The mystery deepens.
Even with hints Awyn might be some chosen hero, he still comes off as a bland protagonist. Vyrde is the real star here, full of conflicting emotions and a vicious desire for revenge. She doesn’t care about her little garden and it’s inhabitant’s well-being so much as the fact that the world was once hers and she wants it back. She wants it badly enough to execute every single of one of her former friends, and from what we’ve seen of them we have very little reason to think Vyrde’s in the wrong.
Take Vul, for instance. She orchestrated a terrible revolution just to watch the humans scramble around killing each other. She is remorseless, shameless, and without redemption. We’re shown that at one time she and Maria (Vyrde) were friends, but in what world was that? Certainly not this ant farm they’re fighting over.
Shockingly, Awyn’s desire to save the princess and stop the needless deaths doesn’t go his way. Characters we’re introduced to in this volume that appear important are culled in a terrible, violent and pointless manner away from the major conflict. Any attempt to reason with or save those tricked into violence is met with more violence. Awyn often feels like a character who fell out of a hopeful shounen manga and found himself is a nihilistic seinen series. He is Vyrde’s tool, not the other way around. That’s what makes this whole series interesting. Revenge shouldn’t feel good, but when Vyrde succeeds in taking out the truly despicable Vul it just feels right.
I’m left wondering why Vyrde was wronged and to what end. What made these friendships go so south? The answer lies in whatever happened with her sister, who is mentioned in passing. Hopefully, the next volume delves deeper into her past.
You know, I generally like the artwork in this series. It is uniformly highly detailed and easy to follow, with the only confusion arising during a few of the close-ups during the action scenes. What doesn’t work as well are the spine-breaking poses some of the ladies find themselves in. (Like Vul on the cover. Hips don’t work like that!) Anatomy is often the first to fall in the battle for fanservice.
Viz includes a color page at the start of the volume, and there are a few bonus gag strips and a world map to close out the volume.
In Summary
7th Garden continues to be a visual delight, for some more than others depending on your level of tolerance for sexual pandering for straight men. Beautiful scenery and bloody violence take turns, with the female characters running about the scenes of carnage in outfits that would make real angels blush. Vyrde’s mission to exact revenge on her former angelic friends drags Awyn through the story, at a great danger to himself. Overall I’m left wondering at the origins of the conflict between the angels, even if I can likely guess the true origins of their world. There’s always something very compelling about revenge stories, especially when it looks like the revenge seeker might get their way.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A –
Packaging Grade: B +
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: October 4th, 2016
MSRP: $9.99
