Maturity of a Mangaka - Basara and 7 Seeds

In my previous post, I did a review and essay on Tamura Yumi's 7 Seeds. After I finished reading it, it was brought to my attention (via the internet) that she had another successful manga that I hadn't read before, Basara. While 7 Seeds is intended for an older audience, Basara was obviously intended for the shojou crowd. Basara consists of 27 tankoban written from 1990 - 1998 and with my current situation, it was not so easy to find it as a complete set, so I searched the internet for an online reader site that was able to deliver the goods for me.

The Unexpected Depth of 7 Seeds

Quite honestly, I am not really sure how to start of this blog post. I wish to clear up something really quick. I believe that have given off the impression that I only enjoy seinen or shonen manga. This is not entirely the case. While, yes, I do prefer these genres on a personal level, I am open to all types and genres. While I have yet to get into some of them, I have every intention of writing about every genre. Which shall start now!

A couple weeks ago, I had a friend randomly send me a message asking me if I was reading 7 Seeds, by Tamura Yumi and I had to honestly answer no and that it was on my list of "manga to read" (which basically gets updated every other day). The truth of the matter is that I had seen the manga at Book-Off for months now, but I looked at the art style and it kinda turned me off to the manga. I know my mother always told me, "Don't judge a book by its cover", but I was judging the art style. Tamura draws in a VERY old shojou style, I'm talking Sailor Moon style, which, while I was in middle and high school, was a style I was attracted to, now I am not.

After my friend asked me, I decided to check it out so that we could talk about it. I was so surprised about the depth of this manga. While it is a josei manga, that means it comes with emotional twisting drama and characters, it is also ment for older girls and young women and it dives into a theme that I haven't really seen any other josei or shoujo dive it, the apocalypse. After a little research, I learned that this manga has been running 10 years strong, which is only a little shorter than Naruto, and that it's an award winner. It's the 2007 Shogakukan Manga Award winner for shoujo manga and it is well deserved.

WARNING! THIS ESSASY CONTAINS SERIOUS SPOILERS!