Cage of Eden #2

Volume 2 of Yamada Yoshinobu's Cage of Eden sets an urgent, unsettling tone right from the cover: two young women — one in a school uniform, the other in a blue flight-attendant suit — surge forward with wide eyes and open mouths against a sky blazing red with fire and smoke, a crashed aircraft smoldering behind them. The raw desperation on their faces and the claw-mark styling of the title lettering (complete with blood-red spatters) signal exactly the kind of white-knuckle survival tension this series delivers. Published by Soleil Manga in 2013, this French edition is a fine entry point into one of manga's grittier takes on the stranded-on-a-dangerous-island premise.