Manga Primer: Mother Keeper

Mother Keeper by Kaili Sorano was a shounen manga running from 2005 until 2014. While the series was technically localised, the localisation was digital-only and at a time when that wasn’t something typical of the manga industry. It was also shortly before the company shut down for good, with only 3 volumes having been translated and released. IP rights for series that were hosted on the service have a rather complex goings-on that make it difficult to know how rights will progress in the future.

Wait, go back to how I read this

Oh y’know

Mangadex recently updated with the JManga release, which has also now been backed-up to Archive.org, so I recommend reading there until chapter 37. While the rest of the chapters are on MangaDex, some chapters feature premature uploads that caused pages to be missing from the mangadex release. To get the complete version of these chapters, please read them on Sense Scans.

Content Warnings

It’s been a fair while since I read Mother Keeper, I’m gonna admit that. I’m doing this purely from memory, so I apologise if I miss anything. Spoilers will be blocked out like this so that if you want to read them you just highlight the black box or hovering over it.

Content	Context
Blood and Gore	Frequently and highly loved by Sorano
Child Death	Turkes kills children on his first appearance
Child Soldiers	COSMOS is primarily made up of teenagers.
Drug Use	Syal was drugged against her will while in Silas's fighting ring.
Human Trafficking	Syal was trafficked before she became a keeper, being forced to fight in an underground fighting ring. Zelik is heavily involved in trafficking and Silas offers to buy him.
Loss of Control	It is possible for all keepers to be controlled via remote to force them to act against their will.
Murder and Violence	Frequent
Rape	Mentioned. Silas threatens to have his men rape Zelik if he wont give him the information he wants, causing Zelik to panic.
Torture	Characters get tortured, it is on screen.

What’s The Story?

Mother Keeper is set in a post-apocalyptic world, split between the utopian city of Eden and the world outside of it. Like all these series, the world outside the utopia is hellish, and the people out there have had enough of being oppressed. Resistance groups have sprung up and among them is Ricalna Forde, a teen rebel. However, on an attack on the city’s central computer, Ricalna is captured and turned into a cyborg to aid the government. He no longer has full control of himself and can be forced to fight his former friends. Worse than that, turns out he’s been missing for a decade and his sister has grown up with a thirst for revenge.

Eden may be bad, but it becomes clear that there are issues within the resistance groups and they may be being used by someone else without realising.

Cast

	Ricalna Forde, our protagonist. Starting the manga at around 15-19, he's captured by Eden and turned into a Keeper (a security cyborg) in a process that took 10 years to complete. He's still young and naïve, trusting everyone and only ever wanting a better world. He and his sister grew up in the care of Graham Gregson, the leader of COSMOS.
	Lennard "Renna" Forde, Ricalna's younger sister. After Ricalna was assumed to have died on a mission, Lennard started training to take revenge on Eden. A highly-skilled fighter who trusts no one.
	Syal Fineded, a Keeper. Syal is loyal to Eden but revenge hungry. She wants to kill the people that hurt her loved ones before she became a keeper.
	Lint Kaiser, another Keeper. Loyal to Eden but particularly to "Mother", the central computer.
	Jim Cleeas, the head scientist on the Keeper project. Extremely unethical and tends to torture Ricalna. She has a soft spot for Syal, but is willing to do anything to protect Eden. However, she's largely disliked by the higher-ups.
	Turkes Verafoult, the leader of Chaos Tide and another cyborg. Chaos Tide is another resistance group, known to partake in pointless terrorism, killing anyone they feel like. Turkes became a cyborg with the help of a scientist out with Eden.
	Graham Gregson, the leader of COSMOS and guardian to Ricalna and Lennard. A mysterious leader type :]
	Zelik Lindemann, the boss of the Cocytus. I could have left him out but he's the author's pet (as in he's going to get the shit kicked out of him at every opportunity) and also I'm in love with him. This is my poor little meow meow.

Some Notes

I’m gonna be the first to say the art at the start of the manga is far from what it is at the end. I highly recommend sticking with it for how significantly the art change comes. If you want to check out Sorano’s current art style, Parham Itan is available as part of a Scribd membership or can be accessed through however you get legally accessible manga.

I Get Into Fandom For Shipping And That’s Okay

Me too lmao the fuck?

But yes! You can have your funky little ships here! The only thing is this fandom is held up purely by the willpower of like 4 people on a good day and content is scarce. Personally, I suffer from the manga that gave me everything I could ever want from my main ship so, like, what am I meant to write? terrible situation, anyway, here’s some example ships.

• Turkes and Ricalna - If you see anyone quickly dipping into the fandom, they tend to sway towards Turkes and Ricalna. A very easy enemies-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic, especially when Turkes shows instant attraction to Ricalna and is first in line to come to his aid as things progress.
• Graham and Zelik - This is second because it’s MY ship and the food is so good. Old friends, DILFs, endless devotion and a willingness to kill at the others’ order? Literally, every scenario I could dream of for them exists in canon. When I reread this manga we may get a ship manifesto I am a problem I wrote one years ago but deleted it and I regret it
• Syal and Jim - Lesbian robot and scientist, that’s what the people want. People want endless devotion between women, I’ve met people I know it’s true
• Ricalna and Syal - For the m/f shippers; friends-to-lovers
• Silas and Allen - They’re not shown here, but this is the ship for people who like to see two moralless bastards in love
• Silas and Zelik - Everyone I’ve known to ship this is looking senseless non-con and mindbreak

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I am so desperately lonely in this fandom, so please talk to me about it.