the art is awesome but too bad im obsessed with akaga and nagamutsu so my brain just,
"oh imma try"
"no"
"but why, brain?"
"dont you fckin dare betray your ships"
"but im just gonna check it out"
"nO"
"but-"
"NO"

THIS, 100%

The way I see it, authors need to tell these kind of stories using exaggerated and unrealistic backstories to communicate to a wider audience. If they attempted to deliver the message in the same society we're in now, they would have to rely on metaphors, which run the risk of being to subtle if you think you're reading a manga for the yuri. Sure, people who are trained to look for deeper meaning in what they read would get it, but it would go over most heads.

That's why a lot of videos trying to show the downsides of being a certain gender or having a sexual orientation tend to have role reversals. One example is the video "Imagine A World Where Being "Gay" The Norm & Being "Straight" Would Be The Minority" (I don't know if we're allowed to post links) on Youtube. Would it have been possible that homosexuality might have become the norm on Earth given a different social development? Probably not. But the message that the video delivers is salient. Like the manga, it points out all the stupid little quirks that are normal in society that most people don't think about, and would therefore not see anything wrong if this manga were set in our current society. Buzzfeed has also done a lot of male/female role reversals, and again, if you ever thought, "well, this particular trait is stupid in this context" when you've watched it, the authors were probably trying to say it's stupid in the real world context too. The videos set up hypothetical scenarios that would never happen, but certainly do not fail at starting conversation.

To clarify, I'm not saying that I believe the world's (female) leaders would set up the system depicted in the manga, but it would not be impossible. I mean, maintaining the status quo isn't that hard, and if for some reason all the leaders were highly prejudiced and uneducated about gender issues, it could happen. People come up with stupid laws all the time, and a lot of people follow silly trends (gluten-free diets, I'm looking at you) for no reason.

All-in-all, I think the backstory was fine, because it got me angry as it was supposed to, and I'm already used to watching role reversal videos.

When I was reading this as each new chapter came out, I didn't really understand what was happening. Frankly, I thought it was stupid that a civilization would choose to keep all the problems associated with gender binarism when there is literally only one sex...

That said, when I actually read it all together, I was a little less stupid. When you stop seeing it as the authors' interpretation as a 'realistic' future, and more a commentary on how stupid today's society is, it makes a lot more sense. This includes the power dynamics between men and women (it is explicitly stated that Adams have more power, and Sakura is 'demoted' to an Eve in the last chapter). Other than the power structure, this manga also deals a lot with gender roles. When I first read chapter 11, I didn't understand why Erika was forced to become an Eve when she displays stereotypically 'masculine' traits as a child. After all, she is genetically female... why can't she just choose when she's older? Well, that is essentially the difference between sex and gender. Gender is of the mind, sex is of the body. It's so easy to think, "well, why didn't Erika's parents just let her be an Adam?", without extrapolating that to the real world in the form of, "well, why don't we just let that boy be a girl?" (or vice versa).

Also, not that it's as important as the discussion of gender, but depending on how you view sexuality, there is no yuri in this manga at all (unless I missed something). Aoi and Sakura both identify as 'male', Erika is 'male' and Momiji is 'female', and Sumire and Masturi are 'male'. Before you start yelling at me through your monitor, consider this: in the real world, if a transgendered woman (pre-op, biologically male) only falls in love with other men, is she straight or gay? Or, in the manga Kyou Kara Yonshimai, is Kashiwa hetereosexual or homosexual?

Tl;dr, this manga is a criticism of our current society. If you ever thought anything along the lines of, "times in this manga have changed, why don't they just stop enforcing genders?" think about why people now are so against breaking down gender roles in a changing world, where women have entered the workforce, and reproduction is less of an issue with a population of 7 billion mouths to feed.