Mœbius was strongly influenced by the teachings of Jean-Paul Appel-Guéry, whose commune on Tahiti he had joined with his family in the period 1983-1984, and Swiss nutritionist Guy-Claude Burger, as well as his own transient lifestyle ("The Gardens of Edena" was drawn in Tokyo and Los Angeles for example, and "The Goddess" was begun in France and completed in California, whereas "Stel" was begun in California and completed in France). Questions are posed about dreams, nutrition and health, biology and sexuality, the human desire to live in a structured society, and archetypal good and evil. All of these philosophical elements are organically embedded in deceptively 'light' stories. The two protagonists Stel and Atan for example, stemming from a highly industrialized civilization, (re)discover their human sexuality on Edena, brought on by the circumstance that they, cut off from that civilization, are forced to consume natural nutrition, with Atan in the process becoming "Atana".