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Viz Media has brought over and translated a lot of good books, though I would say some of their best and most mature books they bring over often fall under their Viz Signature. That's where all the of adult, smart (well usually anyways *coughTerraFormarscough*), and dark books usually end up under. Let’s spotlight one of these mangas, which actually ended just last year. Meet Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit!
13 out of 44 Pages
Our story opens up at an elementary school on the first day. Some school administrator is cheerfully welcoming all of the students to their first day. However, the mood quickly changes for the first graders when they are given some sort of vaccination (which none of them certainly look happy about). Once the shot is given, the doctors write down the kid’s name next to the needle’s serial number. While this happens, we get some narration about a law that was enacted by the government to ensure the welfare of the people of the country called the National Welfare Act.
After the forced injections, the school’s principal then delivers a speech to the kids about wanting them to work and study hard to become wonderful adults…
We then cut to several years later where we meet Fujimoto, the “main” character of the series. He is thinking back on those words he heard all those years ago, mentioning he was one of the lucky ones to reach adulthood. He is currently at the Ministry of Welfare and Health of his country where he is attending a lecture about recently becoming a messenger (a job that is a big deal).
This is where we also hear more about the law itself from the lecturer. It is a law designed to install the fear of death into citizens, so to encourage them to value life…
As Fujimoto reflects upon valuing life more because of this law, someone actually says out loud that he can’t go along with this job. He states the government is basically snatching away people’s lives via some sort of "Russian Roulette" to teach them about what is precious through the government’s point of view. It doesn’t make sense to him at all, also mentioning that his sister was killed because of this law and there was no honor in it. Just senselessness.
Naturally, given the kind of society that would enact such a law, you can guess what happens next. The lecturer calmly presses a panic button and…
The lecturer goes on to say that they all are entrusted to deliver these Ikigami from now on. Its “honorable work” designed to help the welfare of the country and to keep that in mind. So in other words, don't screw up or you're toast.
Four months later, Fujimoto has been trained and is now in delivering these Ikigamis to people (2 to 3 times a month). This particular month, he has three deliveries to take care of.
Fujimoto heads over to the first person’s house, looking over the paperwork and preparing himself to deliver the bad news on the way over. Once there...
The story continues on, where we meet this Yosuke (we even see him a bit before this), but we’ll leave off here and let you discover what happens for yourself.
Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit is a series about what happens to people when they have so little time left. What do they do? Do they try to finish a goal in their life? Do they break down? Do they do something bad? While Fujimoto is technically the main, or at least most recurring character, the series isn’t really about him but the people who he delivers their death sentence to. There’s also discussion about this government and this law, but that’s later on. I only got three volumes into the ten volume series, so I don’t know all the particulars, but it's a pretty good character based series. It's bittersweet at best, but shockingly nasty at worse with the stories we see here.
Anyways, what do you all think?
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Date: 2015-03-14 05:33 pm (UTC)As a heads up, over on Viz, they are offering up a special manga bundle called Mature Starter Bundle. It contains the first volume of this series, along with the first volumes for Black Lagoon, Biomega, DOGS, and Dorohedoro for about 20 bucks American. They are all pretty much violent action series (this series was the odd man out of that group), but they can be pretty fun.