[Special thanks to Deb for passing this along to me! -- DMV]
You're going to die. It's kind of unavoidable. For one reason or another, whether it be heart failure, a traffic accident, or because you tried to save someone's life, you'll find yourself on a slab in the morgue a few days later because of circumstances. But what if it's just that you're unlucky?
Unlucky as in you got a vaccine as a little kid, administered by the government to everybody your age, and one out of every thousand of you are going to die on a pre-determined date. You won't know about it 'till 24 hours before it happens, though. Does that seem fair?
Well, that's the way that life has become in the world of Ikigami. Follow me after the jump to find out more about this title.
Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit
Motoro Mase
Published by Viz Media
Originally published May 2009 ($12.99)
The Japanese government has decided on this whole plan of action where they vaccinate every child in the country, and one child out of 1000 randomly gets a vaccine with a device in it that will lodge in their heart and rupture somtime between the age of 19 and 25, on that pre-determined date.
Our main character, Fujimoto, has gotten the grand responsibility of delivering the "ikigami" -- literally, death papers -- telling people that they are going to die in twenty-four hours. They do this in order to limit the risk of people going out and running on a murder spree. So, in essence, the tales are two-fold: first, there is the story of whoever recieves the ikigami, and how they deal with the idea of a certain death, and then there is Fujimoto's story, which bookends each tale. Therein, he deals with the conflict of telling these people they are going to die, and really questioning whether this program is moral.
There are reasonings behind the program, and they make a convincing case for it, but I'll leave that up to you to find out about. Within the first volume, there were only two stories, each spanning three chapters. The two stories represented differing ways to deal with the impending doom. Right now, there are five volumes out in Japan, and so I wonder how all the stories will pan out -- there will be a point where the plot gets repetitive, because there are only so many ways that you can act where it will be starkly different from the way people have acted in previous stories.
The art of Ikigami is fantastic to look at. Much like 20th Century Boys, there a great amount of detail in each page, and each panel takes up a sizable amount of space on the page, with much of the story being told in broad strokes as the action is oftentimes limited. Think Death Note.
Again, like 20th Century Boys, Ikigami is going to run you $12.99 for the volume. I guess this falls under Viz's more mature titles, so they're trying to justify the lower selling rate that the title will likely have. Should you buy it, though? I'd say so. Ikigami goes into an area that's not terribly new in the genre of fiction -- plenty of times I've seen a "what if you only have a day left?" scenario -- but it does it with a sense of realism, with a tinge of darkness. You know things aren't going to play out pretty: some people are going to snap and go on a rampage, while some will just pass away. The title may not be something that'll stand in your memory forever, but the stories in Ikigami will chill you for a while after you read it.
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