Ikigami 3

Motoro Mase – Viz – 2009 – 7+ volumes

I’m still enjoying this series immensely.  This volume again contains two stories.  “Life Out of Control” is about the neglected son of a campaigning politician who sees his death as a way to get revenge, and “The Loveliest Lie,” about a man who lost his parents in a car accident and has been trying his whole life to get into a situation where he can adopt his blind sister and give her a better life.  He is into crooked money-making schemes, so he lies to her continuously, even about his own death.

I know I shouldn’t be that impressed, but I was fascinated by the fact that these two stories offered two very different and not-exactly-0pposite takes on how to spend one’s last day.  I think I was more impressed with this volume because one of the stories last time, the one about the girlfriend dying, is more of what I would expect in these types of stories.  Revenge, and acting out an elaborate crime, is not a reaction I would expect from an ikigami, especially acting out against a family member, but that’s just me being completely uncreative.  Similarly, the scenario where the boy who’s worked hard to re-adopt his sister is surprising because I can’t imagine spending my last day hiding my death from my only family member.  Both situations are quite fascinating, and I enjoyed them immensely since I had no clue how they would resolve themselves, aside from the character’s deaths.

There’s still the over-arching narrative.  I’m probably missing out on some of this by not having read the first volume, but I was surprised that the National Welfare System (the reason the characters are dying is in an attempt to get people to realize the value of life) is quite popular among the citizens in the series, though to be fair it’s rather apparent that you aren’t allowed to speak out against it, too.  The main character of the series, the one who delivers the Ikigami papers, is having doubts about the rightness of the system, though he’s getting more and more comfortable with his job, too.  I liked that the last story involved him directly, though he wound up breaking several policies to help out.

It’s fascinating.  I could do with several more volumes of just these stories, if they continue to be as different from one another as these last two volumes.  I’m still not all that interested in the delivery man or his thoughts, but seeing him struggle with his job is interesting, and puts the deaths in context since, especially in this volume, everyone else always seems to be okay with the randomness of them.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.