Ikigami 4

Motoro Mase – Viz – 2010 – 7+ volumes

The overarching plot seems to continue to be a “live and let live” attitude towards the ikigami by the delivery man Fujimoto.  He seems to continue to weigh the pros and cons of the system, and investigates its past and the history of the public outcry and possible changing public perception.  Most of this volume weighs the cons, admittedly, as Fujimoto considers how children might be more well-behaved without the system and the stories themselves contain a lot of destruction and horrible crimes.  The moral of the survivors valuing life more after the incidents always comes through in the end though, and it was sweet in both stories.

The first story in the volume, “The Last Lesson,” has been my favorite in the series so far, but also made me feel horrible while reading it.  It’s essentially a story of a teacher with faith in his students being set up and disgraced as a pervert solely for having faith in the student.  And even then, he still has faith.  Don’t worry, this nice man will get an Ikigami.  I wasn’t sure where it was going at first, because I thought the kid doing the setup was too young and the teacher was too old.  I still didn’t quite understand, because… I mean, what a nice guy.  I suppose that’s the point of the random death, but still.  Of course, the nice man snapped and went on a rampage, but even then, he still had complete faith in the goodness of the students.  There was some seriously disturbing and scary stuff wrapped up in here that I don’t really want to talk about for fear of spoiling it, but it was an excellent read, and there were some great dynamic and tense art moments to help the action along.

The second story was a little less exciting, about a young mother and deadbeat dad having to deal with an ikigami.  I did see this ikigami coming, though the direction the story takes from there made it more interesting than it first seemed.  Even as one of the less exciting stories so far (and I say this only because the setup is pretty traditional), it still has a lot of good things going for it.  In addition to being hard to predict, it was also hard for me to completely give up on the family since it was clear that they were relatively happy aside from money problems and the little girl loved both parents.  And for as much of a deadbeat as the father is, he does care for his wife and daughter.

The first story alone is very much worth the price of admission.  I’m not a terribly big fan of episodic series, but each Ikigami chapter feels like it has something to say, and I’m continually drawn into the stories.  They appear mundane at first, but they always grow out of control and manage to wind up bittersweet every time.  It’s a pretty incredible read.  I also like the slower release schedule the series seems to be sticking to, since it really isn’t the type of story that can be enjoyed in a multi-volume reading session.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.