Ikigami: The Ulti­mate Limit (2010), vol.4 is writ­ten and illus­trated by Motoro Mase. It is rated M: Mature read­ers. List price is $12.99USA. Ikigami: The Ulti­mate Limit was orig­i­nally seri­al­ized in Young Sun­day manga mag­a­zine. After read­ing four vol­umes, this series is still cap­ti­vat­ing to me for sev­eral rea­sons 1)character dri­ven sto­ries and 2) often sus­pense­ful and mov­ing 3) inter­est­ing world/society

“If you have any objec­tions, I’ll hear them in hell.” — Ikigami recip­i­ent on the war path

The basic premise of this graphic novel revolves around a social pro­gram in Japan called The National Wel­fare Act. The Act is sup­pose to make cit­i­zens appre­ci­ate life by mak­ing every­one con­front their mor­tal­ity. The National Wel­fare Act dic­tates that every child enter­ing the first grade must be immu­nized with a nanocap­sule that causes the recipient’s death between the ages of 18 and 24. Each child immu­nized has a 1:1000 chance of receiv­ing the “Ikigami” or “death papers” that gives them the time and date of their death. Their death is labeled as “hon­orary” and is required for the social health of the nation.

In each vol­ume we are intro­duced to the peo­ple whose lives are impacted by the Ikigami. Some char­ac­ters use their last 24 hours to do some act of kind­ness while oth­ers are moved to act in a vio­lent man­ner. Each of the sto­ries thus far have been rather mov­ing. As usual, we are given two great sto­ries. The first one, “The Last Les­son” is about a teacher who believes that it is the fault of the par­ents and teacher’s that kids behave poorly. He’s always say­ing that “chil­dren can do no harm.” Yet he is the vic­tim of a prank pulled by one of his stu­dents that unfor­tu­nately gets him fired.

The sec­ond story titled, “A Place of Peace” fol­lows a cou­ple who mar­ried young and had a kid against their parent’s wishes. The young father is a car geek who is badly in debt and lacks matu­rity for his age. His wife strug­gles with rais­ing their asth­matic daugh­ter, the debt and com­pet­ing with a car for her husband’s atten­tions. Things go down­hill fur­ther when an Ikigami lands at their doorstep.

The Ikigami seems so cruel and it takes it toll on Fuji­moto, one of the few recur­ring char­ac­ters in this series. He works at the Ward Office and hand deliv­ers the death papers to the recip­i­ents. He sees first hand how the Ikigami dimin­ishes people’s hopes and dreams. After being on the job for sev­eral months, he’s learned to live with it but at the same time, he is uncon­vinced that the Wel­fare Act does any­thing to make peo­ple value life.

Each story is a moral­ity tale and yes, I enjoy them. This vol­ume goes into a lit­tle of the back­story behind The National Wel­fare Act and explains it’s ori­gins. Also, we get to see a lit­tle more dis­sent but as we are reminded it is dif­fi­cult to escape this law or even speak pub­licly about it in a neg­a­tive way. We do learn that there might be dis­sent but it is qui­etly build­ing up. The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment likes to manip­u­late facts in order to paint a pos­i­tive pic­ture that soci­ety is still loyal to the Wel­fare Act when it actu­al­ity it is not.

The sto­ries are char­ac­ter dri­ven and the art­work is great. This is one of the few graphic novel series I’ve enjoyed read­ing and plan to con­tinue to keep up with. If you’re look­ing for gritty, cap­ti­vat­ing and often mov­ing sto­ries set up in a world where peo­ple are slowly but surely try­ing to com­bat gov­ern­ment oppres­sion, then you should read Ikigami. It is excel­lent read­ing. B+.

Note: Ikigami: The Ulti­mate Limit, vol.5 should be out in stores now…off to find my copy.