Manga Review: Ikigami

Title: Ikigami
Author: Mase Motoro
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Seinen, Psychological
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: A
Characters: A
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is about an alternate world where Japan has implemented a system in which 1 random person out of every 1000 people are injected with a lethal injection while they’re in primary school. Years later, whoever was injected with the lethal batch will die at an exact moment specified by that dose of basically a heart attack. These people who were designated to die simply by chance will be issued a declaration of death 24 hours before their appointed death. This system is meant to improve productivity of the population but to be honest even if the deaths could be justified, there’s no way to actually prove it works. Scare people into leading productive lives with Russian roulette? Anyone who actually thinks that’s a good idea should just go and play Russian roulette with an automatic. Other than me finding it seriously fucked for there to even consider that a system like that would be helpful, this manga is a pretty good read. We get to see how exactly such a system would work and how it affects the people affected by it. Basically it’s a manga about people dealing with their last moments of life while the author has come up with an interesting concept he hasn’t really shown anything me anything particularly brilliant or original but that’s got more to do with my genre savvyness. It’s an interesting read but there’s more that can be done since this concept really has the potential to become a cult classic if done right.