Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit: Volume 5

by Motoro Mase, 232 pages

This volume's chosen are a young artist who gave up his dream to support the family business and an insecure high school senior who is a National Welfare zealot. With his remaining time, the first chooses to protect his imperfect family's future and still go out with an anonymous, scathing indictment of National Welfare--the government can paint over it, but they can't make people un-see it. The second unintentionally leaves his otherwise authority-trusting classmates the legacy of doubt by showing what can happen when an idea is taken too far by an individual or by a country.

What defines a social miscreant? When should you report a suspected one? How do you know if you are one, yourself? And what do you do when the woman you trust and confide in and are developing feelings for proudly tells you that she is one--and that she believes you are, too?

Mase continues to impress with his moving depictions of unique personalities under the ultimate pressure. The artist's final act of graffiti is disturbing and rousing and unmistakable in its meaning. The zealot's breakdown and subsequent influence on his once complacent classmates take the reader on an emotional rollercoaster. And all the while Fujimoto struggles to understand what he believes...and whom.