Jisatsutou

A manga about suicidal patients who have been stranded by the Japanese government to a lawless island to fend for themselves.

Fantastic survival series. We discussed this one all the time in the early days of our podcast. Kouji Mori has a really interesting writing style where he’ll address the audience directly to give information about survival tips or comments about fishing and eating deer.

The story follows a young man named Sei who teaches himself how to hunt wild game with a bow. The beginning of the series is very intense as many of the stranded immediately start killing themselves in despair. Sei lives up to his namesake(which means live) and changes himself as he learns to hunt for food. There’s also plenty of conflict as the island is lawless and certain groups use power to oppress and steal. There’s even a queer character who gets decent representation.

Everything about this series is engaging and exciting. I think it’s a real shame we haven’t seen any of Mori’s manga get official English releases because they’re all great.

Mori is currently writing a prequel series called Muhoutou. It’s good but I’m not sure how things will go considering the fate of those survivors was already established in this series.

~dakazu