It was the unconventional summary on the back of Ikigami volume one that spurred me into buying it. I’m a sucker for dystopian fiction, anything from 1984 to Battle Royal. From the two stories in this volume, Ikigami looks to be a fine addition to the genre. Ikigami does a nice job of blending its episodic stories with the bigger picture. Each story arc focuses on a person who has just received an ikigami, a notice telling them that the nano chip implanted in them as a child will explode in 24 hours, killing them. Not everyone has a chip. The process is completely random and a complex, bureaucratic system is in place so that only a few people know where the nano chips are.