And I thought Light was crazy…
There are always manga that illustrate high school students at their worst, or for some schools it’s at their truest. Limit does a little of both since it’s not the characters fault the dive this one took, literally.
Konno is not the nicest girl around. She’s the girl who tries to fit in as much as possible and if that means laughing at someone else’s cruel joke, so be it. So far her high school experience has been an enjoyable one, her perfect little world is well, perfect. What do you do when your perfect world comes crashing down? She’s going to learn a few things about her classmates and herself on this upcoming camp trip.
Konno, saw the light, well not that “the light” but her cell phone light. She woke up in a dark place and opened her cell phone for light. It shone and showed her what had become of her friends and her world. Her character which had a carefree attitude about everything in particular got a reality check when opening her eyes she finds that her bus had crashed and gone down the side of cliff.
When she reached the bottom of, well the bottom, she realized that all the material things she had loved in her normal everyday life, yes it includes her cell phone, were meaningless. Objects only have enough use in your life until they don’t. I mean that plainly, since the battery can only last so long.
Konno’s character is one I didn’t immediately like but with each page flow and certain events, I realized that the version I liked was there. Her apathetic side made her a different type of main girl at first but we see the version of herself she keeps from others. At least I think she’s the main girl since she’s the most centered in the manga so far. I’m hoping she keeps her aloof apathetic side and doesn’t turn soft but I don’t think that’ll happen.
The other characters are just equally important seeing as if they didn’t exist this would just be a high school girls version of Cast Away. Now with more people into the mix it’s Cast Away meets The Condemned (last movie reference, promise) seeing as there’s always a few that want to be leader of the pack.
We have, the quiet girl, the bullied jaded girl, the popular girl, and the friend of popular girl. All thrown together to coexist under not so comfortable conditions that what they are used to. Some take charge and try to survive while others lose it and become quiet scary and their true self emerges. We get to see but a glimpse into their lives, pre-cliff diving, and see the circumstances that made them who they are.
Something that you get right away is an understanding of the characters and their confusion and pain. You might not like them and some you won't but you'll more or less sympathize with what made them into the messed up human beings they are.
Cruelty, we all know what it is, but it’s not until we go through the act of doing it or feeling it does it really take human form and there’s a limit to how much a person can take before they snap. It shows you what happens when the quiet girl and bullied girl turn the tables. They either band together or that band breaks and havoc occurs.
This setting isn’t suppose to show people at their best, but it does show them at their truest. It peels their layers until all that’s left is their true self. And it’s not very pretty
The art was average and it really doesn’t have anything that stands out. Except maybe when the characters are meant to look cruel, it illustrates that pretty well. It some instances it’s a very raw manga and then in some pages it gives everything a new softer light. The same evil looks turn humble and vice-versa. Some characters are very plain looking wile others are pretty, my guess on purpose or maybe they plan to do a makeover on the plain ones giving it the message of, "Who says you can't band together and turn pretty in the wild?"
I get the same feeling with this manga I get with some movies where because of one idiots fault everyone has to suffer. It’s aggravating and makes me want to throw stuff, preferable at them. Not a lot of chapters have been released and I haven’t yet finished nor gotten a feel for the characters enough to like them, but with some of the personalities it seems like it could go one of two ways: The characters will have a change of heart and band together to live. Then they’ll go back to their happy lives and the popular girls will see the wrong in being mean girls and include the shy and ex-bullied girl into their clique. Or it could stay in the track it’s in and some girls will make it interesting and only a few will come out alive and be anti-psychotic medication for a while after.
If this one is anything like Kieko's other manga like Life, it can be a little of both.
There is a great lesson so far in this one; “Don’t be a bully,” because if you’re marooned with the people you bullied and they’re the ones with an ax, you’re going to have a hard time falling asleep every night.
Just saying.
