The premise of Ippen Sekai is attracting, filled with a sense of mystery. Reading it reveals a story filled with dread, death and tragedy. However, this is not enough to make a great manga if such a mystifying world is insufficiently built.
Narrative: insufficient world-building and unsatisfactory conclusion
Ippen Sekai focuses on an isolated temple in the middle of a forest. The temple is the focal point of a mysterious religion and many pilgrims from everywhere flock there. The story is focused on Puryo, a young girl who is to become the temple's great priestess after the departure of the previous one.
Through the chapters, readers discover that the temple hides many unspeakable secrets: mysterious disappearances and deaths, underground filled with monsters, a “staff” composed of animated statues, sacrifices, secret paths linked with a supernatural realm, and so on. The temple itself seems to be alive with its own agenda, feeding on its believers, and no human seems to be safe there. Puryo, aware of a good part of it and strangely used to all of this, tries to dig even deeper to better fill her future role.
Meiji Kanako, the mangaka, in the last volume's afterword, states that the manga had to be ended without being fully developed. Sadly, this is obvious when reading it. The story does not reach a real conclusion, the subplots remain vague and some aspects of the world seem to be just introduced, such as the religions, the non-believers and the temple itself.
Characters: too many characters for such a short length
The main character is Puryo, a lost child chosen to become the future great priestess. As such, readers follow her in most of the chapters and this is mainly through her that some mysteries of the temple are unveiled. Her natural curiosity drives her to discover the temple's past and the outside world, and makes her question her resolve and motivations in becoming the next great priestess.
The second most important character is Agasa, a girl from another temple who becomes Puryo's second assistant and takes on a more important role in the last volume, to her detriment. In a sense, she is the opposite of Puryo: her past is well established and she initially has clear, earthly motivations, hoping to become great priestess for her own gain. However, she is not prepared to face the temple's true face.
Most of the other characters with a relative impact on the story are simply underdeveloped. Ezline, Puryo's friend from the nearby village is almost invisible after the first volume. Minmi, the mysterious young girl who is Puryo's first assistant, is still as mysterious in the end. Enakin, bland son of a wealthy, influential family, who ends up working for the temple despite himself, does not feel useful in the overall story. Characters linked to the temple and its religion, such as the previous great priestess and Puryo's mentor, should have been more fleshed out, in order to better understand them, as they are crucial parts of the plot despite their absence.
Art: eery and uneven design
As the theme suggests, several aspects of the temple, staff, creatures and places, are drawn with a distinctive look aiming to make the reader uncomfortable. This works quite well to convey the uneasiness, or even the dread, that should be felt in such a place.
In several instances, maybe for the same reason of the lack of developments, the character designs look more like rough sketches than the rest that is acceptable.
In the end, Ippen Sekai is hardly a recommended read. The premise is interesting, but the execution is done poorly with an underdeveloped world-building, useless characters and a vague conclusion to Puryo's quest that does not seem to change anything, most probably because of a premature end.
