(The) Limit vol. 1

(A lot of places online have the title of this series as “The Limit,” however the book itself only has “Limit” on the cover and in the copyright text.  So I’m splitting the difference here.)

This is a new series published by Vertical, so I’m already interested.  Konno is a high school girl who happens to be part of the clique led by Sakura, the school idol.  She enjoys her “privileged” status in this regard and does her best not to make any waves or go against the grain.  So when the class picks on gloomy outsider Morishige, she goes along with it.  When they’re looking to for a reason to make fun of upstanding, “best hope for the future” Kamiya, she offers up a reason.  Though life is good for her, everything gets turned upside down when the bus taking her class to camp goes off the road into a ravine.  Unable to climb up or down the cliffs on both sides, Konno finds herself trapped with two of her friends, Haru and Usui, Kamiya and a Morishege who is very excited about what this new turn of events represents.

The biggest problem with this series is the art.  Mangaka Keiko Suenobu’s shoujo style has too much gloss to fully capture the drama inherent in this situation.  Much as her characters are most comfortable in their familiar high school surroundings, that’s where the art works best.  Most of the time there’s not enough grit or detail in her style to give the impression that her characters are really suffering through this ordeal.  One only has to look at how Konno’s hairstyle remains the same throughout the entire volume as an example of this.

However, even if the art can’t fully deliver on the potential of this riff on “Lord of the Flies” Suenobu still manages to milk enough drama from this setup to keep me from writing it off completely.  This mainly comes from her characterization of Konno, who is initially so bland that a better name for her would be “Miss Point-of-View Character.”  Then we find out some of her backstory, where we see that she actually has a good reason for acting the way she does, and that becomes less of an issue.  Haru also displays an interesting side to her as this situation brings out all of the struggles and resentment she feels towards Konno which comes to a boil when Morishige pits them against each other at the end.  

As for the now former victim of bullying, it would be easy to write off her actions here as over-the-top, but she has also been given almost complete power over her former tormentors.  It would be hard to imagine anyone refraining from indulging themselves in that kind of situation.  Still, I can’t help but feel that Suenobu pushes things just a little bit too far with Morishige’s use of the Tarot here.  Having a vindictive victim of bullying as an antagonist is good, so tossing in the potential for mental instability represents diminishing returns in the area of generating tension.

Part of me thinks that this will appeal most to readers who are in high school and can see their own social situation reflected here.  Older readers like me, who lived through it all, will still get some entertainment out of it.  However, they will also realize that they’ve also seen everything here done before and done better as well.