This issue continues the struggle of Kengi acclimating his role as a Ikigami delivery man dropping the bad news people are going to die. This issue gets a tad bit personal. Kengi's trying to balance his work/social life with relationships after being on the gig, and we get a windowseat into one of his cases, who is a young woman trying to make peace with her life coming to an end once she gets the letter and a young man who has a job at an old folks spot trying to convince his old parents to live even though he's going to die.

The best takeaway from this is that Kengi has to learn how to balance his emotions, hide his emotions, and essentially become numb and shut off his feelings at work, which we see the first signs that each day is getting harder and harder for him. ( )

This volume is even better than the first volume. This dealt mainly with the people given the notices that they are going to die in 24 hours and how they (and their loved ones) spend that last day. We are still briefly shown the daily life of Fujimoto - the messenger of death - and how he has to learn to control his emotions (and how to handle a girlfriend) when he is the one who tells people they are about to die. Not an easy job.

It also seems that this society is like our own society and the death notices don't seem to be making that much of a difference. The purpose of the ikigami is to make each citizen do their best because they never know when their number is up but yet there seems to be just as much violence and drug use and bad attitudes and you-name-it as there would be without this rule.

Very interesting, thought-provoking manga series. ( )