Jisatsutou

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*Minimum Spoilers*

What if you decide to end your life, and the universe brings you something worse? This is Jisatsutou, an outcast survival manga that brings you a unique theme for survival series.

TLDR:
Jisatsutou is a survival manga that tells the story of an island where people who have attempted suicide are sent. The story and character development are solid, and the conflicts between them make it engaging. The artist does a good job of drawing backgrounds and nature, but the character design could be improved. While the manga has over 150 chapters, each chapter is not too long, and the writer still manages to develop the ... story and characters effectively.

Story 8
The story is wonderful and presents a new premise to the survival genre. The main plot revolves around an island where people who have attempted suicide are sent. What's amazing is that at first, going there doesn't seem like a big deal to someone who has attempted suicide, since they think they're going to die anyway. But that's the clever part. The hardest part of feeling hopeless and thinking of dying anyway is when you're forced to keep living.

It's great when people on the island discover the meaning of life through experiences like this. Additionally, as is typical with survival island themes, there is a lot of dynamic conflict surrounding the resources necessary for their survival. Seeing how they try to figure out how to survive and fulfill their everyday needs is very interesting and varied.

The plot and its progression are very solid. However, as a reader, I have mixed feelings about the ending. (So I leave it to your opinion.)

Character 7
There are many characters you'll encounter throughout the story, including the main character Sei. He's a high schooler who was in critical condition in the hospital and decided to end his life, which led him to end up on the island for the first time. His development throughout the story is impressive. At first, he is hopeless, but he later gains a strong will to live. His creativity in solving daily needs is remarkable, and his personality is wonderful.

The other members of the gang have unique personalities and skills that contribute to the progression of their survival story on the island. Each side character or secondary character has their own uniqueness and different personality, making the whole story more dramatic and engaging.

As it is a survival-themed story, there is a basic antagonist, a selfish character, and another survival group. The conflicts between them, driven by their different visions, make the story engaging. Despite being over a hundred chapters long, the author still manages to develop each character besides the main character. Additionally, learning about the background of each character adds richness to the story.

Art 7
The artist of Jisatsutou does a good job of drawing backgrounds, animals, and nature, but the character design is a downside. The old-school manga style with exaggerated features doesn't look like real life, and the facial features are composed in a weird and unnatural way.

I have mixed feelings about the characters. The artist used an old-school manga style, with exaggerated features that don't look like real life. However, I feel that the facial features are composed in a weird and unnatural way. Additionally, some of the face angles are also oddly drawn.

However, the artist's drawings of faces are effective at conveying emotions, and the anatomy and movement of the figures are well-drawn. The panels are well-composed, but the many speech balloons in each chapter can be overwhelming due to the involvement of multiple characters.

Overall 7
In the end, I enjoyed Jisatsutou. It has a well-developed plot that is both dramatic and dynamic throughout the story. Even though I don't typically read manga with a survival island theme, I would recommend this one. Despite having 150+ chapters, each chapter is not too long, and the writer still manages to develop the story and characters effectively.

Mori Kouji, the author of this manga, is incredible with the technical side of survival. He really did go in the field and experience a lot of the things that he wrote about in the series. So much interesting and accurate information about how to survive in the wilderness makes this manga an interesting read. I cannot give enough props to him for having so much knowledge and conducting so much research, even if it's purely out of self-interest, and putting all that into a manga with great art and interesting storyline.

However, I think fundamentally as a story and the character development side of it, ... it isn't as good as it could have been. For a 17 volume serialization, they didn't do as much with the plot, had a lot of plot holes, characters that never lead to anything, and a lot of what felt like filler.

Overall, it's a decent read if you're interested in survival island series'. It is very technical and I feel like a lot less survival compared to other series. A lot of the story centers on conflicts between and within groups.

Warning: This review contains some major spoilers, PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED


While a work can be considered perfect for some people, that doesn't mean it can avoid critiques from others. That's why I will dedicate this review to critique this manga.


Suicide island, is a no man island where the Japanese government decided to forsake their own suicidal people because the gov budget can't support them no more. While it has a simple beginning, the way how it decides to describe the people who were stranded in the island is in a way how majority of suicidal people (or even depressed) ... think, when something is hard to accept or they can't bear it no more, they end their own life. Thus comes the main message the author wants to deliver through his story is life, and why we must treasure it (or so I thought for half the story).
While the main objective of these stranded people is to survive in this island (they need to hunt, and to make their own food), they must also resist the temptation to commit suicide because they are suicidal people after all. And here the story depart with the mc in his journey for hunting while looking for a meaning for his life.
So in order to survive, people must form a community, in which people divide tasks (fishing, searching for food or veggies, developing tools...) in order to survive, and even protect themselves from danger sometimes.

Some may think the story is good as it is, but imagine having 2 different factions with different ideologies, a faction use sexual activities in their daily routine, enslave woman, and even their leader kill his own people to sooth his own hunger, and even deceive them in a way to make them obey his order. While the other faction use a more logical and somewhat gender equal methods to manage their life without discrimination. It must be clear for you now who's good and who's evil? But hold on, in the author's point of view, all life is equal, so even if the evil faction attacks and kill people, the good faction always will forgive and just use bluffs to make their enemies run away. Trust me when I say that +100 chapters of this story goes like this: The evil faction attack to kill men and enslave women and steal food, the good faction repels them, then the good faction decides to attack them too. When they want to ambush the evil faction they realize they are normal people just like them, and they retreat or they are discovered by enemy so they for run it. this same plot keeps going on for multiple times in 100 chapters.

One of the most disturbing things that just annoyed me the whole time, of how the author use something for the sake of plot development but deliberately throws it when not needed, when you have more than one of these objects, slowly but surely the story keeps making no-sense when these objects keeps adding up.
Taking as example pregnancy to explain my previous statement, while the author deliberately made one of the women in the island pregnant to show the importance of life, and that we don't have right to decide for a baby that has not been born whether he will be born or killed before even seeing this world. The author totally ignores a problem that he did introduce himself. What do you think a group of people that keeps doing sexual activities daily but woman don't get pregnant, you may think that they are using contraceptives, but don't forget that we are on a no man island when they don't have access to drugs, the only left answer is herbal medicine which itself causes a lot of side effects (tiredness, nausea, some organ failures...) which will keep women unable from working, where in the story they seem to be doing fine and hardworking, in fact the woman number grows up as more people comes to the island. That's what I can call a plothole in the story.

Another example is The strange change of heart. ex: Sei's decision to leave his group for deciding to leave one of his friends in the enemies hand, he was probably the person insisting the most to attack the enemy, It was so good of a plot development as to show everyone's intentions. You'll be appalled to knew what comes next. When his friends decides to fight the enemy and call for him. The first thing mc thinks of is to solve this peacefully even though more people were killed when he left and he knews that fully well. Then what was the point of him leaving the group in the first place?

Characters: 3/10
While at the beginning, they look promising, and have room for development. You'll be disappointed of how little the characters can grow other than embracing life. And what will be thrown at you at later stage of the story is how characters are outright stupid, have sudden change of heart for no particular reason, can forge their own justice even though their friends are dying or people are getting raped. Everything that you did like in character early on, will keep you awake the night later on.
Taking the mc (Sei) as an example, while he did grow from a NEET teen with no desire for the future, always doom and gloom, to a happy man looking forward for the future, treasuring life and good at surviving on his own using bow. Anything else in his character feels like it was just ignored by the author, or deliberately made the way it is to keep plot in stalemate that will keep the story going for hundred chapters with nothing new. As far as I am concerned (even some people comments through my personal read), Sei is the most disappointing character or mc I've seen in a while, while he keeps talking of how he treasures his dear friends, or how he is willing to kill in order to save them or take revenge, the only thing that keeps showing while he is trying to shoot his target is hesitation then he misses his target, and in the middle of it he either ends up making more of his friends face danger or die, that's how it has been in the beginning and will continue till the end. People are hypocrite, so is Sei, The only time he decided to pull the trigger is to save his girlfriend. And other than that, I don't think he treasures his relationship with friends like he claims to.
I feel like the side cast that are more decisive (like Cap and Ryuu) are really the characters that need to be the main cast in a survival stories, while they may be rash. At least they are decisive in hectic moments. While mc did fuck up in every moment he needed to be decisive. I get it that hesitation is one of mc's main qualities to show how he treasures life. But what can't be tolerated is to keep going on like this for the whole story without growing up.

Drawing: 5/10
I don't think the drawings were as good as the other works of the author I've seen. Sometimes faces can be generic to the point that you will not be able to distinguish characters if they are naked or they change clothes.
You can follow up the story, but other than gorgeous sceneries (ocean, forest and even plants are fascinating...), characters can be drawn sometimes so bad that you can't feel immersed.

Overall: 4/10
While the story at the beginning was promising. The plot with it's defects just keeps worsening the overall enjoyment as you progress.
Imagine a person that lived in the island for years if not a decade, do you think he will suddenly mess up his crops suddenly in order to show up in front of mc when he needs it? No, while it was such a fortunate coincidence, it also just shows up how author did think little up to nothing of how to progress the story and end it.
If you want to read this when you can tolerate indecisive mc and bad plot development, then go ahead, just don't regret your investment at the end