ウルトラヘヴン

ULTRA HEAVEN

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
3
RELEASE
October 10, 2009
CHAPTERS
25

DESCRIPTION

In the future, any mood you want is just a pump away. People flock to legal “pump bars,” where licensed medical professionals, known as bar doctors, prescribe their customers the perfect pharmaceutical blend.

But when the standard dosage isn’t enough, our protagonist, Cub, turns to an unauthorized source. The results have to be seen to be believed.

Rendered in a richly-detailed, clear-line style, this psychedelic sci-fi manga tears apart the basic fabric of reality. What is the truth and what is a dream?

(Source: Last Gasp)

CAST

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

DoorSSBM
95/100
A worthwhile psychedelic trip that never reaches a destination
Image that got me interested in Ultra Heaven: __Story:__
Akira styled dystopian future where neuroscience has been cracked open and monetized. Bars are filled with specialized drug shots instead of alcohol and any emotion is one "pump" and a couple bucks away. The first two volumes deal with these futuristic drugs and their fallout on the human psyche, where the third volume focuses more on machine aided meditation technology that has many parallels to the futuristic drugs of the previous two volumes.

The story follows a very confusing and (potentially?) non-linear path unfortunately to nowhere. After 3 volumes, the manga has been on hiatus for 10 years according to some sources and thus the likelihood of continuation/conclusion is bleak. While the mystery of Ultra Heaven is never solved due to this hiatus, don't let that dissuade you from enjoying what is here.

The story places you deep inside of the psyche of a futuristic drug addict and lets you tag along for all the bizarre and terrifying reality shattering that ensues. The psychology and world building are equally fascinating, alongside some deep dives in the philosophy of what constitutes reality and the self. Overall some pretty heady stuff, but never without a constantly insane visual flair that will keep you engaged throughout.
__Characters:__
Main character Kabu starts off as a cool-guy druggie, and in what we have of the story so far, actually gets a surprising amount of fleshing out and backstory. Difficult to nail down exactly the source of his motivations, but an emotional explanation of sorts is displayed in volume 2. Beyond Kabu, the other characters provide very interesting philosophies to consider, but not with much backstory.
__Art:__ This is the Paprika (2006) of manga.
Reading this all in one go I felt borderline high myself for all 600ish pages. The raw hallucinogenic nature to the visuals places you inside of everything Kabu is going through. Visually, auditorily, physically, and emotionally. While Ultra Heaven has a very interesting setting and philosophy, none of that would hold the same impact without its unique visual representation.

If you are here, I bet you are here for the art. And boy does the art deliver. Panels stretch and warp, faces merge and melt, and the world folds in on itself both physically and in time. All expressed visually. Some of the most interesting manga art I have seen.

Overall:
Lacking any sort of conclusion pulls this manga down, but on every other account Ultra Heaven is a massive success. I highly recommend this for the detailed art and interesting philosophy. If you want to get high from monochromatic static images, look no further than Ultra Heaven.
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chicthicko
90/100
A reinvigorating experience in manga surreality.
Legendary Jean Giraud – Moebius — calls Koike "a magnificent ronin, a warrior without a master, one of the rare authors who resist the cynical formatting of the current manga industry." And no doubt, there are influences of Otomo and Moebius and drugs, something he himself admitted to his publisher: "Except peyotl, I have tried almost everything: hashish, heroin, cocain, acid, magic mushrooms... But from a strictly graphical point of view, LSD is far ahead ... "

He works as a lone artist which is laudable, and an antithesis needed to all the demoralizing AI art dialogue going around. The staggering amount of meticulousness he puts into these pages make them more than just psychedelic relics. Here is a guy who loves, loves, loves what he does. You'll find a perfected organic style, developed range in perspectives and anatomy, his absolute will over them and a flow of narrative that never lets up, never lets you take a breath with the drugged sway in the panels, one page to the next, suck and go whirlpool of lines, ceaseless mounting of imagery, awash with surrealism and absurdity, on and on, pretty much like this sentence, a mixture of drowning and bottomless free fall.

Storytelling structures are chosen with altered perception in mind. A scene transition doesn't consist of cut and change but a motif-based continuity: a droplet is a sweat rope is a lake swim is a zoned out bath. It's trying to mimic the nature of a junkie's mind.

“I want to describe the moment when the boundaries between dream and reality blur. Very particular states of consciousness to which certain substances allow rapid access. All the difficulty then is to realize it. The words, the common vocabulary, the usual narrative logic are inappropriate. We have to invent other frameworks. That's why my stories aren't realistic, they're more trips . . . " which explains why in three volumes of all the dream cream, we've only gotten scattered tidbits of Kabu's past. He has suicidal tendencies, and is much of a cliché addict. You'd think what an overused trope! Nope, not at all. Think of it like this, in Koike's attempt to materialize hallucinations, readers may need a familiar, well-trodden road so as to not lose the way. To an extent, coherence remains intact.

Since in this futuristic world everything is artificial, experiences can be loaned in small pumps or patches of drug doses. So everyone is a potential addict. Kabu loves the Peter Pan. It's a — ah, you guessed it — childlike elation-providing hallucinogen. When he runs out of it, a shady dealer finds him offering a freebie. The withdrawal makes it impossible to resist. Turns out, it's not Peter Pan but a superior "more real than life itself" trip inducing substance. Dreams within dreams. Paranoia imploding total self-worth. Triggered rubble of memories playing off each other. And I wouldn't want to give away too much. There are plot points and set pieces that appear to be created with something in mind. If so, we haven't seen what. Yes, you read correctly, in three volumes, it's not the whole story. It hasn't been officially discontinued either. I wish I could put a quote from Koike about it but I didn't find any. The future of Ultra Heaven hangs in an uncertain limbo.

So, is it worth it? Despite the uncompleteness?

Of course, it is. This is one of those rare instances where how a tale is told hypnotically envelopes what is being told. If you're a sucker for those, you'll love it.
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