Saturn Apartments, Vol. 6

A touching, character-rich vision of an intriguing Reads R to L (Japanese Style). Far in the future, humankind has evacuated the earth in order to preserve it. Humans now reside in a gigantic structure that forms a ring around the earth, thirty-five kilometers up in the sky. The society of the Ring is highly stratified: the higher the floor, the greater the status. Mitsu, the lowly son of a window washer, has just graduated junior high. When his father disappears and is assumed dead, Mitsu must take on his father's occupation. As he struggles with the transition to working life, Mitsu's job treats him to an outsider's view into the living-room dioramas of the Saturn Apartments. Living isn’t easy in the lower levels of the Ring System, a floating civilization constructed when Earth was abandoned as a nature preserve. Sixteen-year-old Mitsu got a job washing windows for the wealthy residents of the upper levels after his father, also a window washer, fell from his tether. Now Mitsu’s been asked to man an illegal craft that’s descending to the surface of the earth. But it seems everyone in this divided society has a secret agenda. Mitsu alone must decide if he’s ready to take the journey of a lifetime…