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Life (manga)

Japanese manga series

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ1354965 ↗
Source-derived summary

Life (Japanese: ライフ, Hepburn: Raifu) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Keiko Suenobu. Life was serialized in Kodansha's shōjo manga magazine Bessatsu Friend from April 2002 to February 2009, with its chapters collected in 20 tankōbon volumes. A live-action drama adaptation aired in Japan on Fuji Television and its affiliates from June to September 2007. A single-volume drama novelization was published with it.

A sequel series, titled Life 2: Giver/Taker, ran on Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Monthly Afternoon from June 2016 to October 2018. A five-part live-action drama adaptation aired in Japan on Wowow from January to February 2023.

In 2006, Life won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo manga. By October 2018, the series has over 10 million copies in print.

Plot

Life

Third-year best friends Ayumu Shiiba and Shinozuka promise to each other that when they graduate middle school, they will remain friends. After Ayumu scores higher on the entrance exams than her, Shinozuka breaks off their friendship.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Life (manga)” is japanese manga series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Life, manga and Japanese, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2002, 2009, 2007, 2016—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Life, manga and Japanese is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “japanese manga series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1354965. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2009, 2007 and 2016.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Life (manga)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Life (manga) primary sources, Life (manga) archive and Life research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Life (manga)”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Life (manga)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.