What is true love? To answer this question, Kazufumi Shiraishi’s soul-searching masterpiece, Me Against the World, takes us into the world of a manuscript left behind by a 53-year old man. Known only as Mr. K, this gentleman makes it clear in the opening that he has a son, daughter, and wife, but has no love for them. He goes on to claim that we humans are like cancer cells, destroying Mother Earth with our unrestrained propagation. He looks at death with an unflinching honesty, and turns to psychic mediums for clues to the afterlife, wondering if immortality were genuine, what would it really mean for our spiritual life?

Mr. K also questions what many religious leaders, spiritual gurus, and even humanitarians mean when they talk about love? Does it help us escape the fear of death? Is love an absolute force that transcends death? He takes pains to show that love is none of these things, that—in its quintessence—love is fellow feeling and compassion.

Me Against the World, in brief, tells us why sometimes the rejection of the world may just prove to be the shock therapy we need to finally open our eyes and awaken to the universal compassion within us—the only genuine force of good that can neutralize the true evils of this world.