Slightly Biased Manga

I reviewed this volume for the weekly Manga Minis column at Manga Recon, so you can check it out over there.

In short: buy it.  Don’t make me come over there.  It’s genuinely quirky, but in kind of a disturbing way I could see turning some people off.  I mean, the jokes have to come at the expense of things like dead bodies, how bodies are found, dead people’s hobbies, or… you know, the characters themselves, who range from spirit-talker to embalmer to body finder.

There was no really long story in this volume like you’d normally find (when I say “really long,” I mean the format where there’s usually only two or so stories per volume), but I enjoyed the short stories immensely.  I touch on them all in that review, but I’ll say it here too: the chapter at the end between Yata and Makino is strange, inappropriate, and oddly touching, three things that don’t really go together in any series aside from this one.

I actually wasn’t expecting this volume out so soon.  I figured we’d need to wait a year between volumes now, but maybe we’re still a couple behind Japan.  I certainly can’t complain about getting this series more frequently.

The first chapter alone reaffirms what it is I like about this series, mainly its sense of humor.  There’s some really weird stuff going on as far as forensics and what kills people and how, but it’s the weird jokes and jabs it makes at its characters tha stand out the most.  The first chapter isn’t that strong as far as its plot goes, but it’s almost like a re-introduction for the series.  It opens with a campus club recruitment-type event.  There’s one panel of Numata leaning against the recruitment table for the “Kurosagi CMM Club,” which stands for “cash money makin’.”  The poster behind him on the wall goes on to elaborate on the qualities new recruits must have: like or have an interest in corpses, be able to speak to or see the dead, or have a special ability others do not.  Obviously the entire area around their table is deserted.  Despite their  attempt to keep the recruits away (this is clearly a ruse so that they get the club funding from their school), a few people show up.  Each of the regular characters then proceeds to upstage them in every way possible, from gristly details about embalming to insulting a gothic lolita type with a foul-mouthed puppet.  After each ridiculous thing is said or done, there is a panel with their full name and job description, like a freeze frame in a movie.  It is hilarious in context.  Plus, I haven’t seen most of the character’s full names in awhile.  Apparently Numata’s first name is Makoto.  Also, Kereellis gets an intro too.  His special talent is listed as “puppet (alien).”

The main story, as featured on the cover, is about marriages that take place after one or more people in the pair has died.  It’s a pretty good story.  It involves a rich wedding planner, some ghosts, a special shrine, a poor guy who gets caught up in things, some yakuza types, and Sasaki getting strangled by a ghost.  More and more is implied between Karatsu and Sasaki.  I don’t actually know if that’s going anywhere, or if either of the two is in on the implication.  The fact that neither seem to be that into one another is just another feather in this series’ hat.  This marriage story is also notable for having a suitably epic final scene.

The next story is also a couple chapters long and is about babies abortion, and midwives.  I had a harder time with this story than the other two, mostly because it’s sort of unclear what’s happening until the very end, and even then, the explanation isn’t very satisfactory (or at least wasn’t for me).  The fact that the spirits of unwanted babies who pass away enroute to the hospital through some sort of black hole are jumping into cadavers… well, you know, that’s sometimes all you need in a story, though, and it takes Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service to provide.

Also, since Castle of Cagliostro was compared to the final scene in the (copious) end notes, now I can’t ever read this series again without seeing Numata as Jigen.  Great.

I get a great deal of pleasure from every new volume of this series, which may seem sort of twisted since it mostly deals in rather morbid topics.  But the fact it has great stories coupled with its bizarre sense of humor makes it absolutely my thing, probably more so than Skip Beat, which I will rave about momentarily.

My enjoyment is enhanced even more by the extensive notes in the back of the book.  If I haven’t said it before, let me say it again: this series has the best translation notes you will ever see.  Ever.  There will never be anything else quite like them.  I usually read them first.  Not only do they comment on a variety of things that are probably not necessary, but the end notes go on for a long time with things like specific directions to stores that are mentioned in the story, etc.

I was disappointed that the story did not pick up where it left off last time, which was with Karatsu on fire.  The characters act as if this never happened.  The first story is about a robot suit made to be a cross between Astro Boy, Mazinger Z, and a Gundam suit.  The robot suit is eventually powered by a zombie who loves to play Nintendo.  It was pretty entertaining, if not all that… well, dark or anything.

The second story is about a plastic surgery clinic fixing people to look like a popular Japanese celebrity who bears a strong resemblance to Audrey Hepburn.  The patients are apparently having problems… hearing voices, and having little faces that speak to them appear on their ears.  The Shirosagi people are behind this, and they manage to catch Karatsu’s soul and his friend Yaichi for the purposes of the women who wish to curse the two of them.  There are earmice, and eventually earmen.  It is entertaining, to say the least, but I can’t say I was entirely comfortable with the implications between two of the characters.  This was probably the best story in the volume.

The final story was based (yet again) on the story of the Inugami clan.  I think I just need to read the goddamn book, it comes up so often in these series.  I liked this one a lot, especially the ending, which went for humor even while it was revealed who was being murdered and why.

Despite what I say about not liking what’s implied between two characters, I do like the way everyone plays their part in the series.  The two girls wind up getting odd jobs for easy work, while the three boys are hired out to do hard labor like haul heavy tombstones.  This is commented on extensively, and I would probably dislike it in any other series, except the jokes they crack about it here are just too funny.

Please read this!  I think the next volume is coming out in January, but it breaks my heart to hear that the sales are not going so well.  It’s quite fantastic.

I was so bummed when I found out this series was underperforming.  How is this not popular?  It’s literally the most intentionally funny horror series I’ve ever read.  It’s also good for a good mystery and usually a gross-out, too.  My roommate isn’t quite as enamored of it as I am, but he’s got poor taste.  Every volume I read makes me fall in love with it a little more.

While I liked the first story, it was totally forgettable compared to the rest of the volume.  This is saying something, because they run into someone with abilities similar to Karatsu, and there’s a post office body-shipping kind of plot going on.  There’s also a joke which alludes to the first scene in MPD Psycho, which is the best scene in that series so far.

The next two stories are tied together.  Numata gets an apartment for cheap when the landlord can’t rent it out due to a body being left to rot for a month inside.  He’s kind of scared by a human-shaped stain on the ceiling, and that’s fair, because it’s pretty freaky-looking.  After awhile, another body shows up and needs special counseling in order to talk, which means they take it to a psychiatrist and use Karatsu to converse between the psychiatrist and the body.  There is a Kaspar Hauser reference, which I thought was awesome, but not quite as awesome as the psychiatrist who was willing to talk to the body.  It turns out that there is a man wandering around, possibly undead, who may be killing people and may bear a resemblance to the spirit that lives with Karatsu.  Any hints about that spirit are very welcome, and we get several allusions to it in this story (via a flaming body, among other things), and the short stories in the back of the volume.

The short stories in the back are set far into the past, leaving the current storyline on a severe cliffhanger.  We find out a lot about a boy with scars on his face, but it’s unclear about whether he’s connected to Karatsu’s spirit or the villain from the last story.

All I know is that I’m ready to find out some major plot points about Karatsu’s spirit.

I love this series.  I really genuinely enjoy reading each volume of it at this point.  There isn’t very much forward momentum, but it is extremely entertaining, and the formula is just so weird that I feel it could go on like this for a long time.

There is a decidedly Egyptian bend to this volume.  The first story is extremely detailed-oriented in all aspects of the burial ceremony.  The corpse that is recovered at the beginning of the chapter can’t speak through Karatsu, and this is because the mouth-opening ceremony hasn’t been performed.   There are lots of other cool details like that where I always feel like I learn something about the burial procedure when reading.  In a later chapter, there is a lengthy explanation about how bodies can turn into soap in the right conditions, which apparently includes every embalmed body in the US.

In addition to the reappearance of the Nire Ceremony company, there is also an old woman who claims “the dead call out to her” who is hired on by Kurosagi and is apparently a professional funeral mourner.  She can get everyone at a service to cry somehow, including the main characters.  She apparently helped deliver a baby at one point too, which may be explained a bit later on in the series.  We also get a little more of an explanation behind the ghost that appears behind Karatsu often, too.  There’s also a new employee at Nire who has a prominent role… but he’s a little corny.  He seemed to take an interest in Karatsu, so maybe he’ll be important later, too.

So I was traveling for the past two weeks and forgot to mention it in my last post.  Actually, I was supposed to be in Florida for only a little over a week, but then I wound up in Indianapolis.  Selling books on the road is a totally awesome job, and I love being in different places, but the traveling to and from wears me out a bit after awhile.  I’ll be in Ohio again the next few days, but I should have internet access from there.

Anyway!  Somehow, this series got much better in this volume.  I was immediately impressed with the first story in this volume, which made fine use of the puppet-boy’s powers finally.  He channels another… alien through his hand in a totally over-the-top story about aliens.  I don’t want to spoil too much by telling you more of the details, but it involves monkeys as well as Russia and awesome X-Files-like UFO conspiracies/fake conspiracies, and I think I liked it a lot better than most of the other stories I’ve read in this series so far.  Plus Kereellis (and they use his name, which I don’t think they have since volume one) really stands up for his host at one point in a really cute way.

The other stories are pretty gruesome, slightly more so than I remember some of the other volumes being.  The last story stands out in my mind since it involves really freaky snail-parasites deforming humans and getting eaten by birds, but it was more weird than gruesome.  Actually, it was gruesome just because bugs and maggots were discussed at length.  Another story involved a “Body Worlds”-like show in Japan and the method by which the bodies for the show were procured.  That one wasn’t so gruesome, but it was fairly in-depth and involved compared to some of the other stories.  There was another story which introduced a character similar to the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (a detective for hire by spirits) who has a power of his own and finally brought into question the spirit that periodically appears with the scars across his/her face.  I’m interested to see who that spirit turns out to be, but I’m perfectly content waiting through these awesome one-shots to find out.

The end notes in the back of this volume were better than they have been in previous volumes.  There was one about springtime flower viewing that I was surprised to see, because I figured most people would be familiar with that custom.  But this particular explanation was necessary, because not only did it plug the Dark Horse series “Hanami,” it also told me about what brand of cigarettes Lupin III smokes.  Neither of these two things had anything to do with what was going on in the manga at the time (“Hanami” was marginally related, but it was definitely a far stretch).  It was one of the longest and best translation notes I’ve ever seen in a manga, and there will never be another like it.

I’m sad that the chance to discuss Rowdy Roddy Piper in a translation note was passed over, though.  I searched desperately for it when the reference came,  but it just wasn’t there.  I cried a little.  Maybe it would have been too much after the Lupin III discussion.  I can only have so much awesome riding on the back of an already overwhelming manga.

The plot once again moves into individual stories as opposed to one story per volume like last time.  It was actually a bit confusing, because the first story lasts about two chapters, then the second story starts, but I didn’t understand that they were different for a bit and was having trouble connecting the two.  But they are different.  Yes.

The story that stuck in my mind after reading this was about organ harvesting and leaving the person with just enough inside to live.  There was something really horrible about the empty shell of a person that they caught walking around at the beginning, and the unspeakable crime of blinding a person and removing just enough of their organs so that they continue to live, then kick them out of house and home is really… yeah, bad.

This volume was probably the best of the three I’ve read, and yeah, I still like this series okay, but it’s still not run out and buy it right now fantastic, but it is a lot better than most of the manga I’m reading right now.

Unlike the first volume, this one was one continuous story about a rival company, and the dead body and villian this time around formed a story that focused on the background for the head of the group, the girl who’s the social networker/computer geek. 

Another character that got a lot of focus was the kid with the alien hand.  He actually got quite a bit of the spotlight while simultaneously admitting he wasn’t sure what his role in Kurosagi was.  The main character (the monk) and the guy who finds the bodies are constantly together and wisecracking, but the monk seems quite driven to help the body apologize for what it had done.  Lots of good character stuff, and I appreciate that since the series could probably be carried on the interesting plot alone.

The rival company actually has a kind of revenge service set up which is quite twisted.  In the end, it tries to buy out the Kurosagi Delivery Company and hire on all the staff, but the two remain separate for the time being (kind of an odd move, especially since we’re lead to believe Kurosagi actually isn’t doing all that well).

Still really weird, horrible, and funny, though.

This volume helped me save money on car insurance!  Or it would have, if I was an editor.  Alas. 

I was thinking about reading this series, and I picked up all the current volumes in the most recent Dark Horse sale at Right Stuf.  Glad I did, I like it quite a bit better than MPD Psycho, the writer’s other work.

It’s a bit easier to swallow and makes a great deal more sense than MPD Psycho, but it’s still not anything fantastic, like something everyone has to own as an example of the horror/comedy genre.  It does mix the brutal sight of dead bodies quite well with a really weird sense of humor though, which is quite a feat. 

The first volume consists mostly of one-shot short stories about the formation of the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, a gathering of misfit college students who reap karmic rewards for helping dead bodies with their last wishes.  Two of the members have practical skills, like the ability to tap into a huge social information network or to embalm a body (a skill that is apparently almost nonexistant in Japan since almost all dead bodies are cremated, I understand).  One, for whatever reason, is handy at dowsing dead bodies instead of water, which is only somewhat supernatural, I suppose.  The main character is the one who’s got the full-blown psychic ability, since he can lay his hand on a body and let it speak its wishes through him.  And then there’s one character who, for whatever reason, has an alien spirit inhabiting his hand (clothed in a puppet) which speaks foul-mouthed truisms in most situations.  I’m not sure when that skill will come in handy, but I’d love to see it when it does.

Two or three cases are taken on in this volume, and each case does a good job of using some or all of the characters prominently.  There’s the occasional really bizarre joke, but for the most part you get a lot of gore and detective work, with many conclusions featuring the bodies coming back to life to have their revenge.  One conclusion, at the end of the volume, was particularly gory and awesome, and involved quite a bit of figuring out to determine how the man was causing all the accidents.  He got his comeuppance, though.

The notes in the back of the volume are pretty awesome, too.  There’s a long article about how the different Japanese writing systems work together, then several pages worth of sound effect translations with notes and anecdotes mixed in throughout, some having more to do with the manga than others (the car insurance tangent being one of the more strange, but extremely welcome, entries).  It’s the most thorough index ever.

I like this because I like horror manga a lot, but if horror manga isn’t something you read much of, there are certainly things you should try before Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.  Red Snake is the one that pops into my mind immediately, because it is certainly the best horror manga one-shot available in English.