A Review By: Amelia
I’m a huge fan of Dark Horse and–conveniently for me–they
frequent English adaptations of one of my favourite kinds of manga: anything darkly humourous. That’s how
I stumbled upon Kurosagi Corpse
Delivery Service–funny characters mixed in with a dark plot–what’s not too
immediately love?
The story behind The Kurosagi
Corpse Delivery Service is a simple one that gets a lot more complicated
the further into the series you get. Put simply it’s about five recently
graduated university students who have formed a company which specializes in
dealing with the dead and their last wishes.
The author of the series is Eiji Ōtsuka and the illustrator is Housui Yamazaki. I couldn’t dig up much on
Yamazaki, but Ōtsuka is a social critic and novelist that has a degree in
anthropology, women’s folklore, human sacrifice, and post-war manga. In addition
to his work with manga he’s a critic, essayist, and author of several successful
non-fiction books on Japanese popular and otaku (a Japanese term for
people with obsessive interests)
sub-cultures. Aside from Kurosagi
Corpse Delivery Service he writes Multiple Personality Detective Psycho.
The characters this manga series follows are a rag-tag group
of young, Japanese adults that–for one reason or another–have a strange talent
or connection to the dead. There’s Karatsu who is able to speak to recently
deceased people by touching their bodies. Sasaki is the brains of the operation
with excellent hacking skills and a general computer expert. Numata is the
heavy lifter (the one that lugs bodies around) and uses dowsing with a pendulum
to locate dead bodies. Yata is a timid guy who channels a rather crass alien
through a puppet on his had and has a vast knowledge of things like math and
literature/urban legends. And last, but not least, there’s Makino who is a
licensed and very talented embalmer–which is a rarity in Japan as most are cremated and not
buried.
This colourful cast of characters are all so good: I could
gush about them forever! They’re all very human and, even though they all have
such weird and peculiar talents and lives, they’re very relatable. Numata and
Karatsu are my favourite pair because they’re hilarious together! All the
characters will give you a good laugh here and there, but these two are
consistently comical. Of course that makes their tragic back stories all the
more heart breaking when you learn of them (Numata’s especially, at least by my
standards of seriously tragic).
The art in Kurosagi
Corpse Delivery Service is great. It’s a realistic style of art, and when I
say realistic I mean the characters are proportioned like actual human beings
and buildings and landscapes aren’t stylized. Some of the characters
expressions can be a little wild but they’re not at, say, Sailor Moon manga level. Besides, it’s a manga after all–allowances
have to be made!
 |
| One of the creepiest story lines featured this thing here! |
Everything this manga does is just right. The art style?
Just right. The characters? Just right. The ‘monster of
the week’ formula? Just
right. The number of creepy things this manga presents its readers? Just right.
This is a seriously dark, creepy, funny, compelling manga series and–even
though I just said it, I’m saying it again! Everything this manga does is just
right!
My final thoughts on Kurosagi
Corpse Delivery Service are that it’s great. It’s so super disturbing and
gross and for mature audiences only–I can’t stress that point enough! Despite
being one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is also one of the funniest,
saddest, most touching manga I’ve ever read. If the gore puts you off, please–I
beg of you!–stick with it anyways; this is a manga that should not be missed or
ignored. Trust me, you’ll want to read this before the corpse delivery service
comes for you!
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