The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Volume 1 v 1
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Volume 1 v 1
Your body is their business! Five young students at a Buddhist university, three guys and two girls, find little call for their job skills in today’s Tokyo… among the living, that is! But all that stuff in college they were told would never pay off - you know, channeling, dowsing, ESP - gives them a direct line to the dead… the dead who are still trapped in their corpses and can’t move on to the next reincarnation. The five form the Kurosagi (”Black Heron” - their ominous bird logo) Corpse Delivery Service: whether suicide, murder, accident, or illness, they’ll carry your body wherever it needs to go to free your soul! The kids from Kurosagi can smell a customer a mile away - it’s a good thing one of the girls majored in embalming!
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars Worthy
I found the book to be engrossing and entertaining. The art is pretty good, and the characters likeable, especially Numata. It’s a fun book, though there is some gruesome stuff in it.
3 Stars At times morbidly funny, but poorly written and overdone
I’d heard some really great things about this series, so I picked up the first book. After reading it, I probably won’t pick up any others.
The character designs are ugly, and the art in general wasn’t particularly impressive. The stories are very episodic, which I thought was nice, but they were’t particularly engaging or interesting apart from one involving an elderly lady looking for her final resting place which was well-executed - it was touching and grimly funny. The other stories were pretty standard mysteries with mild supernatural elements and genrally, a twist ending you can see from a mile away. Not bad, but nothing great, either. Kind of like Stephen J. Cannell does manga (but with more gore). The plots all follow the same basic pattern.
In short, the book is too funny for the horror crowd and not enough funny for the comedy crowd. Also, I’m reasonably familiar with Japanese cultural studies and I was often baffled by some of the religious practices, which are almost never explained in footnotes. This book does not translate well to Western audiences because death and funerary practices differ so much across societies.
At times, the humor in the book is good - the cynicism of the monk, for instance, was often funny but there wasn’t enough of it. It doesn’t seem very reaistic that people would joke so little around so much gore (and yes, people IRL have a lot more of a sense of humor about this stuff).
I have a VERY strong stomach (I used to be an EMT), but, fair warning, the execution of themes (incest and serial killing for instance, fill 2 episodes) in this book are often mean spirited. At times, the book seems like an excuse for the author to show women naked, humiliated, and dismembered. Not really my cup of tea. I’m not even vaguely a feminist or anything like that, either. I have no problem reading seinen like Berserk, which is loaded with gore and violence against women - but that fits the story. Most of the blood and guts in this book just felt gratuitous and wasn’t being used for the plot, or as a springboard for comedy.
It’s not as bad as I make it sound, but it’s not as good as everyone else seems to think.
5 Stars Fascinatingly Macabre
This book is definitely strange and gruesome but it is also brilliantly funny in a similarly dark way. The characters are interesting and vary nicely. The story is about a volunteer group of students who have banded together to help the dead find peace. The team includes a psychic, a dowser, an embalmer, and a channeler. If you have a strong stomach, an appreciation for the macabre, and a dark sense of humor I highly recommend this series.
5 Stars Complete newbie to manga…just adore this book!
Honestly, I passed this in the bookstore on my way to picking up a knitting book. You could not know less about manga than I do. I found the story lines riveting and the art engaging. I’ve already ordered Volume 2 and 3. Definitely adult content but a very engrossing read!
5 Stars Different offbeat enjoyable
I will tell you that i enjoyed reading this very much.It’s strangely different from most of the other graphic novels i have read in the past.The characters in the stories make it a great read.A must have.I cant wait too read the rest.
Filed under: Comic Book Reviews