Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service

“Day Job of the Dead”

For those of you playing drinking games at home, get ready to take another shot. Me reviewing Darkhorse titles is now kind of like Sarah Palin saying the word “Maverick.” And honestly I would have said “No, go die in a hole new Darkhorse Manga” had the cover itself not stopped me in my tracks and forced me to go out and buy every volume I could before even cracking the pages open. The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, aside from having one of the longest titles in any Manga I’ve ever read, is all at the same time horrific, violent, hilarious, sexy, smart, hip and mundane mixed in some otherworldly bowl of soupy goodness. That is to say I like it. A lot.

KCDS as I’ll call it from now on is the story of a rag-tag group of students who pick up a day job delivering, guess what, corpses. Each brings their own special talent to their little group. The leader is a computer expert who uses her talents to bring information and work to the team. The main character has the ability to touch a corpse and communicate with it, kind of like what Anita Blake did in the Laurell K. Hamilton novels before they turned into a hardcore porn series. The corpses tell the group its last…well…laster wishes and they carry it out for a price from the dead guy. The dead usually pay with either valuable information or valuable loot. Because let’s face it, when you’re taking stuff from dead people you’re looting them. That in itself is awesome.

The hitch is, of course, that it isn’t for kids. You’ll find gore and nudity aplenty in KCDS. However it’s the way it’s handled that makes this series such a triumph. Even though you are exposed to a good number of dismembered corpses, nude women…both at the same time usually…it’s done in such a mundane and every day way that it becomes less offensive and more normalized. These corpses are part of their job and Eiji Otsuka does a wonderful job humanizing even the supernatural aspect of this series. This is definitely something I can recommend to anyone who is a fan of horror or good storytelling in general. Also the cover is freakin’ sweet. Hopefully next time I’ll have something other than a Darkhorse Manga for you, but if it’s anything like this…I wouldn’t mind at all. Peace.