07 Aug / The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (vol. 14) by Eiji Otsuka, art by Housui Yamazaki, translated by Toshifumi Yoshida, edited by Carl Gustav Horn
After more than two-and-a-half years since volume 13 hit Stateside shelves in December 2012, the Kurosagi quintet-plus-puppet (I mean alien) are FINALLY back. And then some. Because in this latest volume, it’s Kurosagi x 3, as in three distinct Kurosagi versions fighting for page time. Guess they needed the lengthy gestation to triplicate themselves …
Of course, you’ll need to get to know the real staff first: psychic Karatsu, dowser Numata, hacker Sasaki, embalmer Makino, channeler-Yata-and-his-hand-puppet-Kereellis-who-is-really-an-alien. Click here for an overview of previous volumes, but you must read all 13 (including the illuminating endnotes, don’t forget!) yourself. You’re gonna thank me for sure.
So the Service is getting recognized on the streets now, although not for the usual reasons: they’ve recently been listed on “an underground site specializing in urban legends and conspiracy theories.” Legendary they may be, but now they’ve got to prove they’re the real thing by exposing those fakes who turn out to be quite a different sort of corpse delivery service! And just what is that motorcycling, phone camera-snapping web journalist up to, anyway?
Poser-Kurosagi aside, how about a meta version? Numata buys a DVD from a street vendor, called FBI Special Investigation Unit: The Black Heron (kurosagi means ‘black heron’), because the price was right – only a hundred yen (about 80 U.S. cents). This time, the animated (both literally and figuratively) stand-ins are a “#1 hit show from the US” as they deliver pizza under great duress and … uh … also help skinless corpses be whole once more.
When the Service finally gets to work as themselves (only), they’re called to make a special delivery to a museum specializing in “judicial implements of the past” – as in guillotines and far worse (I just learned what an iron maiden really is – screaming, yes, but no music involved!).
If imitation is the greatest flattery, then clearly Kurosagi is doing more than a little right! As long as the wait turned out to be, timing is pretty spot on, by the way … with election year fast approaching, some might consider this as warning for the political wrangling still to come, oh my! Talk about brain drain …!
Go ahead (no pun intended, ahem). Let the (real) Kurosagi quintet.5 take you far above the fray!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 (Japan), 2015 (United States)