MANGA MANIA: THE KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVER SERVICE, VOLS. 7 & 8

Otaku culture takes center stage in the first story. "Otaku" are obsessive fans of anything ranging from manga to movie stars to the internet, an obsession that in its most extreme form keeps those obsessed confined largely to their rooms or certain sites that cater to their obsessions. The KCDS staff meet up with robotics enthusiasts who slip into arcane, for me at least, squabbles about the niceties of robot history. The scene shifts to The Broadband Center, a multi-story emporium catering to otaku needs. This is a thinly veiled version of a real shrine to otaku culture, the Nakano Broadway building. Various plot streams come together when a corpse-powered robot runs berserk. Then we are served up with a tale of plastic surgery designed to transform Japanese ladies into the image of an obscure star. (Apparently there was a period when Japanese women were actually undergoing surgeries to look like Audrey Hepburn.) Again, this being the KCDS, things are not what they seem with these surgeries. Participants become possessed by jimenso, scary little faces of the deceased star that appear behind their new pointy ears. When the source of the ears is discovered, readers are treated to one of Otsuka's most grotesque images to date.

The longest episode in Volume 7 finds the crew employed on a movie set. The elderly, senile director is a parody of the Japanese master filmmaker Kon Ichikawa, who died at the age of 92 a couple years after this was published. Kon made some of the bleakest anti-war films ever and produced Tokyo Olympiad on the 1964 games. This homage to Leni Riefenstahl made some people uncomfortable. His later films became more commercial, but why Otsuka singles him out for this cruel parody is unclear. The plot involves, of course, multiple murders, body parts showing up as props, and reanimated corpses.

Volume 8 tells three of Otsuka's best stories.

The first tale is ghost story with a gentler tone than this series is known for. But Otsuka is back in form for the next two tales. In both of these he follows his favorite theme of how history and folk traditions find their way into modern Japanese culture.

Kaneari, an obnoxious, wealthy, trendsetting wedding planner, is the malevolent force in the second story. He lives the ultimate playboy lifestyle, and the men of the KCDS meet him when they deliver at 40,000,000 yen refrigerator to his apartment. (Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no such thing as a refrigerator that costs around $500K.) Sasaki, the most entrepreneurial of the KCDS, takes an interest in Kaneari's new service, arranged marriages among the deceased. This was an actual practice in parts of Japan, where those who died before they were married could be married to one another for very Japanese reasons explained in the notes but that I will not try to explain here. Of course there proves to be something very fishy and supernatural going on. The drawings made for a shinto shrine to commemorate these events have to power to hasten the demise of the still living halves of the ceremony. The climax is one of the best revenge nightmares ever as Kaneari and his party animal friends receive surprise visits from dead but very angry young women, all dressed as traditional Japanese brides. Kinky and cool.

The final story introduces the disturbing Japanese tradition of the josanbu, midwives willing to kill unwanted babies at birth. The story also involves the introduction of "baby drops" at Tokyo hospitals. These are places where a person can anonymously leave unwanted children. (Similar experiments have taken place in the U.S. In one Kansas City incident, a single father brought all nine of his children to the hospital.) There is also a mysterious stand of unused lockers with magical properties and more information on how Japanese corpses are cleaned for burial than you might want to know. On the upside, it could be that Karatsu has met his true love.

MANGA MANIA: THE KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE VOL 6 by Eiji Otsuka

Volume Six is a bit bland for this series.

Past volumes have included such explosive episodes of Japanese history as the biological weapons devision of WW II and the Nanking massacre. This go round, the topical issue is the privatization of the postal service initiated in 2007 by outgoing prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. This causes a not particularly interesting development in the delivery service's business model.

Things get back in gear when Numata moves into an apartment with a suspiciously low rent. It turns out to be the scene of not one but two crimes. This narrative is interrupted by a gaiden. Gaiden are side stories that may have information eventually relevant to the main narrative or serve as historical side pieces. This one takes place in the Meiji period, concerns the serial killings of prostitutes, and uses a motif I first encountered on the TV series Thriller when I was in elementary school.

Spectacularly lurid images enliven the text, but less often than usual. The notes, of Disject Membra.  are entertaining and exhaustive as ever although even here the English language editors allow themselves a small vacation.  The topic concerns an early 20th century academic debate over the nature of Japan's prehistoric inhabitants. After stating the barest outline of the controversy, the note ends

...actually there were other differences as well, but unusually for Disjecta Membra, we are not going to get into it.

In this series, every life has a second act

MANGA MANIA: THE KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE by Eiji Ohtsuka

The creators of this series seem determined to pick at every scab of 20th century Japanese history. In Vol. 4 it was Unit 731, the infamous biological warfare initiative from WWII. This time. the Kurosagi team gets involved in tracking down the truth about a small village supposedly wiped out by a mass murderer many years before. The murderer turns out to have been on of the perpetrators of the Nanking massacre, the Japanese mass murders and rapes in a Chinese city in 1937. Returning home with an extreme form of PTSD, the man kills his entire village. Hardly social commentary, but still an approach to surprising, sensitive subject matter.

There is also something about a body in a mummy case and a really funny episode about the cryogenic industry that allows author and artist to cut loose with the grisly fun. 

As always, the notes are informative and useful.

Disgruntled Customers

MANGA MANIA: THE KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE VOL 4, by Eiji Otsuka

Each volume of this series finds out heroes desperate to make some cash and willing to accept most any work that will bring in a paycheck. In Vol. 4, they are signed on to help a destitute Japanese village become the Roswell, New Mexico, of Japan. While the three guys make crop circles litttle Makino checks out the supposed mummified alien corpse discovered by villagers fifty years ago. It is clearly the corpse of a monkey, but Kuratsu discovers an alien being trapped in the corpse, and so the teams sets to work.

As usual with this series, each episode takes on topical subjects in outrageous fashion, One of those touring exhibitions of plasticized human bodies leads the team into a hotbed of perverted science relating back to Unit 731, the WW II Japanese biological warfare initiative whose existence the nation denied until the 1990's. The wildest story involves the illegal imports for the exotic bug market which is causing an outbreak of suicides among collectors infected by a parasite that lives in a particularly desirable and illegal snail. The parasite does quite a number on its host's eyes and makes them want to fly. The results are predictably disastrous but it is all just nature taking its course.

The dialog throughout is profane and funny, and the visuals are consistently grotesque. Unfortunately I could find nothing from Vol 4 on the internet to reinforce that last statement.

MANGA MANIA: THE KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE

When you are in a business called the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, you do not expect one of your clients to get up and walk away. That's what happens early on in this installment, but the kids find him later, genuinely dead. In fact, he is dead twice over. He is carrying an older, deader transplanted kidney. This discovery leads the team to a very dodgy trade in organ harvesting from illegal immigrants. It also takes the to Iraq. Since this third volume is episodic unlike the single, book-length tale that made up Volume 2, the Delivery Team still has time to encounter a murder/suicide club operating in Tokyo.

A significant feature of this series is the Glossary and Notes at the end of every volume. The glossary mostly translates the kanji used for sound effects. I used one as a Potato Weather Posting here . But there are helpful notes that give some cultural background to the plots. The notes also explain various misconceptions the authors have about Western societies that make their way into the stories.

MANGA MANIA: THE KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE VOL 2 by Eiji Otsuka

Times are tough for the enterprising young people of the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. They haven't had a client in weeks and the local government has cancelled the annual sweep of the forest for the bodies of suicides and murder victims. The KCDS has been reduced to advertising as a general disposal service.

Fortunately, the first call comes from an area prison, where, due to some sloppy handling, the guards have left the corpse of a recently hanged murderer in with the daily garbage. The corpse, of course, has a story to tell.

Volume One of the series was episodic, but this time out you get a book-length adventure that involves the families of the protagonists, a very shady funeral home, a little girl who can bring the dead back to life, and some over-the-top gore. A good time will be had by all.

MANGA MANIA: THE KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE (VOL 1) BY Eiji Otsuka

What do you do if you are about to graduate from a small Buddhist college but do not come from a priestly family and therefore have no job opportunities open to you. If you have the proper skills, and a strong stomach, you might join The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. This group sees to it that corpses abandoned in garbage dumps or found in the woods or the trunks of cars make it home to where their remains truly belong. But special skills do come in handy. One is a computer hacker; one is a dowser able to find corpses not water; one channels a foul-mouthed alien through a hand puppet; another, who for some reason appears to be a little girl, is an embalmer; and, most helpful of all is Kuro Kuratsu who is able to speak to the recently deceased.

Eiji Otsuka's manga series promises to be ghoulish fun. One story involves a necrophiliac father, another a hair dresser determined to assemble the perfect woman. Most surprising is Eiji's ability to write funny dialogue, something you don't get a lot of in manga. There may be visual gags and outrageous situations in most series, but The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service at times has the verbal spark of good comic film writing. In one scene the group argues over whether they need to buy a train ticket for a corpse. Numata, the dowser, has the group constantly eating the same brand of instant noodles so he can collect the labels and enter a contest for a Prada windbreaker. Throughout, they banter and give one another a hard time like any group of twenty-year-olds, they just happen to be carrying around dead bodies.