The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 2 (v. 2) [Paperback]

Eiji Otsuka (Author), Housui Yamazaki (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 2007

Your body is their business! Five strange 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" - as opposed to the white stork which brings babies into this world...) Corpse Delivery Service: whether suicide, murder, accident or illness, they'll carry your body wherever it needs to go to free your soul! In Volume 2, The Corpse Delivery Service has helped the dead who wanted justice from the living. Now, think about how many living people would like to take vengeance on the dead. What if it were possible? When Sasaki realizes that the latest corpse in their office is the man who murdered her parents years ago, the Kurosagi crew learns of a far darker business than their own, in this intensely disturbing one-volume story.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Kuro Karatsu and the gang are back, this time to schlep the body of an executed prisoner who murdered Ao's family 15 years ago. Attempts to deliver the corpse lead the crew into a larger mystery involving the sinister Nire Ceremony funeral home, a little girl who can raise the dead, and a psychotic doctor. The tongue-in-cheek horror series' genius continues to lie in its subtle balancing of humor and suspense. Less episodic than the first volume, this one thus allows for more plot twists and turns. Not for the faint of heart, unless they expect gore and nudity. Tina Coleman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593075936
• ISBN-13: 978-1593075934
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #362,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Manga, January 18, 2011

By 

rednappingcat "a" (Gig Harbor, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 2 (v. 2) (Paperback)

Interesting story with excellent artwork. I'm still only halfway through the series, but it's quickly turning into my favorite story line. I think it is probably a little graphic and the concepts to old for younger teenagers but for older kids and adults it's at times funny, touching, sad, and sometimes reverent.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Second volume just as good as the first., June 10, 2011

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 2 (v. 2) (Paperback)

Eiji Otsuka, <strong>The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, vol. 2</strong> (Dark Horse Books, 2002)

After setting the scene in volume 1, Otsuka immediately moves on to a longer tale, this one the length of an entire book (and this is long for a manga volume, running 232 pages). Work's been slow for the KCSD since last we saw them, but things take quite a turn when they discover a corpse in a routine delivery they're making from a prison. It turns out the corpse in question is a criminal who's just been executed. Worse, when they get back to HQ, they discover he was in prison for killing most of Sasaki's family fifteen years before; only she and her younger sister survived the attack, as they were away from home at the time. Meanwhile, Yata has left the company to get work with steadier pay, landing at a funeral home where he's lovestruck by Mutsumi, another young employee who's harboring a special power of her own. Is it just coincidence that this funeral home were the ones who were supposed to pick up the body form the prison, and that they are fully aware of KCDS' "special" courier business? Perhaps not, as it turns out...

Proving himself equally adept at longer stories, Otsuka turns in another solid volume. Can't wait to see what volume 3 brings. I'll be getting to it as soon as possible. ****

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I generally don't write reviews but . . ., June 1, 2009

By 

William Daniel Walker (Dublin, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 2 (v. 2) (Paperback)

Seeing as there are no other reviews for this volume, (pretty much all the others have at least one) I figured I'd at least try. (and prepare for lots of these little digressions)

The second volume of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service centers around a single plot arc instead of each "issue" being stand alone short stories, like the first volume. The story starts with the guys broke and using their van for more traditional deliveries. This all changes when they are picking up packages from a prison and accidentally load up the corpse of a recently executed murderer and then . . . (OK, so I hate it when people give away the whole plot in reviews) Needless to say hi jinx shenanigans, and plot twists ensue.

There is less of the black humor that made the first volume so delightful, (and gallows humor would be so appropriate) but it is traded for more character development, so its an even trade. (as well as a manga/anime tradition, the first few volumes of any title seem to have more humor to ease readers in and make them like the characters before moving into the "meatier" stuff. Start off with melodrama and most people will tune out.) The writing is still very good, the series boasts much more dialogue than an average manga, and the author can handle the mature themes of the series very well.

The art style is the same as the first volume, realistic (by manga standards) but lacking detail (not really a complaint, I just can't remember a positive word for it at the moment) and the violence has a needle-in-the-arm quality to it (I should explain: when a Persian gets run through or chopped in half in 300, everyone cheers, but if someone gets a needle stuck in their arm on a medical drama, the same people would cringe and squirm in their seat.) All action words are still rendered in Japanese and the panels go from right to left. (Yes, I know it is the standard for manga, but there are titles that stray from this so i like to mention it)

For the moms out there, there is violence, blood/gore, dead bodies aplenty, (remember the title) nudity, (mostly of corpses which is just creepy) and a swearing sock puppet just to round things off.

In conclusion, (four years of college and now I can't end anything without saying that) if your considering this you've probably read the first volume so the major deciding factor is that there is *slightly* less humor and loads more story. If you haven't read the first volume then GO DO THAT NOW, unless you're the squeemish type you're in store for one of the best manga titles to make it to our shores.