story by Eiji Otsuka art by Housui Yamazaki As this black humor/ghost revenge manga series enters its second “decade” of volumes, we begin with a redesign. In place of the previous “brown paper wrapper” approach, in which a khaki cover gives the feel of reading something to be hidden away from the view of others, now the books have a prominent block of black, symbolizing death and the unknown mystery. In another change from previous books, most of volume 11 […]

As was the case with volume 7, volume 9 starts with an exploration of fandom. A young idol, a girl famous for being cute, is finding creepy possessed dolls in her apartment. She assumes they’re being left by obsessed fans, but when the toys move on their own, that suggests something more. The best part of this story is how involved Kereellis gets. That’s the alien puppet, channeled by Yata, who reacts in a protective fashion toward the dolls. Of […]

Volume 8 is a better starting point, if you’re picking up The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service in the middle, but I thought this installment had some interesting things to say about fame and the movies. The first story in volume 7 is a one-shot, about a robot powered by a zombie with a video game for a brain chip. It’s full of fan humor, making fun of gamers and other obsessive types. I found myself wishing writer Eiji Otsuka had […]