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The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service #13-15
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service: Book Five Omnibus
Five students at a Buddhist college in Japan find there's little call for their job skills...among the living, that is!
But their unique talents allow them to work with the dead...carrying out the last wishes of those whose spirits are still trapped in their corpses, and can't move on to the next life!
Book Five has the Kurosagi gang running into ever more bizarre incidents of modern horror, from mind-control mouse hats, to taxpayer-supported torture museums, to the most feared calamity of all...jury duty! Meanwhile, it seems a gang of corpse-clearing impostors is out to take away their meager business--and in America, someone's made a cartoon series based off them...?! Plus, three previously unpublished stories: a client whose psychological syndrome makes her believe she's dead; the mad robot scientist trio invents a zombie biker gang, and fugitives from a deadly cult hide out in the radioactive ruins of Fukushima!
Collects The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service volumes 13 and 14, plus the previously unpublished volume 15.
But their unique talents allow them to work with the dead...carrying out the last wishes of those whose spirits are still trapped in their corpses, and can't move on to the next life!
Book Five has the Kurosagi gang running into ever more bizarre incidents of modern horror, from mind-control mouse hats, to taxpayer-supported torture museums, to the most feared calamity of all...jury duty! Meanwhile, it seems a gang of corpse-clearing impostors is out to take away their meager business--and in America, someone's made a cartoon series based off them...?! Plus, three previously unpublished stories: a client whose psychological syndrome makes her believe she's dead; the mad robot scientist trio invents a zombie biker gang, and fugitives from a deadly cult hide out in the radioactive ruins of Fukushima!
Collects The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service volumes 13 and 14, plus the previously unpublished volume 15.
648 pages, Paperback
First published August 30, 2022
7 people are currently reading
82 people want to read
About the author
Eiji Otsuka
361 books142 followers大塚英志
Social anthropologist and novelist. Graduated from college with degree in anthropology, women's folklore, human sacrifice and post-war manga. In addition to his work with manga he is a critic, essayist, and author of several successful non-fiction books on Japanese popular and “otaku” sub-cultures. One of his first animation script works was Maho no Rouge Lipstick, an adult lolicon OVA. Otsuka was the editor for the bishojo lolicon manga series Petit Apple Pie.
In the 80s, Otsuka was editor-in-chief of Manga Burikko, a leading women's manga magazine where he pioneered research on the “otaku” sub-culture in modern Japan. In 1988 he published "Manga no Koro" (The Structure of Comics), a serious study of Japanese comics and their social significance. Also as critic, Otsuka Eiji, summarized the case of the Japanese red army's 1972 murders as a conflict between the masculine and the feminine principles as they were both embodied by women and against women (Otsuka,1994).
Social anthropologist and novelist. Graduated from college with degree in anthropology, women's folklore, human sacrifice and post-war manga. In addition to his work with manga he is a critic, essayist, and author of several successful non-fiction books on Japanese popular and “otaku” sub-cultures. One of his first animation script works was Maho no Rouge Lipstick, an adult lolicon OVA. Otsuka was the editor for the bishojo lolicon manga series Petit Apple Pie.
In the 80s, Otsuka was editor-in-chief of Manga Burikko, a leading women's manga magazine where he pioneered research on the “otaku” sub-culture in modern Japan. In 1988 he published "Manga no Koro" (The Structure of Comics), a serious study of Japanese comics and their social significance. Also as critic, Otsuka Eiji, summarized the case of the Japanese red army's 1972 murders as a conflict between the masculine and the feminine principles as they were both embodied by women and against women (Otsuka,1994).
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 26, 2023
Another big hunk of a book, collecting three volumes of the adventures of the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (KCDS). It's settled into its X-Files groove, solving supernatural mysteries and ever-so-slowly building a larger mythology, but each volume seems to push closer to two stars -- I'm rounding this one up from 2.5 -- as the self-contained stories too often resolve with an onslaught of vengeful reanimated corpses on the bad guy and only offer dribs and drabs toward the bigger picture.
Vol. 13 - First Story Arc
Men who use the internet to prey on girls and runaways find their bodies under control of a girl who can push them into suicide. This features the first of two appearances in this volume of the three roboticists from the third omnibus, so I guess they're going to be the go-to expositionists for science stories just like Dr. Jenny Kayama is the source for all things psychological. Also, a revelation is made about the relationship between two of the delivery service members.
Vol. 13 - Second Story Arc
It's a riff on 12 Angry Men as the group's hacker pulls duty on a panel ruling on a murder trial and finds herself swayed by a fellow panel member with synesthesia who claims the accused has an innocent aura.
Vol. 13 - Third Story Arc
The crew takes an odd job weeding in a public park. But what's the secret ingredient making this garden grow?
Vol. 14 - First Story Arc
The most unnecessarily complex segment features impostors posing as the KCDS and a politician trying to wrangle the completion of a dam in his district despite championing a ban on dams elsewhere.
Vol. 14 - Second Story Arc
The oddest arc in the book is presented in a different, more cartoonish drawing style as the pilot episode of a TV series loosely based on KCDS. These American characters all have different names and slightly different powers and personalities. And most of them are pizza delivery guys who get pulled into investigating corpses whose tattoos have been carved off.
Vol. 14 - Third Story Arc
A delivery to a museum of execution and torture devices devolves into yet another conspiracy of crooked politicians.
Vol. 15 - First Story Arc
A survey of Japanese people over 100 years old according to town records to see if they are still alive has the KCDS taking charge of an aged homeless woman with memory issues who leads them to Tono, Japan, in a story that pays tribute to the folklore enshrined by Kunio Yanagita in his century-old collection of tales. The best story of the volume.
Vol. 15 - Second Story Arc
A tale of feuding motorcycle gangs takes a Kurosagi twist when a third, headless gang starts riding the streets. Corny.
Vol. 15 - Third Story Arc
In a case of "Too soon?" storytelling, the KCDS heads into the danger zone in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster chasing down a lead on a killer tied to a lightly-veiled cult based on the very real Aum Shinrikyo organization that was responsible for the sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995. It seems the cult member is planning a new and even deadlier attack using material from the disaster site. It's a less-tasteful version of Spider-Man visiting Ground Zero in Amazing Spider-Man #36 in 2001.
Vol. 13 - First Story Arc
Men who use the internet to prey on girls and runaways find their bodies under control of a girl who can push them into suicide. This features the first of two appearances in this volume of the three roboticists from the third omnibus, so I guess they're going to be the go-to expositionists for science stories just like Dr. Jenny Kayama is the source for all things psychological. Also, a revelation is made about the relationship between two of the delivery service members.
Vol. 13 - Second Story Arc
It's a riff on 12 Angry Men as the group's hacker pulls duty on a panel ruling on a murder trial and finds herself swayed by a fellow panel member with synesthesia who claims the accused has an innocent aura.
Vol. 13 - Third Story Arc
The crew takes an odd job weeding in a public park. But what's the secret ingredient making this garden grow?
Vol. 14 - First Story Arc
The most unnecessarily complex segment features impostors posing as the KCDS and a politician trying to wrangle the completion of a dam in his district despite championing a ban on dams elsewhere.
Vol. 14 - Second Story Arc
The oddest arc in the book is presented in a different, more cartoonish drawing style as the pilot episode of a TV series loosely based on KCDS. These American characters all have different names and slightly different powers and personalities. And most of them are pizza delivery guys who get pulled into investigating corpses whose tattoos have been carved off.
Vol. 14 - Third Story Arc
A delivery to a museum of execution and torture devices devolves into yet another conspiracy of crooked politicians.
Vol. 15 - First Story Arc
A survey of Japanese people over 100 years old according to town records to see if they are still alive has the KCDS taking charge of an aged homeless woman with memory issues who leads them to Tono, Japan, in a story that pays tribute to the folklore enshrined by Kunio Yanagita in his century-old collection of tales. The best story of the volume.
Vol. 15 - Second Story Arc
A tale of feuding motorcycle gangs takes a Kurosagi twist when a third, headless gang starts riding the streets. Corny.
Vol. 15 - Third Story Arc
In a case of "Too soon?" storytelling, the KCDS heads into the danger zone in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster chasing down a lead on a killer tied to a lightly-veiled cult based on the very real Aum Shinrikyo organization that was responsible for the sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995. It seems the cult member is planning a new and even deadlier attack using material from the disaster site. It's a less-tasteful version of Spider-Man visiting Ground Zero in Amazing Spider-Man #36 in 2001.
January 25, 2025
oh my god please. please give me an overarching plot. im begging you at this point. you can't just drop on me that karatsu's ghost now disappears when sasaki is on her period and then not give me anything else on it for like fifteen chapters. i saw the other ghost girl show up and was like fuck yeah! back to the plot they teased for us like thirty chapters ago! and no!!!!! it does not happen!!!!!! again!!!!!!!!!
anyways it's still a 3 star b/c the girl lining up a bunch of pedos on a rollercoaster track and then hitting them w/ the coaster was fucking amazing
anyways it's still a 3 star b/c the girl lining up a bunch of pedos on a rollercoaster track and then hitting them w/ the coaster was fucking amazing
August 28, 2022
FINALLY! I am so glad Dark Horse hasn't given up on this series. It's the best horror manga running.
June 23, 2025
Well, it’s been a long time since I looked at this series. Mainly because Dark Horse decided that sales weren’t good enough to economically produce the individual volumes, so they started reprinting Kurosagi in an omnibus edition that has three normal volumes in one big block. This volume includes #13-15 and came out in 2022–the next volume is due out January 2026.
Quick recap: Five students at a small Buddhist college discover that each of them has unusual powers or skills related to death. A corpse asks for assistance with its last wish, they help it out, and receive a reward. Thus they stick together as a small business, the Kurosagi (Black Heron) Corpse Delivery Service. They find the dead and help them to rest–and do odd jobs during dry spells.
The five members are: Kuro Karatsu, who has mediumistic powers that allow him to communicate with and temporarily reanimate the dead; Makoto Numanta, who has dowsing powers, but only to find corpses; Ao Sasaki, a hacker and business major that acts as the manager of the business; Keiko Makino, who trained in embalming in America and is the closest thing the team has to a coroner; and Yuji Yata, who apparently channels the alien mind Kereellis through a sock puppet.
They’re often unofficially hired by social worker Sasayama, a former police detective that was invalided out of the force.
In most of the volumes, there’s three “cases”, often dealing with social issues, “weird” Japanese cultural oddities, or modern retellings of folklore.
The volume opens with Karatsu and Sasaki returning from a vacation where Sasaki discovered she’s more closely connected to her coworker than she knew. It’s not clear if she told Karatsu about it. Sasayama calls the team in on a series of vehicular accidents/suicides. They are all men in their 20s/30s, wearing Mookey Mouse hats. There’s obviously a connection, but what?
Karatsu’s powers are on the fritz for…reasons, so the Kurosagi crew has to use more mundane methods to investigate. It turns out that the killer may already be dead. Also, the mysterious Shirosagi (White Heron) group are lurking in the background, but don’t expect any explanations or movement on their subplot.
Next up, Sasaki is called up to act as a “lay judge” in a murder case. It’s kind of like being on a jury in the U.S., but with its own twists. Even though the accused has already confessed, there still has to be a fact-finding trial. One of the other lay judges mentions that he’s getting the distinct feeling that the accused isn’t the murderer, but he can’t prove anything, so is shut down by the chief judge.
Sasaki is interested, though, because she’s noticed some anomalies in the evidence, and that the chief judge seems awfully invested in making sure they rush to a predetermined conclusion. The poetry of Rimbaud is a major clue, and with the help of her team, Sasaki is able to pull a Perry Mason-style courtroom trick to expose the truth.
Then it’s time for an odd job, helping clean up an abandoned construction site in preparation for turning it into a park. There’s an unusual abundance of ancient grains here, but also a buried corpse that’s been chopped up, along with a dogu statuette that radiates anger. Could this have something to do with the disappearance of a graduate student?
Skipping to the next section, the Kurosagi crew has become something of an urban legend themselves, which has inspired a set of imposters who make corpses disappear for a fee. The trail leads to a corrupt politician and a dam project that’s finally outlasted the protestors.
There’s also a fellow who’s apparently created a smartphone app that detects the thoughts of the angry dead.
Of interest is that the imposters have special skills of their own that allow them to evade immediate traps.
Then there’s a short story which has an American cartoon version of the crew, adapting them for stereotypical American roles and making them pizza delivery people between jobs. The villains are making leather goods of tattooed human skin,
This turns out to be a bootleg DVD for an unsold pilot that Numata bought, but one of the items in the story turns out to be very real.
Next up, there’s a story about a museum of execution devices that’s being shuttered just as the legislature is looking into suspected embezzling of government funds. The truth is rather more bizarre.
On to the newest volume! Sasayama offers the team a job checking up on centenarians, people who are supposedly over a hundred years old and still pulling down government assistance. In some cases, it’s known, the elder has died and the family conceals this to keep getting that sweet government cash. Those dead people could be clients for Kurosagi.
This turns out to be something of a wild goose chase at first, as many of the files simply have old addresses that no longer exist, and the people who lived there are long gone, so it’s just fixing the records.
But then the fellows find what looks like a corpse in the garbage outside a upper-income house. It’s just an elderly bag lady, but she claims to be dead, possibly because of the old head wound affecting her brain. She suffers from partial amnesia and fugue states, and wants to go to her family grave. Things get more complicated when it turns out the person who gave the old woman the head wound is still around, and still wants the fortune he was trying to steal from her.
This turns out to be a modern version of the “spirited away” folklore.
The next case involves a feud between two motorcycle gangs complicated by a third group of headless bikers. This turns out to be a sequel to the execution museum case, and also bring back the three robotics students whose wacky inventions inconvenience our heroes.
The volume concludes with a story about a survivor of an attack by an Aum Shinrikyo-style cult who has the ability to draw recreations of anything he sees on television. It turns out he’s not been doing this randomly, but every time the man who attacked him was in the background of a news show presentation. The man has just been seen in the background of a story about the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
So the boy has gone into the irradiated area to look for his attacker, and the Kurosagi crew goes after him to try to rescue him. It turns out the cult member has an evil plan to make Japan suffer, and that has to be stopped too.
The art continues to be excellent, and the writing is thick with references and research. So much so, that each volume comes with copious translation notes explaining what we’re reading that might be missed.
The big block of book is rather clumsy to read, but packs a lot of interest into one package. I am given to understand that there will only need to be two omnibus volumes after this one to complete the series.
Content note: Murder, suicide, other violence. Human sacrifice. Corpses in various stages of mutilation and decay. Sexual assault. Nudity. Stalking. Incontinence. Definitely older teens up, this is strong stuff.
Recommended for cerebral horror fans.
Quick recap: Five students at a small Buddhist college discover that each of them has unusual powers or skills related to death. A corpse asks for assistance with its last wish, they help it out, and receive a reward. Thus they stick together as a small business, the Kurosagi (Black Heron) Corpse Delivery Service. They find the dead and help them to rest–and do odd jobs during dry spells.
The five members are: Kuro Karatsu, who has mediumistic powers that allow him to communicate with and temporarily reanimate the dead; Makoto Numanta, who has dowsing powers, but only to find corpses; Ao Sasaki, a hacker and business major that acts as the manager of the business; Keiko Makino, who trained in embalming in America and is the closest thing the team has to a coroner; and Yuji Yata, who apparently channels the alien mind Kereellis through a sock puppet.
They’re often unofficially hired by social worker Sasayama, a former police detective that was invalided out of the force.
In most of the volumes, there’s three “cases”, often dealing with social issues, “weird” Japanese cultural oddities, or modern retellings of folklore.
The volume opens with Karatsu and Sasaki returning from a vacation where Sasaki discovered she’s more closely connected to her coworker than she knew. It’s not clear if she told Karatsu about it. Sasayama calls the team in on a series of vehicular accidents/suicides. They are all men in their 20s/30s, wearing Mookey Mouse hats. There’s obviously a connection, but what?
Karatsu’s powers are on the fritz for…reasons, so the Kurosagi crew has to use more mundane methods to investigate. It turns out that the killer may already be dead. Also, the mysterious Shirosagi (White Heron) group are lurking in the background, but don’t expect any explanations or movement on their subplot.
Next up, Sasaki is called up to act as a “lay judge” in a murder case. It’s kind of like being on a jury in the U.S., but with its own twists. Even though the accused has already confessed, there still has to be a fact-finding trial. One of the other lay judges mentions that he’s getting the distinct feeling that the accused isn’t the murderer, but he can’t prove anything, so is shut down by the chief judge.
Sasaki is interested, though, because she’s noticed some anomalies in the evidence, and that the chief judge seems awfully invested in making sure they rush to a predetermined conclusion. The poetry of Rimbaud is a major clue, and with the help of her team, Sasaki is able to pull a Perry Mason-style courtroom trick to expose the truth.
Then it’s time for an odd job, helping clean up an abandoned construction site in preparation for turning it into a park. There’s an unusual abundance of ancient grains here, but also a buried corpse that’s been chopped up, along with a dogu statuette that radiates anger. Could this have something to do with the disappearance of a graduate student?
Skipping to the next section, the Kurosagi crew has become something of an urban legend themselves, which has inspired a set of imposters who make corpses disappear for a fee. The trail leads to a corrupt politician and a dam project that’s finally outlasted the protestors.
There’s also a fellow who’s apparently created a smartphone app that detects the thoughts of the angry dead.
Of interest is that the imposters have special skills of their own that allow them to evade immediate traps.
Then there’s a short story which has an American cartoon version of the crew, adapting them for stereotypical American roles and making them pizza delivery people between jobs. The villains are making leather goods of tattooed human skin,
This turns out to be a bootleg DVD for an unsold pilot that Numata bought, but one of the items in the story turns out to be very real.
Next up, there’s a story about a museum of execution devices that’s being shuttered just as the legislature is looking into suspected embezzling of government funds. The truth is rather more bizarre.
On to the newest volume! Sasayama offers the team a job checking up on centenarians, people who are supposedly over a hundred years old and still pulling down government assistance. In some cases, it’s known, the elder has died and the family conceals this to keep getting that sweet government cash. Those dead people could be clients for Kurosagi.
This turns out to be something of a wild goose chase at first, as many of the files simply have old addresses that no longer exist, and the people who lived there are long gone, so it’s just fixing the records.
But then the fellows find what looks like a corpse in the garbage outside a upper-income house. It’s just an elderly bag lady, but she claims to be dead, possibly because of the old head wound affecting her brain. She suffers from partial amnesia and fugue states, and wants to go to her family grave. Things get more complicated when it turns out the person who gave the old woman the head wound is still around, and still wants the fortune he was trying to steal from her.
This turns out to be a modern version of the “spirited away” folklore.
The next case involves a feud between two motorcycle gangs complicated by a third group of headless bikers. This turns out to be a sequel to the execution museum case, and also bring back the three robotics students whose wacky inventions inconvenience our heroes.
The volume concludes with a story about a survivor of an attack by an Aum Shinrikyo-style cult who has the ability to draw recreations of anything he sees on television. It turns out he’s not been doing this randomly, but every time the man who attacked him was in the background of a news show presentation. The man has just been seen in the background of a story about the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
So the boy has gone into the irradiated area to look for his attacker, and the Kurosagi crew goes after him to try to rescue him. It turns out the cult member has an evil plan to make Japan suffer, and that has to be stopped too.
The art continues to be excellent, and the writing is thick with references and research. So much so, that each volume comes with copious translation notes explaining what we’re reading that might be missed.
The big block of book is rather clumsy to read, but packs a lot of interest into one package. I am given to understand that there will only need to be two omnibus volumes after this one to complete the series.
Content note: Murder, suicide, other violence. Human sacrifice. Corpses in various stages of mutilation and decay. Sexual assault. Nudity. Stalking. Incontinence. Definitely older teens up, this is strong stuff.
Recommended for cerebral horror fans.
November 16, 2024
This was a really strong book in the always excellent Kurosagi-series. A lot was familiar to me, since it's been collected in non-omnibus, but the new material made up for the double-buying.
The dam story is very good, and then there are two topics that must surely have sparked some controversy at home? The Aum Shinrikyo (albeit under another name) and the Fukushima disaster both turn up.
The best manga in English that nobody reads, imo 😅
(Why doesn't it get five stars? Because I really disliked the "us comic" art style chapter + not super find of the format. But if that's what it takes for Dark Horse to keep publishing, I guess I'll buy it anyway)
The dam story is very good, and then there are two topics that must surely have sparked some controversy at home? The Aum Shinrikyo (albeit under another name) and the Fukushima disaster both turn up.
The best manga in English that nobody reads, imo 😅
(Why doesn't it get five stars? Because I really disliked the "us comic" art style chapter + not super find of the format. But if that's what it takes for Dark Horse to keep publishing, I guess I'll buy it anyway)
December 23, 2023
4⭐️
This was a great volume. Though there were a few duds in the book, most of the stories were interesting and we get some closure on a few people. But in the end we are still left with a few major mysteries that I am not sure we will ever get to read in the future as this series is ongoing but the translation or even scanslation has not caught up to the Japanese release. I am just happy I have a few more volumes left that have been scanslated by fans and am looking forward to seeing where the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service goes.
This was a great volume. Though there were a few duds in the book, most of the stories were interesting and we get some closure on a few people. But in the end we are still left with a few major mysteries that I am not sure we will ever get to read in the future as this series is ongoing but the translation or even scanslation has not caught up to the Japanese release. I am just happy I have a few more volumes left that have been scanslated by fans and am looking forward to seeing where the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service goes.
February 26, 2024
I went to the library and saw this and was excited to read book 15, which has not been released as a single book. I am sorry to say it didn't feel like the rest of the series and I was a little disappointed. I wanted more about the background of the characters, which is where I thought the series was going.
February 22, 2025
Starts off a little weak but concludes with a really eerie and touching story where the gang heads in to irradiated Fukushima. Kurosagi is one of the great manga of this era and I hope it continues in translation beyond the sixth omnibus. Are you listening Dark Horse??
January 11, 2023
Scooby Doo on crack omnibus 5 was worth the wait
March 7, 2024
2.5 stars.
May 17, 2024
As with the first 4, a fun and entertaining read
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