Book Review - Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service

Nearly 60 years ago, Joseph Campbell wrote a seminal work, the Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he argued that among all the world's narratives existed a common pattern. Somehow, I doubt he could have ever imagined a story like Otsuka's Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service - about a group of university students who make money by transporting dead bodies.

The main characters are social outcasts - too strange be accepted by the "in" crowd and too average to get ahead professionally among the living. They find solace in each other and earn their income using their unique talents working for the deceased, who arrange for karmic payoffs. One satisfied client rewards them with a winning lottery ticket.

The genius of this manga series is how it manages to balance the tragic with the comic. The heroes' task is to liberate troubled souls, which often belong to victims of murder, abuse, and illness - both physical and mental. These stories within the story are profoundly disturbing. In one case, a "loving" father stores the body of his dead daughter at home to keep him company.

And yet, Otsuka's work is also downright hilarious. The most rational character in the Kurosagi crew is frequently one who communicates via a hand puppet. The heroes, often short on dinero, complain about having to transport corpses using mass transit. It gets to the point where one has to ask: who is more twisted, the story or the reader?