The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 2

Written by Eiji Otsuka
Art by Housui Yamazaki

The second volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is quite different from the first.  Where the first one introduced the characters and the concept of a group of Buddhist students who have opened a business to help lost and unclaimed corpses find peace over the course of a number of short stories, this book contains a book-length story.

Basically, the group has been having a hard time finding paying clients for their service, which makes sense since to be their client, one must be dead.  They advertise on the internet, and quickly become embroiled in a plot by a rival organization, called Nire Ceremony.  What they do is revive the corpses of murderers, and then let the families of their victims have at them with knives. 

Ao, the boss of the Kurosagi Service is contacted by her sister when they learn that the man who murdered their parents and sister has been executed.  Through strange circumstances, the KCDS has the man's corpse, but they deliver it to Nire Ceremony.  Later, they discover that Ao's sister's fiance has some secrets of his own that are connected to everything that is going on.

What follows is a pretty densely plotted horror story, which hinges on some pretty unbelievable coincidences and some very strange concepts, but is overall a very compelling and readable story.  Otsuka is doing a good job developing these characters, and I appreciated the longer story in this volume.