A Japanese Scooby gang drives around in their version of the Mystery Machine seeking out corpses that haven't been properly buried and helping their restless spirits find karmic closure.

The members of the group have skills that help in the quest: a dowser who can find corpses, a medium to talk for the spirits, an embalmer to care for the bodies, a puppeteer who can channel advice from an alien entity, and a business manager to make sure the corpses and karma provide them a little bit of cash to fund their endeavors.

The chapters in this first book are all self-contained little adventures with the college students venturing out to face heavy stuff like a suicide, child molestation, elder abuse, a serial killer, and . . . ~shudder~ . . . an insurance actuary. The bickering oddballs manage to keep the tone light even as the corpses pile up.

I have a couple more volumes on hand and a looking forward to seeing where this goes. ( )

A group of 5, no make it 6, oddball students from a Buddhist university use their unique skills to find and deliver dead bodies to their rightful resting place, for a price of course this is a delivery service after all. A pretty straight forward service, except the clientele aren't the kinds of people that die happily in their sleep or are well taken care of in their final moments, there is retribution to be paid to the living. And a matter of payment to work out.

Darkly comedic and graphic, this twisted bunch of Scooby-Doo adventurers is beyond entertaining in execution. Sure, the premise is far-fetched and silly, but this band of misfits seem to care about what they do and each other, even if their backstories could use some fleshing out. Told episodically, it is the perfect Manga to jump in and out of, since they reintroduce the premise each time and the stories themselves aren't linked. However, as much as I enjoy these type of stories, they are not for everyone the depictions of death by all its means is beautifully drawn but graphic. And this series deals with some very troubling subjects from child molestation, poverty, abandonment, murder, and suicide. Basically it's all the content warnings.

I thoroughly enjoyed this volume, it's right in my wheelhouse, but I don't expect many others will. It'll be something I can jump into from time to time and with 14 volumes published in English something that will last while. ( )

light-hearted read on horror. the murderers get their just desserts. irony abounds but seems to lose steam near the end. wish it was a full story rather than episodic. ( )

Dark and macabre concept with a heavy dose of black humor. A diverse group of misfits help to fill the last wishes of various corpses. It's a neat concept and each section tells a separate story. There's quite a few volumes, so we'll see how these stories mature and if they can sustain the momentum, but right now, I want to certainly read more. ( )

I started reading this for my Halloween Manga Reviews at Bureau42, before deciding to do Uzumaki by Junji Ito instead. However, I'm very glad I picked this up. It is definitely a horror manga (and I might consider saving it for next year's Halloween reviews - if it weren't for the fact that I want more people to read it), and it's very well written. If you consider yourself a fan of horror (or, for that matter, mystery stories), you should definitely check this out. ( )