It’s been a while. I’ve been reading, I promise! Just not blogging about it.

Okay, on to a book review!

Bloody Monday

A deadly virus outbreak in Russia causes a gruesome massacre on Christmas. An unfortunate victim leaves behind a clue on video, pointing to a mysterious femme fatale named Maya…

Said video falls into the hands of Fujimaru Takagi, a high school student in faraway Japan, who also happens to be a genius hacker moonlighting for his father in the Public Security Intelligence Agency. But the gravity of the case does not hit him until his father suddenly gets framed for a murder and leaves him with the enigmatic code words, ‘Bloody Monday’. Meanwhile, a new teacher arrives at his school and starts to show an unnatural amount of interest in him. Her name? Orihara. Ms. Maya Orihara…

Earlier this month, just found out that hubby had this manga in our shared shelf. It looked interesting enough, so I picked it up and started reading, breezed through volumes 1 and 2. Was a bit… put off. Reading the third one sealed the deal and made me drop it completely. I’m getting ahead of my self, I need to review it! And since these are three books, I might as well review each volume right?
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What would you do if you were informed that you only have 24 hours left to live? That is the basic question this relatively new manga series, Ikigami, asks. In this world, everyone has been injected with an immunization while they were young, but one in every one thousand is given an injection with a nano capsule that give you a predetermined lifespan, but this one person doesn’t know they are that one. The goverment’s plan is to let you learn that life is short and live life to the fullest as much as possible.

Ikigami #1 introduces the concept and the system, as well as the messenger system of how the ‘notice’ gets delivered to the person. And it covers 2 stories revolving around the people who are about to die, as well as the main character we follow through the whole thing: the messenger.

It is a psychological thriller, and also makes you question the system the government has implemented. Sure, may be it works (crime rates are down, people are ‘virtually’ living well), but is it the right and only way. For some reason, I’m picking up books recently that make you check your moral compass now and again. You also feel sad for the people who have been informed of their deaths and given such a short time to fulfill whatever they want.

Picking up this book, I was again intrigued by the premise. My husband agreed and we bought the book with no prior knowledge, as we did when we picked up Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. It turns out to be a very good choice again and we are looking for the next installment to be available locally.

This is a good series, well-written and aptly-drawn (although a bit gory, but then again that’s what the disclaimer is for). If you like good psychological thrillers that have a bit of life-inspiration brilliantly snuck in there somewhere, this is for you.

Rating: ★★★★★ 4 of 5 stars [?]

We finally got hold of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, #10 from a local seller. Manga volumes are not readily available in the local market, but am just really glad they still import this particular series.

We discovered this series a couple of years ago by accident. Not only was their cover design intriguing, the premise at the back coupled with ‘corpse’ and ‘delivery’ was too, so we had to go buy it and check it out. And was it a good choice! We followed the series ever since.

Your body is their business! Five young students at a Buddhist university, three guys and two girls, find little call for their job skills in today’s Tokyo… among the living, that is! But all that stuff in college they were told would never pay off – you know, channeling, dowsing, ESP – gives them a direct line to the dead… the dead who are still trapped in their corpses and can’t move on to the next reincarnation. The five form the Kurosagi (“Black Heron” – their ominous bird logo) Corpse Delivery Service: whether suicide, murder, accident, or illness, they’ll carry your body wherever it needs to go to free your soul! The kids from Kurosagi can smell a customer a mile away – it’s a good thing one of the girls majored in embalming!

Amazon

This latest volume covers dead that are suddenly rising up, lessons of letting sleeping dogs lie and why Numata (one of the main characters who always wear his sunglasses) suddenly takes them off for some one! Without spoiling anything this is another good volume of packed mysteries and I highly recommend anyone who loves a good story that is not necessarily scary. I just wished there was more info on Karatsu’s mysterious spirit that is always with him. Well, I guess that will let me hope for some more on the next volume yes?

For more info about the series, you can go read more via the Wikipedia page. Kurosagi Shitai Takuhaibin¹, was written by Eiji Otsuka, writer of the MPD Psycho manga series.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5 of 5 stars [?]

1. the series’s original Japanese title [↩]