A beautiful second book in the series
Creative Staff
Story: Tomohiro Maekawa
Art: Jinsei Kataoka
Translation: Althea Nibley & Athena Nibley
What They Say
Sakurai has been working with Y.K. Livingstone for a little over six months, so you would think he’d get the hang of things by now. However, his job — to clean and collect the physical form of the soul — comes with unique challenges that make things a little difficult…
What’s worse, he’s been paired up with a partner who would rather play video games than work. Dealing with life and death can be heavy business, from witnessing the power of emotional attachment, working with local law enforcement, to questioning whether animals have souls, Sakurai definitely seems to have his work cut out for him…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
For the first story this time around, our heroes need to deal with a high school age boyfriend and girlfriend who have been getting busy in a negative point. And as it turns out this had the rather nasty effect of causing the girlfriend to spontaneously try to kill her lover. Just when they try to commit a double suicide our heroes swoop in, and as expected it turns out the girl is at a point where she’s unlikely to be saved, but the boy is still salvageable. This turns into quite a dilemma, but ultimately Sakurai’s humanitarian technique wins out, claiming that it’s not worth risking the boy in order to save the girl’s soul, so in turn they’re left to save one another. All in all, there’s just a nice human touch here that really helps to rid the series of some of its detached feeling, which is definitely nice to see.
The next chapter is a really amusing and intriguing one, showing our main duo from Arima’s point of view. It’s a real great change of pace that works wonderfully, and it’s even got a pretty neat case imbedded within to boot! The next story, though, is a bit of a step down and largely relies on the humor of a little girl acting like a courtesan. Still, it does have a nice little bit that adds some character to our heroes’ boss, so that’s a plus. After this comes a chapter centered around Amano, a crow, a young boy, and his step-mother. It’s got a really great theme of “communication” running throughout it that’s beautifully executed, to the point that it’s easily my favorite story in the series thus far.
Finally, we end things on a two parter, centered on a hospital and another pair of professional cleaners assigned there. It’s not terrible, though it feels just a bit weaker than the rest of the book. Still, the idea of a hospital being especially dangerous for this sort of thing makes sense, and the new pair do make an intriguing contrast to our heroes, so it’s certainly got its merits. Oh, and we do get a goofy little “chapter 0” short centered around Amano and a smart phone at the end of the book, too, which largely just aims for getting a chuckle or two.
In Summary
Though it’s still not perfect from cover to cover (with the chapter about the little girl actually being a tad weak), this volume really feels like it nails the concepts set up in the first volume. There’s a ton of great stories here, and it digs heavily into the concepts of death and the overall morality of our heroes’ job. Perhaps best of all are the chapters centered around the high schoolers and the one with the crow, as they dig into the differences of the main characters really well. While the former shows Sakurai clinging to his humanity in face of his work, the latter gives Amano a chance to shine and digs beautifully into the idea of what it means to be different. Add to this the absolutely wonderful chapter here that takes the point of view away from our heroes, and you get a really great volume. Be sure to give the series a look, as with this volume, it’s become absolutely clear that it’s something special.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: March 15th, 2016
MSRP: $10.99
