STOP THE PRESSES — Dark Horse resumes publishing “The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service!”

In news I didn’t think I’d read anytime soon, Dark Horse announced at the Anime Expo panel today that they’ll be publishing new volumes of “The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.”  The series, about a group of mostly unemployable college students who make ends meet by taking jobs from dead people, has been on hiatus since vol. 14 was released in July 2015.  Now, saying that we’re getting new volumes of this series is a bit of a misnomer. That’s because “Kurosagi” will be continuing in the three-in-one omnibus format that the first twelve volumes were re-collected in.  This means that the upcoming fifth omnibus will collect the existing 13th & 14th volumes and give us vol. 15 in English for the first time.

Speaking as someone who has already bought volumes 13 & 14, I have no problem with this.  In fact, I told series editor/adapter Carl Horn as much at the Dark Horse Manga panel he hosted at Fanime a few years back.  Given that the series has struggled so hard in the past to find an audience I’m not surprised that they’re going with the format that has actually made it profitable for the company to publish it.  I can understand that some people who bought volumes 13 & 14 are going to gripe about having to re-buy them to get vol. 15. They just need to keep this in mind: Re-buying two volumes to get the newest one is still preferable to getting no new volumes at all.

It also bears mentioning that this new omnibus is set to arrive next March, with another omnibus collecting volumes 16-18 following later that year (I hope).  While this is AMAZING news, the fact remains that the title’s future is not assured just yet. Dark Horse’s representatives stated at the panel that they will only release further omnibi if these new ones sell.  So be sure to open your wallets when next March rolls around to get this new omnibus. Barring someone deciding to make some kind of anime or live-action adaptation of the series — not impossible, but I’d say the current chances of that happening top out at “extremely unlikely” — this is likely our last, best chance to ensure that the series receives a proper, excellently translated English release.