5 out of 5

Collects volumes 10 through 12, again with Carl Gustav Horn’s awesomely informative and amusing commentary / sound effect translations at the end of each volume (the ‘Disjecta Membra’ glossary).  …And regarding those sound effects, after recently reading some manga from Viz, which publishes the effects in English in-panel, I have to truly doff my cap to Dark Horse’s presentation here, because the way manga employs sound effects to repesent both actual sounds and, er, implied sounds doesn’t sync to how English comics use their effects, and thus seem unfortunately hokey when translated.  By leaving it in the kanji, it maintains its original intent of adding flavor without being distracting.

Anyhoo, the approximately two or so stories per volume, broken down into 4 or so ‘deliveries’ each, are perhaps in line with the more far-reaching, less-world-buildy tales in Omnibus 3, but just like the second set gained a lot of steam on the direction started on in Omnibus 1, Eiji Ōtsuka and Housui Yamazaki gather up the more wandering elements of the preceding tankobons and deliver perhaps the most outright entertaining set yet.  I’m flabbergasted on both the writing and artistic one-upmanship here: that Eiji can take this corpse-hunters routine and find new, inventive, thrilling, comedic, and horrifying ways to apply it – even when he’s poking fun at his own story by repeating a concept (doll possession) or lampshading how this started out as a “job” but it never pays – and that Housui can seemingly draw anything from any angle and keep it fresh, and recognizable, an nail both the funny and scary beats.  The deliveries feed addictively into the next, such that I can’t imagine having to track this stuff down across breaks between publications and moving between different magazines.

Numata, Yata, and Karatsu again emerge as the main stars, but I was really happy to feel like Yata stepped forward more as a presence and not just puppet punchlines, and even Makino (often left out of both the core group and her embalming skills not so frequently needed…) comes across as more relevant.

Now everyone read this review for a couple years old collection, get interested, go buy it, thus encouraging Dark Horse to keep translating future volumes…