4 out of 5

The long, long overdue publication of the fifth KCDS Omnibus, containing the previously unpublished 15th volume – hence the delay; or after whatever decisions led to that not being published individually in the first place.

I’d previously reviewed volumes 13 and 14, so I won’t be touching on those much here, and unfortunately, the ten-years-after-the-fact (for us non-Japanese speakers / readers anyhow) 15th volume is rather underwhelming – more on that below – netting the overall average of tales here… average. But the Omnibus gets an extra bump just for being an attractive and correctly priced ($24.99 for 3, 180ish page tankobons) collection, and bringing in all of Carl Gustav Horn’s wildly entertaining / informative notes at each chapter’s end. And, of course, I’m happy to get to read more of the series, even if it maybe kinda could’ve ended earlier. Then again, it has swung up and down from good to great during its time, so who knows.

Eiji Ōtsuka’s tale of semi-spiritually “enhanced” college kids who “deliver” corpses to their final resting place – one can detect the location of dead bodies; one can read their final thoughts; one has… a puppet; etc. – has bounced up and down between some serialized aspects, and standalone, episodic deliveries, that generally involve some comeuppance for a related wrongdoer. The whole thing has always been structured around the episodic (taking place over one or two chapters), but it’s a matter of how much those events actually seem to impact others beyond Easter eggs. The quirky rhythm and odd getting-the-band-together chemistry has fueled much of the book, and just the general creativity of some of the setups. But we’re also getting to the point now where much of those setups are structurally repeating, or feel stretched, and the lack of story payoffs overall leans into things feeling fun, but not necessarily page-turning. I am thoroughly entertained, but I can also reread a previous volume and feel the same. And most of those negatives apply to volume 15.

At the same time, I’d say these are all pretty inspired tales, though they do feel like stretches to fit into our world. The opener is probably the most relevant, with our group tasked by the old man to confirm some eldsters from the census are still alive, and finding a woman who is still alive… but claims she’s dead. The way this dips and weaves through a more typical KCDS revenge mystery is fun, and everyone in the group feels pretty solid in their roles. The next story revisits the robot-building scientists, and goes for robot gang members and some goofy, zippy action, thus bringing us to the ‘tangential’ type of tales – we’re involved because it features characters from previous arcs, but feels inconsequential to things overall. And lastly, a really, really promising tie-in to Aum-related stuff ends up feeling like a stretch, as though Eiji just wanted to drop some Aum facts on us. It’s also here where the drop-in / drop-out nature of the majority of the Kurosagi crew feels too obvious, with Sasaki getting screentime… just because. Housui Yamazaki’s art also feels a little looser and less defined in this last arc; I’d be curious if he was maybe working on other things at the time, or some other distraction.

In short, volume 15 feels mostly like side stories. KCDS has, as mentioned, rarely been a linear narrative, but we’ve slowly world built along the way, and it’s been a couple of volumes (14, 15) of somewhat treading water. But will I read the next Omnibus, should it be released in English? Of course. I’m still having fun, and the series has earned plenty of good will to coast for a bit. In the meantime, I’ll continue with Duolingo, pretending like it will eventually unlock me being able to read this stuff in Japanese.