Manga Review: Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro Volume 1

Once upon a time, a young girl dressed like a boy and she traveled the countryside with a wise-cracking bat and two cat-eared girls. Oh, and one more thing. She's got a coffin strapped to her back. Welcome to the fractured (but oh-so-cute) manga fairy tale that is Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro by Satoko Miyuduki, from Yen Press.

You have to give it to Yen Press -- they're not content to just go for the usual shojo or shonen fare all the time. Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro is too cute to be shonen and too quirky and melancholy to be a typical shojo story. There's elements of fantasy here and a little slice-of-life humor, but even its sweeter moments have an undercurrent of darkness and emo introspectiveness that's more common in American or European indie comics than most manga stories. It's an unusual story made even more unlikely because it's mostly told in yonkoma or 4-panel comic strip format.

Read my review of Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro Volume 1, and see if this off-the-beaten path manga offers readers a fun journey to someplace new, or if it loses them along the way.

Image credit: © Satoko Kiyuduki / Yen Press