Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro Volume 1

A girl dressed in black travels across the countryside with a coffin on her back -- Not your typical manga story, and one that you wouldn't expect to be so darn cute. But that's Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro – an unusual mix of mystery, slice-of-life humor and fantasy that's hard to figure out and difficult to completely dislike.

The page layouts are confusing and the story meanders, but there's a spark of something special here. The art is charming, and there's a bittersweet, dark mood beneath all that cuteness. An off-kilter fairy tale that can charm indie comics and fantasy fans, if they're patient with its quirks.

"Once upon a time..." – Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro doesn't start out that way, but its fairy tale setting and magical artwork would make that phrase an appropriate way to begin this tale. A girl dressed in black wanders from town to town, carrying a coffin on her back. Where is she going? Why is she dressed like a boy? And what's in the coffin?

The first volume of Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro doesn't reveal all of the answers, but instead gives readers a fairy tale puzzle, with clues scattered throughout its pages. It never quite gives you a complete picture of what's going on, but by the last page, you know just a little bit more about Kuro, and her companions, Sen the bat and two cat girls, Sanju and Nijuku. Kuro is more introspective than most manga and Kiyuduki is content to let her story cast its spell slowly. For readers of Shoulder-A-Koffin Kuro, patience is a virtue.

Patience is also required to get used to the unconventional mix of yonkoma (four vertical panel) and standard manga pages. The first page is read horizontally from right to left. On the following page, readers must read the panels vertically in two columns. It's a bit confusing, to say the least.

But what seduces the reader to keep going is Kiyuduki's lovely color artwork, which is mixed in with black and white pages. Kudos to Yen Press for presenting these pages as the creator originally intended, because this story would be a much less magical experience without them.

At times, Kuro is cute, charming and funny, but also has a dark, melancholy edge to it that keeps it from being too sickly-sweet. Overall, it's an unusual, non-linear story that can appeal to fans of fantasy manga, slice-of-life indie comics or goth fairy tales like Fables or Sandman. Check it out with an open mind, and you just might find yourself enjoying it before you even know why.