Mail, Vols. 1-3

By Housui Yamazaki
Published by Dark Horse
Rating: Mature Readers

From Housui Yamazaki, the artist for The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, comes the three-volume horror series Mail. Like Golgo 13, Mail consists of vignettes built around a single character. The series’ hero is Akiba, a detective who comes off as disarmingly useless and naive but is, in Columbo-ish fashion, hiding his true intelligence. And his ability to see dead people. We get few glimpses into his past, though Yamazaki does at least provide us with an “origin story” in the first volume, and a rather disturbing flashback to Akiba’s childhood in the third.

Yamakazi sticks to a basic formula for most of the stories: Someone gets into trouble with a ghost. We learn a little bit about the ghost–how and why he (or she) is menacing the living. Then Akiba shows up and takes the ghost out with one shot from Kagutsuchi, his holy gun. Though this structure might sound pretty bland and repetitive, Yamazaki constantly offers fun and creepy takes on the traditional ghost story, from haunted cars to ghostly limbs.

Though I enjoy Yamakazi’s work on Kurosagi, I think his art really shines in Mail. At first glance, the clean line work might not seem to lend itself to horror stories. Once the ghosts begin to turn up, and the first gory images appear, however, any doubts about the appropriateness of the artwork are banished. There isn’t a whole lot of overly graphic gore present in the book; most of the horror relies on Yamazaki’s ability to create a creepy atmosphere. His use of double page spreads provide for some really chilling moments, even when the action in them isn’t what one would think of as visually scary or dramatic. The best example can be found in “Hide and Seek” (volume one), which is set in a haunted apartment. Yamazaki gives us a lovely, two-page spread that consists of a woman looking into an empty room while a ghostly head peeks back at her around a corner–from a ceiling perch. It doesn’t sound like much, but the build up and reveal give it a nice punch.

Dark Horse chose to leave the Japanese sound effects intact with translation notes at the end of each volume. Thankfully, there’s a lot more to these endnotes than just an index of sound effects. As he did for Kurosagi, editor Carl Horn uses these appendices as a dumping ground for all sorts of interesting tidbits: explanations about Japanese terms for World War II, information about locations mentioned in the stories, and a wonderful rant about John Woo’s Windtalkers. Most folks might skip over the endnotes, but they really shouldn’t. They’re interesting, insightful, and funny to boot. It’s a nice little unexpected bonus.

Overall, Mail is a fantastic horror series that’s far too short. Three volumes just weren’t enough for me, especially after some developments late in the third volume. Thankfully, Mail fans can look forward to one more Akiba story, as he makes an appearance in the fourth volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.

All three volumes of Mail are available now. Click here for a preview of volume one.