[Manga] Reiko the Zombie Shop (Rated M!)

Reiko the Zombie Shop


Genres: Horror, Supernatural, Comedy
Author: Rei Mikamoto
Distributor: Dark Horse Manga
Volumes: 6 (discontinued)

Story
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Reiko Himezono is a zombie shop for hire, being able to resurrect zombies in order to discover hidden truths within them at the request of those who hire her. These truths usually involve pinpointing murderers and motives as well as various other bits of information. In each case, reanimating zombies isn't cheap and there is a price behind each instance.

However, Reiko the Zombie Shop has a unique story progression in which the focus and delivery of the plot is incredibly varied across chapters. The first volume focuses on a single aspect of Reiko, the zombie necromancy from a strictly business perspective, giving rise to several short vignettes with different clients for each. One story arc starts and ends, and then in the next volume, the story focuses on another arc, introducing an aspect of the usage of resurrected zombies for battle purposes. Short and usually violent side stories are interlaced between and within arcs, some not even involving Reiko at all.

Characters
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Characters in Reiko the Zombie Shop come and go, especially main ones.


Reiko Himezono (see cover): The main character. Can reanimate corpses as zombies for information and battle purposes.


Saki Yurikawa: Has her own arc in the first volume, a serial killer that murders little girls for not being obedient to her delusions of being a kind older sister. She plays a much different role in Volume 2 and is quite resilient until then.



Riruka Himezono: Reiko's evil twin sister who plans to rule the world with a legion of zombies after violently eradicating it of human life. She causes a significant amount of trouble for Reiko and company in Volumes 2 and 3, complete with a set of loyal subordinates.




Misc.
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Reiko invokes her powers of necromancy in order to resurrect a zombie. Most people request her services and pay her the accompanying (albeit exorbitant) fees, but varying circumstances cause her prices to fluctuate. One of those circumstances is when her personal safety is in jeopardy, which usually drops the price down to 0 yen.



Zombie summoning is always a messy job, with the results never turning out pretty. The first zombie summoned is a daughter of a family who questions the supposed method of death, suicide. Of course, it's quite obvious that suicide was not the case, otherwise that would be quite boring indeed.

Spoiler:

Saki Yurikawa in the middle of her killing spree. Not just limited to little girls, anyone who is in the way directly, or indirectly die a brutally painful death. The results are usually incredibly gory deaths by slashing or stabbing, since knives are her weapon of choice. The conclusion of her arc is supremely satisfying as well as the events afterwards.



Opinion
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Reiko the Zombie Shop is easily the goriest, most violent and most disturbing manga I have ever read. This easily ties or beats Berserk, and there were several moments throughout where I put the manga down in disgust to catch my bearings. Some of the most violent moments include a killer forcing her victims to eat their own entrails, various limbs being slowly amputated to maximize pain, and brutal deaths of young children.

Despite all this extreme violence, the manga is part comedy with lots of dark humour thrown about, although these moments never really take the edge off the mature subject content. A lot of the time comic relief presents itself in the side stories rather than within arcs.

As a final note and spoiler, just about everyone:

Spoiler:

dies at some point, except for one character

Spoiler:

It's surprisingly not Reiko! So you don't really get attached to anyone.

Jam it back in, in the dark.