That, of course, is our world. The mundane world where the fantastical is that which we create it to be. Some of those creations find expression in manga, and within the confines of those pages pretty much anything can happen. Despite mystical, magical settings, however, even those who spend their days with spirits and demons need roofs over their heads and need to eat, and thus need to either parlay their skills into a career or find time for a side hustle. I’ve been backlisting a lot of manga lately as well as diving into some new stuff and the characters who populate these books have definitely made, or been sucked (or suckered), into some interesting lines of work. Here are some of my favorites:
Shop Assistant to a “Space Time Witch”
Coffin Bearer to the Beast
Psychic, Dowser, Alien Channeler
I…may need to rewrite my resume. Even talking to corpses sounds more interesting than my last job. What, exactly, is Kurosagi? It’s a group of five students from a Buddhist University, three of whom have powers that may not be useful to the everyday practitioner but are certainly useful to those seeking their final rest. Karatsu is psychic but his powers are a bit limited in that he can only hear (and may, to a certain extent be able to command) the dead. He also discovers later, in Vol. 2, that if the connection is strong enough he can see the corpse’s memories, which can assist in sorting out some very murdery confusion. Numata is a dowser. No forked stick and wells for him though. His skull ring with a drop chain and pendulum locates something else: dead bodies. Huge boon for a team whose (ironically) life-blood is the deceased. And then there’s Yata, the channeler. He claims to be channeling an alien intelligence through the sock puppet on his left hand. No one can confirm or deny, however, there are a couple of times in the first two volumes of Kurosagi when Yata is rendered unconscious and the puppet keeps mouthing off, so…your call, but I’m convinced. CW: graphic violence, nudity, sexual content
