Death Hall (Shiyakusho) Volume 1
I've been putting off writing my opinion about this after first reading it.
The gist of it is that after dying, people find themselves in a hall with various Officials which will help them write down papers to get accepted into paradise. The dead can decide to not write the papers and embark on a long walk into the void, where they'll disappear.
Obviously this means that each chapter is more or less a self contained story, with the recurring characters being the Officials of the Death Hall.
The first chapter opens up with a little kid who killed himself because of bullying and a constantly smiling Official, almost creepily. The author doesn't shy away from offering written details about what kind of bullying the kid was inflicted with and his reluctance in writing it all down to be able to be allowed to go to Paradise, even risking to be forced into the Void, felt pretty on point. The chapter has a bittersweet end, thanks to the young kid meeting one of his bullies down there and learning that his stepdad killed the bully after finding his own stepson dead and discovering what had been happening to him.
This gives the poor boy the push he needed to jolt down the info required for his application, because souls sent to paradise could be reborn and the boy, now knowing his stepdad loved him so much, has a reason to wish to be reborn.
These events are also used to give us a certain detail about the place that, at the start, Creepy Smile didn't tell us, by use of the bully who is, unlike the bullied boy, quite happy to oblige and jolt down the reasons for his death on the application form, only to find himself being hurled to hell because, as Creepy Smile inform us at the end, the application to paradise can be denied.
The other chapters deal with more or less the same levels of bittersweet stories. I felt bad for the young woman who died in place of her boss. She was happy to have sacrificed her life for him, because he helped her out giving her a job. Seeing the memories of her life has the sweetness of redemption as you see her being so happy to do her job and stuff, while the bitterness of her death is made even more bitter once we learn that her death wasn't an accident but instead it was planned by the rest of the staff. The only accident was her sacrificing herself to save the boss, the real target, as the other people were pretty dissatisfied with him, citing low pay for a tough job and not enough security. The final image of the boss sadly lowering his head to her family though left me a bit unconvinced of what those people claimed as him being a purposeful bad person. He could have been exploiting people in need but it didn't look like he was living the life while these people were suffering. Truly a bitter death.
The last chapter deals with a murderer sentenced to death penalty and gives us even more info about how the Death Hall is run.
First, the Officials are themselves people sentenced to death. People sentenced to death can decide to apply to become Officials, which puts the Officials into a new light.
The other piece of info it gives us is in regard to Creepy Smile. The character has been smiling all the time and even as he deals with this sick murderer he keeps showing that smile... until the last panel, after having managed to make the sick murderer (ran over kids to have fun) choose to embark on a journey toward the Void. It's then that he shows us his serious, angry and disgusted face. The man has little sympathy for assholes and his smile is only the applicants to paradise. I liked him much more after that.
So, I found this first volume pretty great. Bittersweet all around not just because it deals with death but also because of the type of deaths and the type of people involved, yet everything is shown and told in a pretty great way. The art for it is particular enough, nothing especially great looking but that I found cool.
I know this isn't scanlated, but if it's licensed in your part of the world or you can read Japanese, give it a chance, I feel it is worth it.
