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Reviewed by Barb Lien-Cooper I found out to my great sadness that (according to Wikipedia) my favorite distributor of Asian horror films, Tartan Films, just went bankrupt and has ceased business. There are only about seven or eight Tartan films I haven't seen, as they're the bottom-of-the-barrel ones. I will now seek them out. But I'm telling you, stuff like Undead But (Un)Forgotten is pretty thin fare compared to Tale of Two Sisters or even Face. So, Mail 2 and 3 have been like a mini-lifeline to the part of me that loves Asian horror. Sadly, like Tartan Films itself, Mail stops abruptly and for no apparent reason at Volume 3. Actually, the reason probably has something to do with the creator now working on The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service manga. Sad to say, as America has a history of poorly made remakes of Asian horror), Kurosagi is now in development as a US film. Eventually, I'll read Corpse Delivery, but for now, I'm still a tad upset by the disruption of Mail. While it lasted, Mail was a neat little series. Reading somewhere between a typical but well-done Asian horror film (say, One Missed Call) and the old American comic The House of Mystery. The plot: A geek psychic in glasses has a spirit gun (yes, a spirit gun---just go with it, okay?), which he uses to "shoot" unrestful spirits back into the light. The stories are mostly unconnected to each other, which makes for zero cumulative effect and precious little character development, but when the stories are scary, they are very scary. Volume 2 is the best one of the series. While wildly uneven in the imaginative twists department, I still recommend this volume. At the series' worst, some of the stories are little better than the type of ghost stories you used to hear at summer camp. You know, the "give me back my eyes" or "don't go in the elevator" type stories that are as cheap as they are effective. In Volume 2, we get a haunted doll. To that, I say no more haunted doll stories! That's an order! Haunted dolls are terrible clichés, so cut it out. Next, we get a haunted elevator story that is both a little simple-minded, but also a bit chilling. At Volume 2's best, I actually found myself making little "eek" noises out loud in delicious fear. The two best stories: Cottage (about a vacation gone really, really wrong) and Baby (about a housewife who really needs to find a decent daycare service before it's too late) are delightful. Volume 3 of the series is just weird. In it, our geek psychic gets a sewed-up zombie little girl assistant. Yeah, you read that right. She's sort of a junior Frankenstein monster. It makes me wonder if there were actually more plans for the series, as Akiba the psychic finally has a sidekick to tell plot exposition to. I kept reading the last volume, thinking, "You're kidding, right? You just introduce a character that might actually mean something good or important or just plain nuts to the series and you're not going to do anything with her?" Yup, 'fraid so. Let's see. Volume 3 is really up and down. Some stories are good, some are not so good, and some shake you out of your suspension-of-disbelief comfort zone. For instance, the story Un-notifying (about cell-phone use from beyond the grave) was quite good, except that the female main character, after being disturbed in the bath, runs around naked the whole time. What, did Japan have a towel shortage or something? Maybe the young woman's just a natural flasher (or the readership demands a little fan service with their chills and thrills). But I'll tell you, if I'm called out of the bath for any reason, whether my life's in danger or not, I'm going to at least try and cover myself with something before investigating further! I'm especially going to attempt to cover my privates when a total stranger with a ghost gun enters my home with an undead helper in tow! On a more positive note, the best tale in Volume 3 is Maternal Instinct, about the sad and frightening aftermath of a suicide attempt. Totally killer diller and just a little different than what you'd expect in terms of plot twists. For the sake of Asian horror and in memory of my beloved Tartan Films, I give this manga series a summertime-popcorn-movie-type-thrills rating of B plus. Comment on this review of Mail v2-3 on the Manga Life Forums. |
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