Ever wonder if there is a way to escape government regulation and red tape? Don’t waste your time – even after you’re dead the Ministry of Hades will see to it that your soul is sorted, catalogued, and properly assigned in the afterworld. Hades is as full of disorganized offices as any underfunded government human services department, however, and plenty of the dead still fall through the cracks in the system. This is where Asato Tsuzuki comes in. Employed by the Summons Department, working for 70 years after his own death without a pay raise, Tsuzuki is in charge of rounding up the souls of those who were scheduled for death and somehow managed to miss their appointments. This is hardly the Department of Motor Vehicles – if you want a comparison to the living world above, the Summons Department is not so different from the busy police precincts of Fake or Top 10, with a hefty share of practical joking, inappropriate sexual overtures, griping, and politics. Tsuzuki himself certainly seems like a bit of a buffoon to his newly assigned partner Masaki Asuka, but this veteran of the Department is no idiot, despite his devil-may-care antics. Tsuzuki and Asuka head out on their first mission together, and it soon becomes apparent that recently dead, baby-faced recruit Asuka has plenty of secrets he’d rather not share with his senior partner. As magic crackles in the air and a young girl’s life hangs in the balance, Tsuzuki must puzzle out Asuka’s hidden agenda in time to complete his case, bag a bonus, and keep his own skin intact!
Descendants of Darkness, Volume 1
Yoko Matsushita
ISBN: 9781591165071
Viz, 2004
