None of these spinoffs have seen English release.Ĭorpse Party has two OVA adaptations. The story is good, but feels forced into the Heavenly Host universe. There is also a unique story entitled Corpse Party: Another Child, once again written by Kedouin, which stars a brand new cast. While there is currently no manga adaptation for Blood Drive or the incomplete Dead Patient, but additional manga releases include an adaptation of the Corpse Party film (below), a manga adaptation of the Cemetery0 light novel, and two short-form comedy anthologies. Musume tries to mix ecchi with murders, and in a way that isn’t just uncomfortable but weirdly senseless… and judging by fan reaction, misdirected.
While the series has always had its share of ecchi jokes for better or for worse (especially Hysteric Birthday), and many of the manga adaptations are worse, they at least kept the ecchi in the comedy side of things. Musume tries to salvage by mixing in elements from Blood Covered and by creating some new and hybrid characters to differentiate the cast, but it’s not enough to stand up to its next decision: to go whole-hog on ecchi and become a borderline porn manga. The problems start when you realize that all the PC-98 game has to distinguish its story from the remake ideas that Blood Covered already put in the trash. Musume is a complete wreck, and fans tend to tuck under the rug in hopes that one day it will stay there, forgotten. Unfortunately, there is an adaptation of the PC-98 game, released in 2010 and known as Corpse Party: Musume. The adaptations of Blood Covered and Book of Shadows have been released in English by Yen Press, the former in five volumes and the latter in one. The Hysteric Birthday manga is not a universal improvement, but it is an interesting read: it slashes and compresses much of the midgame into a chaotic quiz show scenario, and replaces the original climax with a multi-chapter story unique to the manga itself. The Book of Shadows manga is only par for the game when it comes to moment-to-moment details, but it turns the game’s final chapter into a loose frame story, which goes miles towards correcting the game’s structural issues.
The Blood Covered manga is a solid retelling of the original, making key changes to help the reader understand important details, or to improve character arcs. The adaptations are adept at rolling Wrong Ends into the main plot without killing anyone, and often feature a number of additional improvements that make them worth a read even for an established fan. Four of the games have been adapted into manga, and all of them are written by Kedōin.