Mai the Psychic Girl 1
Posted: February 10, 2008 Filed under: Mai the Psychic Girl 3 Comments »I was in the mood for something really 80s, and this series fits nicely. Stories about psychics aren’t really my thing, but hey, I thought I’d give it a try. Somehow, I had no idea this was drawn by Ryoichi Ikegami, but that definitely made the decision a little easier.
Within the first couple chapters, we learn that not only are psychic powers going to be used, but insane martial arts too. Mai doesn’t really use her powers all that often in the first volume, but they keep getting more and more destructive every time she does. The high point is probably when she stops a car to prevent a puppy from being run over, at which point the driver is ejected messily through the winshield, a bus ramps over the back end of that car and explodes, and then the entire street turns into a flaming auto junkyard. Part of me wants to believe that Ryoichi Ikegami refused to draw the manga if that scene wasn’t in there.
A lot of the action is martial arts-y in this volume, though. At first most of the guys in the organization trying to catch Mai go up against Mai’s dad, who is an unstoppable badass. The organization counters with a huge man/ogre they’ve kept frozen for just such an occasion, and the huge guy and the father battle it out on a ledge that is only a few inches wide and has a drop down into a gorge on either side. During this scene, the giant’s feet are mostly whited out in the style of disappearing genitals. This made me a little mad, since as soon as I figured out this fight was going to take place, I felt like I needed to know how the huge giant feet were going to support him on the narrow ledge. Oh well.
Later, Mai moves into a college dormitory with a bunch of geeky guys, which seemed a little odd to me.
Mostly I hate psychic-oriented stories because they always seem to stall, slow way down, and get boring, but so far this one’s good, and God knows Domu was cool, so maybe I should start giving them a chance.
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I just started reading this. Good, good, especially art! There’s a nice nostalgic feeling in it. I don’t mind ESP stories, I like Kimagure Orange Road that is still unreleased in english. :-/ And I thought there were only 2 volumes in the perfect edition as are listen on righstuf but I found out there were 3! Thank god justmanga had it, I ordered it immediately.. ;-)
For some reason, I always get Kimagure Orange Road and Here is Greenwood confused even though they have nothing whatsoever to do with one another other than rough time period :p I thought KOR had been released in English, then I remembered that it was Greenwood.
Mai was very good, and I don’t normally go for ESP stories. I want to say this was my favorite volume, but I remember the final battles really well too, so I think it stays pretty consistent. I recommended it to my roommate who absolutely loved it too, so it seems to have a pretty good track record so far.