Mai the Psychic Girl 3
Posted: February 18, 2008 Filed under: Mai the Psychic Girl 5 Comments »I’m not sure what I was expecting, but to tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed with the end to this series. There is a satisfying fight between Mai and Turm, but I was really hoping that a huge psychological trauma would force Mai to unleash her powers much more than she actually did.
Don’t get me wrong though, the end is still pretty epic. The last part of the series has Mai being pursued by three boys. One of the boys goes to school with Mai, one of them goes elsewhere and does a lot of legwork like trying to take out the man who’s been sheltering Mai, and the other acts as a contact for the two, translating their psychic communications for the head of the Wisdom Alliance and sending out orders to the other two.
Inevitably, the three boys and Mai wind up flying all over the city, Mai only partially clothed. Like I said, the final battle isn’t as spectacular as I had imagined, but I can forgive it, because it sort of takes Mai’s feelings into consideration in a way that I respect. The ending works best, I think, because the story has done such a good job of showing Mai as a regular, kind 14 year old girl who doesn’t really want to fight, and that’s how she is to the end. Mai is a great character, which isn’t something I expected in a psychic action series, to tell you the truth.
Lots of death does occur, two of which I was really sad to see. They were characters I felt uncomfortable with throughout the course of the series, but I liked them a lot, and their ending was quite sad. At least they had each other.
There were shades of “Offered” briefly when Turm explained that she was descended from a God who protected Dresden and mentioned that Mai was descended from the deity who protected the Togakushi area. Maybe one of the boys was descended from Beowulf or something, I don’t know. This series was just too normal to take that and run with it, though, which is a real shame.
But yes, there is a happy ending, which I was not expecting. Mai’s a great character, and this series was definitely worth reading, but I think Otomo is still the go-to man for epic psychic battles… I definitely liked Domu better than Mai.
This is the tamest (I can’t believe I’m using that adjective) Ryoichi Ikegami story out there, but it’s still awesome. Coincidentally, through a random act of God-loves-me, I found single-issues 3, 5, and 6 of Mai the Psychic Girl for a quarter apiece. Plus some Legend of Kamui, Silent Mobius, Kodocha: Sana’s Stage, and Fist of the North Star. All single-issue format, all freakishly old Eclipse Communications, all a quarter apiece. o_O When I saw the Mai the Psychic Girl, I almost started hyperventilating.
It always makes me happy when I see old issues of “Smile” from Tokyopop surface in comic bargain bins. There’s a shop around here which has a biannual-or-so sale with both anicent comic issues and graphic novels. They’ve had some pretty weird and esoteric stuff, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the individual issues of Mai the Psychic Girl in their bins. They used to be in the back issues when I first moved to Chicago about five years ago, but they’ve since been purged. Sad. I usually don’t go for individual issues, but I always look for issues of Animerica Extra I don’t have so I can sort of fill in the gaps (I’ve got almost all of them), and I always think about buying issues of Smile or Tokyopop, just because those are seriously entertaining and often have Paradise Kiss on the cover. At least the ones I see do.
XD I’m trying to plug the gaps in my Super Manga Blast! collection, since I’ve only got one issue of Animerica Extra. :( I always like looking at the art of Shadow Star, and reading What’s Michael? and OMG!. I don’t really like Seraphic Feather or Club 9, but that’s ok. ^^
I didn’t read Super Manga Blast, but I probably should have. At the time, the only series I was interested in was OMG, and I was willing to wait for the collected volumes. I definitely wish I had supported 3×3 Eyes before it got cancelled instead of after, because I love that series. Also, I probably would have loved reading What’s Michael in a magazine. I didn’t pay much attention to it when it was around, but it definitely seems like the kind of quirky weirdness I would get into.
Quirky weirdness is WM? in a nutshell. I love it so much. ^^ I’ve only been ever able to find two of the collected volumes, so I’m glad for SMB! XD