Into manga only material. This is a Vertical Comics exclusive.
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Hajime Segawa
Translation: Kumar Sivasubramanian
Production: Risa Cho, Tomoe Tsutsumi
What They Say:
Nearly a year and a half after the battle with The Professor where countless glowing fish filled the skies of Tokyo, 20% of the population in the Kanto region are now superhumans. As society grapples with the dramatic changes in the populace, a special ESP Academy is established so superhumans can attend school. Among the students is one Ren Jomaku, a girl who can create blocks of ice—and perhaps something much darker…
Rinka, who had gone missing, arrives back in Tokyo to put a stop to the plans of a terrorist organization that threatens Tokyo with a dangerous weapon, and rescue Ren and Marume from their evil clutches. But where had Rinka been that whole time? And what had she been doing? The truth is darker than the White Girl could have imagined.
The battle in Hong Kong’s black market tournament culminates with Rinka facing off with someone very close to the big bad boss…and Rinka winds up having to face some harsh truths about the choices she has made up until this point. Meanwhile, Kobushi makes a decision about her path in the criminal world with potentially fatal consequences.
Back in Tokyo, Ren had expected life at the ESP Academy to return to normal, except a certain student has gone missing, and another classmate finds herself swept up by the immense aura of a new evil presence that has set foot in the metropolis…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After the excitement of the first three omnibuses, and the end of the anime adapted material, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Tokyo ESP anymore. I knew it was a pretty high level action series with roots in X-Men and, to my very limited viewing of the X-Men franchise, stands alongside some of the very good storylines in there.
These next three omnibuses vary between never teetering a more interesting line and going into the promise of the first three. The stories aren’t written in strictly linear fashion, first starting with one year and four months after the end of the third omnibus. But volume five’s material is majority taking place between nine and 16 months since the end of the third volume.
It’s in volume five that I started to kind of lose interest in Tokyo ESP. It’s not that it’s not entertaining—it is—but it isn’t doing anything super interesting. It’s exhibitionism and exploitation and outright discrimination against the people who have gained super powers. In it all is Rinka, absent from volume four for the most part, who’s trying to take down an evil organization taking advantage of the helplessness people with powers currently find themselves in. They’re sold off as slaves and forced to fight to the death under the guise of being able to escape Tokyo. None of it is true, of course.
The problem with this volume and storyline is that it’s like two whole volumes (thus the whole omnibus) worth of largely wheel spinning. The twists and turns in the story are logical, but go on too long to truly be anything more than good shonen action. There’s nothing wrong with that inherent (except the little girl who’s made to look exactly like the Chucky character from the Chucky movies), but I want more. I want the girl that’s fighting for the little man, and to be reminded of that with her every action. The payoff is at the end with the Chucky girl, who has lost faith in a Rinka that used to represent everything that I loved about the character. She realizes Rinka was never killing in the ring if she could help it and trying her damndest to get everyone out of this situation. But the journey was too eh.
Volumes four and six are where the interesting events occur. Volume four introduces a flurry of new characters in Ren Jomaku, who can make ice; Marume, who’s a technopath; and Zeusu, who can bend spoons. Returning champions Ayumu and Murasaki also make their appearances throughout the volume, which mainly deals with managing a terrorist organization that’s bent on continuing The Professor’s goals. Sounds very familiar.
Of course this all leads down a path that everyone, from the first volume on, has been doing everything to reach a more ultimate evil that’s trying to…create a new master race of people with super powers? And also the original tablets that had the Ten Commandments holds all this power? And Ren is some sort of key for the ark? I glossed over several moments there that I didn’t want to believe because it was too high level for me.
In Summary:
I hope the final two omnibuses in Tokyo ESP return to the better quality of its first three omnibuses. It’s not that these three volumes were bad, but it would have probably been better to have a continuation of a villain or a greater villain rather than retroactively make all the first villains not-really-villains (but more specifically villains working for a greater good).
But do not fret. There is plenty of exciting content within the pages of these volumes. Whether it pans out in the end is yet to be seen.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 14+
Released By: Vertical Comics
Release Date: April 5, 2016; June 14, 2016; August 23, 2016
MSRP: $15.95 each
