With its cookie-cutter storyline, dopey male lead, and share of printing snafus, this first volume of Psycho Busters is a frustrating – if often entertaining – read.
Creative Staff:
Writer/Artist: Yuya Aoki / Akinari Nao
Translated by: Stephen Paul
What They Say
Out of the blue, a beautiful girl asks Kakeru to run away with her. This could be any boy’s dream come true, but there’s something strange afoot. It turns out that the girl is on the run from a shadowy government organization intent on using her psychic abilities for its own nefarious ends. But why does she need Kakeru’s help? Could it be that he has secret powers, too?
Contents: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: boy meets girl. Girl has psychic powers. Boy meets a troupe of good psychics. Boy gets dragged into the middle of a grudge match between good psychics and rival cabal of evil psychics. Boy flees with the good psychic troupe. Boy starts exhibiting his own latent psychic powers.
If you add “boy is as thick as a brick, but not half as useful in a street fight” to that list, then you’ve roughly described the plot of the first volume of Psycho Busters. In this case, our would-be boy wonder is 15-year-old high school student Kakeru, who is in the midst of enjoying his newly found liberty while the rest of his family is away on vacation and business. Pawing through his sister’s manga collection and hacking away at his self-created video game only keep him occupied for a day or so, leading him to pine for a more interesting life. Ah, if only he could just open a door, and have a beautiful girl whisk him away on an adventure!
Exactly one panel after uttering this wish, Kakeru opens the door to his room to find — wait for it — a mysterious beautiful girl sitting in his room. Or the specter of one, anyway. Wasting no time on introductions, the girl possesses Kakeru’s body and leads him to a run-down house. Inside, she introduces Kakeru to Xiao Long, the world’s most over-achieving practitioner of qilong; herself, Ayano, master of astral projection and telepathy; and Joi, the teenaged gang’s mysterious leader. Oh, and don’t forget the Farmers: an elite paramilitary force who run the psychic development institute that the group escaped from, and who have inconveniently barricaded the house. And what psychic-hunting death squad would be complete without their own teenaged psychic savant, Ikushima, who appears out of nowhere to brandish a pistol behind Kakeru’s head?
Kakeru helpfully stands back and watches as Ayano & Co. take care of the situation, and improbably escapes harm when a loose piece of ceiling tile deflects a bullet aimed squarely at his head. After a quick escape to Kakeru’s house and a visit to his school’s requisite Hot Female Teacher, the band of psychics head to Yokohama in the hopes of tracking down fellow escapee Kaito, and ultimately end up encountering a couple of the Farmers’ rival “Category One” psychics. (Not, of course, before Joi has the chance to tell Kakeru that he’s going to save the world. Betcha didn’t see that one coming.)
Comments
While Psycho Busters isn’t really a bad title per se, it’s unoriginal and predictable to a fault. The whole premise gives me a bad case of deja vu, and it’s obvious where Aoki is heading when Kakeru constantly denies having psychic powers. (You’d think that after worming out of so many life-or-death situations by sheer luck, he’d start noticing a pattern…) The little bits of humor mixed in here and there manage to keep things churning so far; but with some of the running gags already starting to wear a little thin, I wonder how long Aoki can continue to ride that wave.
The first volume of Psycho Busters walks a dangerous line between being entertaining and just plain loopy, with no clear indication of where it’s going to fall by the time the reader reaches the last page. As the story develops, upcoming volumes may push it solidly into one camp or the other. With that in mind, I’m giving it a mild recommendation, with a warning that things could go downhill fast if the storyline doesn’t take a turn for the better in the next few chapters.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Del Rey Manga
Release Date: October 31st, 2007
MSRP: $10.95
