★★★★
Ageha Yoshina will do just about anything if you pay him 10,000 yen. On his way home from beating up a bully for cash, a payphone rings mysteriously close to him- and, on a whim, he answers it, only to find a phone card with the word Psyren on it. After he hears a classmate’s last words of ‘save me’ before she goes missing, Ageha finds himself slowly become entangled with her predicament- and, a day after using the phone card, he finds himself teleported to a dangerous world and learns of the game he unthinkingly got himself dragged into. He was now a player of Nemesis Q’s unbelievable game, together with others, in the world called Psyren.
Psyren is a pretty long series, with a total of sixteen volumes all in all. What started to me as a simple and curious story slowly began to unravel into a major conspiracy of sorts. At first, I expected this to just be your regular ‘guy ends up in another world’ story- but unbeknownst to me, I was starting myself on a journey through time that would pit those with power and those without in a massive war for survival. With psychic powers in the past and an apocalypse in their future, watching the main characters move back and forth in time is surprisingly easy to digest, which is rare for me to say about anything with time travel. The way they give mention of the time travel paradox regarding changing the past to change the future is also really enjoyable.
Of all the characters in this series (and let’s face it, it’s unsurprising there’s a lot of them with how long this series is), I think my favorite is No. 7. Though we don’t meet her until later into the story, I really enjoyed her history and the way it impacted her intervention in the antagonist’s plot. Though her methods were far from perfect, I could see the reasoning easily enough. I also just really liked her blunt attitude. Now if she’d just been bluntly honest from the start, I feel I would’ve liked her even more- but then again, the story wouldn’t be as enthralling if she had, I’m sure.
The art in this manga is fairly detailed. I was especially pleased with the fact that there was more than one skin tone in this manga- a lot of manga fail to feel inclusive and lack that kind of variety. I think I would’ve liked it more if I could think of more than one memorable character with darker skin, however. There was technically a second that comes to mind, but she’s a rather unique case, and I don’t count her as a separate character in the end. Otherwise, I felt the series had great artistry- the body types varied, some had facial markings, and you could easily tell the difference in fabrics between certain clothing and others. Adding this to an intriguing story and colorful characters, you get a pretty awesome manga to enjoy.
Ah! I just realized, you probably have no idea who I am, do you? Well, my name is Jaluna Rolik. I'm a writer and editor, and I also blog on a variety of topics. From writing and reading to daily life, I write a bit about everything, because I believe everything can relate to writing and creativity if you look at it the right way. If you're interested, my blog can be found here. I'm in the midst of hosting guest bloggers myself right now, so there will be even more variety of content than usual!
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