Mai, the Psychic Girl

AUTHOR: Kudo, Kazuya

ARTIST: Ryoichi Ikegami (illustrator); Bill Person (letterer); Wayne Truman (letterer)

PUBLISHER: VIZ Media

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Mai, 1985-1986 (English translation, 1987-1989)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1985-1986 (English translation, 1989)

Publication History

When Mai debuted in 1985 in WeeklyShonen Sunday, a male-leaning weekly, the series was notable for featuring a female lead character. The feature ran for fifty-three installments, ending in 1986.

VIZ Media selected Mai as one of three properties it would package for American audiences under a deal struck with Eclipse Comics. Mai, the Psychic Girl, issue 1, had a May, 1987, cover date and was published twice a month, ending in July, 1989. The black-and-white artwork, shortened page count, and increased issue frequency were ways to call attention to the content. The plan worked; the first two issues had second printings.

After Eclipse collapsed, VIZ took control of the property and collected the serial into four volumes, helping to introduce to Americans the digest size that has become the norm for manga. The series was also released to bookstores through Simon & Schuster and was a forerunner of the manga explosion of the 2000’s. VIZ adapted the artwork, restoring aspects that had been edited out of the initial Eclipse releases, including one brief nude scene. In 1995, VIZ repackaged the four volumes into three “Perfect Collections,” which have had multiple printings.

Plot

Mai Kuju is a teenage schoolgirl, a fairly typical protagonist for manga. Unlike her comic peers, however, she manifests psychic powers. Once they appear, Mai is propelled into a rapid-fire adventure in which she is sought by the Wisdom Alliance, a global conspiracy that wants to use those with psychic abilities as agents in its efforts to influence history.

Fourteen-year-old Mai did not ask for her telepathic and telekinetic abilities, and she thinks they can be used for fun.

She would prefer to hang out with Yumiko Sugimoto and Rie Ikenami, but she soon finds herself on the run with her father, Shuichi. Her strong telekinetic abilities allow her to fly or hurl mental blasts with destructive force.

When Mai’s powers become obvious, she is brought to the Alliance’s attention. In turn, the group dispatches the Kaieda Intelligence Agency (KIA) to capture Mai and add her to the four children already under its control. As Mai learns to control her powers, she also learns that she is the latest in her family to have these abilities and that her revered ancestors used their gifts to protect Japan.

Without an instructor, using the powers proves problematic at first. For example, in order to protect a puppy she stops a car without taking kinetic force into account, propelling the driver through the windshield. She adopts the puppy and names him Ron.

Shuichi takes Mai to meet Madarao Idei, whose family has been protecting Mai’s family for generations. Shuichi displays a mastery of martial arts, keeping the KIA agents away from his daughter. Needing to eliminate Shuichi, the KIA takes Tsukiro, a giant of a man, out of cryogenic suspension and unleashes him. At this point, Mai is led to believe that her father died after falling off a narrow ledge into a deep gorge. Tsukiro’s right arm has been permanently mangled but he still is a threat to Mai, until she is rescued by Intetsu, a college student hiking in the vicinity. When Mai falls ill, Intetsu takes her to his dorm and finds a doctor.

Intetsu keeps Mai safe. She falls for him and does not want to endanger him, so she goes home on her own. Soon after she is confronted by Senzo Kaieda, and over tea he explains that he has been working for the Alliance. She goes to stay under his protection, where she finds some measure of happiness.

With Tsukiro unable to find Mai on his own, the Alliance dispatches after her its four teen agents—Baion Yuwomn, David Perry, Turm Garten, and Grail Hong. Turm strikes first, attacking her at the college. He is attempting to prove she is the most powerful of the quartet working for the Alliance, which is when Mai learns that the Wisdom Alliance, not KIA, is the real threat.

Mai eludes one psychic teen after another and winds up discovering that her father is not dead but injured and amnesic; however, her psychic abilities restore his memories. As Mai attempts to prevent worldwide destruction, she discovers everyone has secrets. Senzo Kaieda, for example, approved an experiment that turned her son Tsukiro into a monster. Turm claims to be descended from a god who protected her home of Dresden, Germany, during World War II and suspects Mai is also descended from a god that protected the Togakushi portion of Japan.

After defeating Turm and reuniting with her father, Mai returns home and to school. Soon after, Grail Hong is enrolled as a new student, becoming Mai’s friend. A few days later, Sogen Ryu, the Alliance’s leader, decides that Mai is better off dead. He dispatches Baion Yuwomn and David Perry to track her down, beginning a climactic battle over the city. One by one, Mai defeats Baion, David, and Grail and then confronts Ryu. He explains the Alliance’s goal: to ignite a global nuclear conflict at 9:09 a.m., September 9, 1999. With humanity largely wiped out, the Alliance would use the children under its control to become the parents of a new human race.

Mai’s determination impresses Grail. She explains her legacy and that she will die before Ryu is allowed to destroy the world. Acknowledging her position, Ryu withdraws, telling her it is only a matter of time before Japan, and then the world, bows to the Alliance’s will. Mai returns home and happily resumes her life.

Volumes

• Mai, the Psychic Girl: Perfect Collection,Volume 1 (1995). Collects the first seventeen installments, which appeared originally in issues of Weekly Shonen Sunday,beginning in 1985. These were then reprinted for American audiences in Mai, the Psychic Girl, issues 1-17, from Eclipse Comics, beginning in June, 1987.

• Mai, the Psychic Girl: Perfect Collection, Volume 2 (1995). Collects installments 18-35, which appeared originally in issues of Weekly Shonen Sunday,beginning in 1985. These were then reprinted for American audiences in Mai, the Psychic Girl, issues 18-35, from Eclipse Comics, beginning in 1987.

• Mai, the Psychic Girl: Perfect Collection,Volume 3 (1996). Collects the final eighteen installments, which appeared originally in issues of Weekly Shonen Sunday,beginning in 1986. These were then reprinted for American audiences in Mai, the Psychic Girl, issues 36-53, from Eclipse Comics in 1988-1989.

Characters

• Mai Kuju is a fourteen-year-old girl of average height and build who is obsessed with boys and her adolescent body. She attends Otani Junior High School in Shinjuku. One day, when she orders a baseball to stop its flight, she realizes that she has telekinetic abilities. Soon after, she discovers that she can read minds.

• Shuichi Kuju appears to be the director of New Energy Resource Development for Marbushi Trading and travels for business. He is keenly aware of the Wisdom Alliance, however, and becomes suspicious when he realizes that Mai had been given a psychokinetic test. He takes her from home and runs to protect her from the Kaieda Information Service thugs. He is a master martial artist with a fierce determination to protect his family and the world.

• Maki Kuju is descended from the Mihiro family, which has used its telepathic and telekinetic gifts to protect their homeland for generations. Her ancestors built the Togakushi Shrine, and the power is considered a sacred trust.

• Sogen Ryu is the leader of the Wisdom Alliance, an international cartel determined to shape mankind’s destiny. Smart and cunning, he wears an eye patch, has a goatee, and can be suave, domineering, and ruthless.

• Senzo Kaieda governs Kaieda Information Systems. He was a secret agent during World War II. His son, Tsukiro, was an experiment gone wrong and was kept in suspended animation until needed.

• Tsukiro is a huge brute with a wild mane of hair, but he is also nimble and agile. When his arm was permanently mangled, he was given a robotic prosthesis.

• Baion Yuwomn is a slovenly, obese teen with poor manners and a horrible attitude. He is kept essentially as Ryu’s pet.

• David Perry is an American student playing soccer in Japan when he comes under Ryu’s sway. Arrogant and vain, he believes himself to be better than anyone until he is defeated by Mai.

• Turm Garten comes to Ryu’s attention when she uses her powers to destroy an airplane containing a rival for a piano competition. Ryu brings her to the World Alliance and turns her into a weapon. Petulant and petty, she believes herself more powerful than she actually is and is easily defeated by Mai.

• Grail Hong is short for his age but is friendly and seemingly well-adjusted, making him the perfect sleeper agent to infiltrate Mai’s social circle. Seeing Mai in action, he comes to her rescue in defiance of Ryu and is ultimately returned to his native Vietnam after Mai’s standoff with the Alliance.

• Intetsu is a college student who is hiking when he comes to Mai’s rescue. He is her protector when she falls ill, and he becomes her friend.

Artistic Style

Illustrator Ryoichi Ikegami has been a popular artist in Japan since the 1970’s. He illustrates with a realistic style. He began his career with AIUEO Boy and Otoko Gumi, later collaborating with Japan’s top writers. He also illustrated Japan’s Spider-Man manga, which Marvel printed in the 1990’s.

His style for Mai is typical of the manga of its day, with many close-ups and varied page layouts, allowing for plenty of emotion and detail. He uses thin line work for shading and texture but, for the most part, leaves faces simple, letting a few lines offer up the emotion. His characters have a natural feel and fluidity to them, with many silent panels devoted to a person’s head reacting to the moment.

Mixed with his realistic style are the more traditional, comically exaggerated expressions associated with manga. These are used sparingly but are done for emotional effect, giving visual punctuation to scenes.

Ikegami’s work also uses Zip-A-Tone for effect and texture, adding depth to the images. Cityscapes appear to be photographs altered into line art, giving a photorealistic look to the settings. There is a clear American influence to many of the action sequences, and Ryu, the villain, is clearly modeled after Max von Sydow’s Ming the Merciless from the 1980 Flash Gordon film.

Ikegami’s style was ideal for bringing manga to American audiences and was well-received. Thus, his Sanctuary (1993-1998) was among the second wave of manga that VIZ published in the United States.

Themes

Ikegami conceived Mai as a character based on the Buddhist figure Maitreya, a Bodhisattva who comes to Earth at the wrong time and as a girl. From that notion, Kazuya Kudo and Ikegami spun a modern-day tale that reflected the conspiracy fears that had been made popular in fiction. The Wisdom Alliance is a shadowy organization attempting to control the world’s destiny, and is willing to kill mankind to achieve its ends. Its international makeup shows its global reach. The idea of bringing the world to the brink of annihilation is nothing new, but it is freshened by Ryu’s desire to oversee the development of a new race entirely gifted with psychic abilities.

A secondary theme is that of the legendary line of powered protectors, a common enough theme in Japanese and American literature and pop culture. Mai’s coming into her inheritance and only then learning of her gifts and legacy is a trope used repeatedly. Her yearning for a normal life with friends denotes her Everywoman character.

Adolescents becoming the adult they are destined to be is a subtextual theme, as exemplified by Mai and the four teens sent to oppose her. Three of the others are nasty, vain, and morally corrupt before Ryu even gets to them. Only Grail Hong is caught between his obligations to Ryu and the influence of Mai.

The father-daughter relationship is a rare theme in manga and American comics, so its presence in Mai is notable. Shuichi and Mai risk everything for one another, and the genuine love between them is one of the series’ strengths.

Impact

Weekly Shonen Sunday was filled with shonen stories aimed at male readers, so it was eye-opening when Mai arrived in 1985. She was a teen heroine with superpowers, which was unusual at the time in Japan. More importantly, Mai was perfectly suited in terms of plot, characters, and art style to introduce American comic readers to manga.

Ikegami has admitted that he and Kudo were influenced by Stephen King’s novel Firestarter (1980), which was also a film starring Drew Barrymore that played in Japan not long before work began on Mai. Similarly, the mutated Tsukiro was influenced by American science-fiction films.

American readers were charmed by the innocent and cute Mai, and were also no doubt titillated by Ikegami’s decision to have Mai enter her climactic battle in the skies over the city essentially topless and mostly unselfconscious about it. The success of the semimonthly Mai title encouraged VIZ to publish more of Ikegami’s works in the United States, beginning with Crying Freeman (1986-1988). The series also proved enticing to Hollywood, leading Sony to option the film for a live action adaptation; at that time, few comics and almost no manga generated interest from Hollywood film studios. As a result, Mai is a pioneering manga in American and Japanese comics history.

Further Reading

Buronson and Ryoichi Ikegami. Strain (1999-2002).

Fumimura, Sho, and Ryoichi Ikegami. Sanctuary (1993-1998).

Koike, Kazuo, and Ryoichi Ikegami. Crying Freeman (1986-1988).

Bibliography

Gravett, Paul. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. New York: Collins, 2004.

Misiroglu, Gina, ed. The Superhero Book. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2004.

Napier, Susan. “Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women, and Sailor Scouts.” In The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries, and Global Culture, edited by Dolores P. Martinez. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.