Warning! This is volume contains INTENSE GORE, SICK VIOLENCE BRUTAL CRIMES and NUDITY. This is for mature readers, preferably 20 years old and up. Be advised.
Before you click Read more, please know that this is unlike any manga out there. The level of gore this series has brought is far beyond any horror manga or any detective manga I've read. This is your last chance to back out. Please, listen to me and do not read more than this if you don't want to dream of bad dreams.
MPD Psycho Volume 1: (Story by Eiji Otsuka/Art by Shou Tajima) tells the story of a detective who has developed Dissociative Identity Disorder. Our main character, Yosuke Kobayashi is a detective who we see is currently working on a case where the victims are mutilated and dismembered. After being seen on a television show, Kobayashi was identified and was targeted by the criminal himself. The criminal kidnapped and raped Kobayashi's girlfriend to exact revenge but he didn't end it there. He chopped off every limb and kept her inside a frozen goods delivery box that had an electrolyte mixture. The criminal disguised himself as a delivery man and proceeded to deliver the package at Kobayashi's work place. A co-worker opened the box and that started Kobayashi's breakdown. Kobayashi, bent on exacting revenge, cornered and killed the criminal. The question is, did Kobayashi do it, or someone else?
Freed from jail, Kazuhiko Amamiya (the intelligent and cool-headed detective inside Kobayashi's brain) was recruited to be a detective once more, but for a private investigating company. Some unofficial work was done by Amamiya before his release and one of them is a cannibal case. His first official case (under the new investigation firm) involves human head flower pot (heads that have flowers sprouting from the brain.)
I have given a fourth of the story away but that doesn't fully explain the gore behind this title. No words can describe the sick and brutal murders illustrated beautifully and told shockingly.
I warned you about this...
Art: For the age, I can't believe this seinen series has art that can compare to today's art. The art is close to human but with cartoon-y minor details. You can't tell a story with a lot of gore without the art being so close to human it looks like a photo. The anatomy is correct, the details are great and the expressions are defined. The gore is wonderfully drawn! If you were to trace a crime scene photo of a mutilated victim, drawn the gore and put on some dimension-giving shadows, then you have this. If an artist were to seriously drawn a chopped up cadaver, then this would closely match that artist rendering. I'm still in awe on how Shou Tajima pulled off such beautifully grotesque art!
The details in this manga is surprisingly kept the same throughout the series. The hair is details, the eyes (including the eyelids and eyelashes) are surprisingly accurate for the Japanese look and the faces are exceptional (except for some characters who are meant to be the comic relief.) This feels like a live-action series to be honest. You can't display this much gore in an anime because it will only look childish and immature when it should be acted in a live-action show. This is definitely done in a monthly basis because you can't achieve that much detail in a week. Despite being a monthly series, I think that this is definitely worth the wait because the wait pays off for itself after seeing a really in-depth look at gore.
Detailed. See?
Panels: This manga uses the standard box panels with the usual free flowing panels added as a panel breaker. The unique thing that I see in the other panels are the jump-out panels (I just made that up so shut it) because it's like a 3d effect where art overlaps the panel. Not many mangaka do that because it only tends to be cut up when its published.
The efficiency is there but the movement isn't. The mangaka probably thought that expressing movement isn't really a big factor when they were drawing storyboards. I can agree on that but with some extreme gory scenes, I would prefer it to be handled frame by frame. There's a scene where someone pulls something out of someone and the readers will only get that something is happening to the someone because of the sound effects. I guess sound effects can affect the story but I would prefer it to be expressed with minute movements to amplify the gore fest that it already is.
Meat that's tastier than beef, pork or chicken without any seasoning added on? Tricky? The answer lies is obvious.
Story: The story is smart. Well, Amamiya is smart but the story comes close! The plot is spread apart but is still pointed out (Hint: it's about the eyes.) I definitely want more of this story because the events (including the crimes) can happen IRL (though I doubt that anyone would hire a detective with multiple personalities.) The story flows evenly but for the first half of the volume, it jumped from the past to the future, then back to past then the present. It's confusing, I know. Anyway, the story is quite solid for a detective series (we all know that detective series' focus on different cases and not the development of main characters) and it focuses on the characters more than the crimes.
Characters: Well, we have an all-in-one character, Yosuke Kobayashi, who's not relatable at all. His other personalities make him a unique character. We have his psychopath personality, a really intelligent detective personality and a stuttering scare-dy-cat residing within one body. Then we have Machi Isono, the director of the private investigating firm, who is a calm and collected woman. She's most likely, our main character's love interest in the coming volumes. She's the woman who won't give up so easily and is rowdy when the situation needs to. She probably the most relatable out of all the "serious" characters because you probably know one who is like that (what I meant by serious is a character who plays a role in the story, not some comic reliever.) Most of the other characters are just for laughs or supporting characters so I will not include them.
This one's a pothead.
Bottomline: I advise you to leave this series alone until you are really ready to read something out of a serial killer's art project. If you really want to make yourself puke, then please do read this. It's unique, it's bloody, it's sick, it's awful and it just forces your gut to barf out. For someone like me who likes twisted tales of gore, then I would suggest this. I have bad thoughts about the scenes but I still love it. It's addicting too and I'm just stopping myself from reading all three volumes I have left. The story is enticing that you just want to see more and more and more of gore.
If you've read this far, then you're probably like me. Go ahead, read it. Don't back out on me!
Addicting Level: 9/10
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