MPD-Psycho Vol. #01

By Greg Hackmann     January 07, 2008
Release Date: June 06, 2007



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Eiji Otsuka / Sho-u Tajima
Translated by:Kumar Sivasubramanian
Adapted by:

What They Say
MPD-Psycho, the most-requested manga series in recently memory, has found a fitting home at Dark Horse Manga, where it will be presented uncut and uncensored in all of its controversial and unflinchingly grotesque glory! If Takashi Miike's MPD-Psycho television series still has you confused and reeling, the original manga series that inspired the show is sure to take you on a longer, darker journey into madness. Enjoy the MPD-Psycho series for all of its absurd twists, sci-fi touches, and inventive torture scenes, but you'll also be mesmerized by the plethora of odd conspiracies and case files found in Otsuka and Tajima's uncontrollable, urban horrorshow.

In MPD-Psycho Volume One, police detective Kobayashi Yousuke's life is changed forever after a serial killer notices something "special" about him. That same killer mutilates Kobayashi's wife and kick-starts a "multiple personality battle" within Kobayashi that pushes him into a complex tempest of interconnected deviants and evil forces. Earning praise for its consistently shocking plotlines and Tajima's clean, arresting art style, MPD-Psycho is the manga event of the decade!

The Review
MPD-Psycho goes for the jugular with its graphic content and serpentine plot twists, but there seems to be a method to Otsuka's madness.

Packaging:

The first clue to MPD-Psycho's controversial content comes from the distinctive front cover, which depicts a grotesque hybrid between a brain stem and a thorned plant placed against a flat black background. If there's a better way to grab the reader's attention, I haven't seen it. The back cover is much plainer, featuring just the MPD-Psycho logo and the customary publisher's blurb. The entire volume is shrinkwrapped and bears a Parental Advisory sticker, in case the cover alone isn't enough to question MPD-Psycho's age-appropriateness for under-18 readers.

The print quality is excellent; Dark Horse has chosen a nice, bright paper stock that keeps the line art sharp and the contrast high. Extras include an author's afterword and a two-page translator's notes section.

Artwork:

Though the two titles feature different artists and were separated in Japan by close to a decade, Dark Horse has been heavily cross-promoting MPD-Psycho with its nearly-concurrent release of Otsuka's Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Looking just at the artwork, it's not a bad comparison to make; like Yamazaki's artwork in Kurosagi, Tajima uses realistic character designs and clean line art throughout MPD-Psycho. Detailing is fairly sparse -- more often than not, characters stand against blank white backdrops -- but it's effective when used, especially with the very disturbing crime scene illustrations.

Unfortunately, like its sister manga Kurosagi, MPD-Psycho's artwork has its share of gaffes and off-model moments. Tajima seems to really struggle with perspective in a few places; characters viewed from above suffer the most, looking squat when drawn at an elevated angle. Some of Tajima's attempts at visual humor likewise fall flat. The (thankfully short) scene involving Tomoyo Tanabe's boss is especially problematic, showing off a strangely Tezuka-esque character design and bizarre facial contortions that hardly fit in with other characters in the same panel, much less the volume as a whole. While these sorts of artistic problems aren't all that frequent here, they're sometimes blatant enough to distract me from the flow of the story when they do occur.

Text/SFX:

Though MPD-Psycho's complex and often-nonlinear narrative can be hard to piece together, I never felt that Sivasubramanian's English translation and adaptation hindered the process. This translation is printed with a functional but highly readable bold typeface, making for a smooth reading experience all around. (Well, about as smooth as possible considering the source material, anyway.)

Dark Horse has included two pages of editorial and translator's notes. Since SFX and signs are translated in the artwork, this section generally deals with cultural differences rather than notes directly related to the English translation. Readers should be warned that this section explicitly points out places in the story where personality changes occur, which could be considered spoiler material.

Contents: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)

As we begin the story, Detective Yosuke Kobayashi is seemingly starting to crack under the pressures of his job. The ongoing hunt for a vicious serial killer has begun to creep into his dreams, spawning nightmares where Kobayashi finds himself confronted by a double covered in blood and carrying a dagger. The case rises to enough prominence that it attracts the attention of public television reporter Toguchi, who meets with Kobayashi after one last dismembered victim is discovered outdoors. This meeting is cut short by an unexpected delivery to Kobayshi's office; the delivery boy hands Kobayashi a Styrofoam cooler containing what's left of his girlfriend Chizuko, limbless but clinging to life. Kobayashi tracks down the assailant and executes him in cold blood, leading to his swift conviction and sentencing.

What makes this case more interesting than a simple run-of-the-mill revenge story is the fact that Kobayashi defends his actions by insisting that he's not actually Kobayashi: even at his sentencing, he interrupts the court proceedings with demands to be called Kazuhiko Amamiya. Despite his apparent mental instability, Detective Machi Isono continues to confer with Kobayasi/Amamiya on difficult cases, and even seems to believe his claim that he suffers from a multiple personality disorder. To make matters even more complicated, on hearing of Isono's impending retirement, Toguchi offers previously-unreleased videotape evidence as a sort of going away present ... and the tape implicates a third personality, Shinji Nishizono, in Kobayashi's crime.

When Amamiya is finally released from prison, Isono greets him with a lucrative offer: in exchange for assisting Isono's new private crime investigation agency, she'll be willing to overlook his crimnal record and mental illness, and even offer him pay and housing. Amamiya accepts, earning him a slot in two violent but seemingly unrelated cases. The first case, the suicide of an office worker turned cannibal, provides Amamiya with an unorthodox lead when a barcode-shaped bruise is discovered on the victim's eyeball. Though Amamiya isn't yet aware of it, the serial killer involved in the second case has simultaneously begun to develop the same unusual symptom, suggesting that there's more than a cursory connection between the two incidents.

Comments
MPD-Psycho is not an easy title to recommend one way or the other, especially at this early stage in the plot. Between the gruesome depictions of death and the incredibly convoluted plot, Otsuka seems to going out of his way to alienate his audience. (In an afterword defending the graphic nature of MPD-Psycho, he even implies that one of his goals was to push the boundaries of acceptability in shonen manga publications.) But MPD-Psycho's capacity to shock and disturb also makes it hard to dismiss out-of-hand: whatever statement Otsuka's trying to make here about violence and death, it's a powerful one. Even if you buy into the idea that modern audiences have become desensitized to violence in pop culture, you'd be challenged to find a reader who doesn't flinch at some of the things uncovered by Amamiya's investigation.

On the other hand, Otsuka's convoluted storyline and constant plot twists aren't so easy to defend. Every couple of chapters or so introduces a new alternate personality for Amamiya; by the time this volume ends, we've been exposed to four distinct personalities stuffed into one body, who come and go throughout the process of Amamiya's investigation. Thankfully, Tajima's artwork generally includes contextual clues to help the reader sort out which personality we're dealing with at any given time. Even with these clues, though, I sometimes had to really work at identifying the various personalities as they suddenly emerge. However, the constant personality switches are made more palatable by the intriguing organ donation subplot that ties the serial murders together. I'm willing to give Otsuka the benefit of the doubt at this point, if only for the creativity of this larger plot thread; but potential readers should be warned that re-reading parts of MPD-Psycho as you go along is practically required.