MPD-Psycho. No. 1 (udgave 2007)

Entertaining, somewhat gory. Has potential to go somewhere, but if it were considered outside its serial context, I'd probably only give it three stars. ( )

WTF was that? Honestly, after the first volume, I had no clear idea what I was reading. I kept going, thinking that maybe it would clear up, but no, it didn't. There were tons of little author notes on the side that made things worse, so I stopped reading them. ( )

I delayed writing this for too long and now details escape me, so I'll keep it short: Though I haven't read a lot of manga like this, I've watched a good amount of movies kind of like, so I think I can say that for what it is MPD Psycho seems quite good. It's creepy and disturbing and really violent. And, uh, weird, with some interesting mysteries. The art is great, really striking with very expressive facial expressions and varied character designs. And it's clean and rather pretty, too, unlike art from some other similar series I've seen that is technically good but in its desire to look harsh and gritty starts looking (to someone of my particular tastes) a little unappealing or boring.

But there's a reason I've not read many manga of this style. The characters in them tend to have this stark distant feel, and I tend to not be able to keep with something like that for an extended period of time (hence enjoying similar movies but nothing longer). I tried this since there are always exceptions (I can read Death Note as the situations just got so wtf complicated enough to be gripping), but no luck here. The situations were definitely interesting and unsettling, but nothing that translates to gripping enough to make up for my lack of ability to connect with the characters. Still, I'm sure it's great for those who like this sort of thing, and possibly still interesting enough to snag some of those who usually don't as well. If I had someone to borrow the series from I probably would have even kept reading, but I'm also probably not going to pay for volumes I know beforehand to not quite be to my taste. ( )

While a bit confusing at first, this is a fantastic manga that deals with multiple personality disorder, in a detective/profiler. It is extremely well done and very enjoyable. ( )