It has been well over fifteen years since I read the manga for PSYREN. Fun fact: when I first started collecting manga, PSYREN became the second series I completed collecting the volumes for (the first was Mega Man NT Warrior). Now, for nearly 20 years, I said that it was one of the best manga I had read that never received an anime, until now. The only problem is… after fifteen years, I barely remember anything about it, which means I might as well be going in blind. Was it as good as I vaguely remember it?

Let’s go!

Ageha Yoshino is a high school student who is always getting into fights, but he’s not a delinquent… well… mostly. He has a strong heart and will protect anyone… for a price (usually 10,000 yen). On the way home at night, he hears a payphone ring. Feeling that it’s a bit strange, he piques his curiosity and answers the call, but something odd happens. A phantasmal entity appears, disappears, and the payphone spits out a red card with the word PSYREN written on it.

The next day at school, he and his friends take notice of the school’s “Ice Queen,” Sakurako Amamiya, arriving. She doesn’t say much, but this leads to her being bullied. When Ageha notices her wallet in the trash, he returns it to her and asks about the red telephone card. She freaks out and commands him not to look into it. Suddenly, a buzzing noise happens in her head, and she runs off. Right before she disappears down the hall, she asks him to help her.

He does some digging about the phone card, and we learn that PSYREN is thought to be a secret society and is beckoning people there by a mysterious entity known as Nemesis Q. It sounds crazy to Ageha, but he sees dollar signs when he learns that an unused card is worth five million yen. He’s about to cash out when he remembers Amamiya asking for his help. He sticks the card into the payphone and contacts PSYREN. After answering a slew of questions, he rejects the offer and hangs up. This brings two “police officers” to his school looking for him. He realizes that he made a grand mistake and tries to flee, only to be confronted. After an escape, these “officers” mention that they need to get to him before the card awakens, but they are too late.

The card awakens, and Ageha finds himself in another world where he watches someone die right in front of him at the hands of a mysterious monster. Just when he’s about to bite it, too, Amamiya slashes through the monster with a sword, saving him. Welcome to the world of PSYREN!

MAYBE – After I talked about the manga, this might be surprising for me to give this a MAYBE recommendation; however, I’m not considering my fond memories of the series here. Instead, I am looking at this from the lens of someone who hasn’t heard of the series and is checking it out for the first time because, quite frankly, after over fifteen years, I feel as if I’m doing the same thing. I barely remember anything of the story, but bits and pieces did come back to me, so why the cautious recommendation?

Because… the way the story presented itself in the first episode didn’t feel like something that flowed naturally. Ageha randomly stopping to answer a payphone, and an info dump about PSYREN from an occult student, the classic trope of the main protagonist being in trouble only to awaken a power (or in this case, an escape) at the perfect moment. The entire story, so far, felt like a series of plot devices strung together to create the narrative.

While I do know that the story gets better later, if I were watching this as a new viewer, I probably wouldn’t find anything special about it. The first episode is as paramount as the ending, and PSYREN didn’t do anything special to get people to keep watching. It just came off as a generic isekai anime, minus the fantasy setting or overpowered main character. If I didn’t already read the source, I would be giving this the three-episode rule, which is what I would recommend any new viewer to do.

However, since I do know the source and do know how good it gets, I will keep watching, and maybe that will inspire you to do the same. Even though I say it does get good, keep in mind that it was over fifteen years ago; I had just started to get into anime and manga, so a typical shounen battle series may have been more exciting for my past self than the current version of me. I could very well be watching this show through rose-tinted glasses, so what I’m saying is… it was good, but it’s not going to do anything special or unique that a million other shows haven’t done before.

With that, I’ll let you all make up your minds on this one.