Tokyo ESP

Tokyo ESP is very, very mediocre.

When i first started reading Tokyo ESP i took quite an interest. The Mc was female which you don't see much of in a shounen manga and it had quite positive reviews. It had a few good opening chapters which gave a good understanding of the world and the situation of our protagonist was in; overall it set the premise well and it had potential to expand into a interesting story. However, as the story went on the manga betrayed my expectations and came about full of cliches and boring protagonists.

The story went so far to take a bunch of American movies and mashed them together. Some even have the same faces. Now, I can't tell if this is trying to give a little "comedy" to the series but it definitely does not work. It's like the manga is trying to force the audience to take the story seriously with sometimes very gruesome scenes yet at the same time, the manga itself doesn't take itself seriously, with petty jokes and god awful fan service. Sometimes i can't tell if this is aimed at 7-9 years olds or for teens.

The Mc and her crew is probably the most boring part of the whole series. They're the most boring and cliche characters i've ever seen in any shounen series. If you came here expecting a story that's different to every other generic shounen manga then you'll be sorrily disappointed. The Mc is like any other shounen protagonist you'll ever see except that she's female and that's about it. The side characters are very bland with little to no character development throughout the whole story like the story completely forgot about them. And the romance is probably the most cheesy I've ever seen in a shounen manga. The author clearly wasn't great at romance that they should've just left it out if he couldn't even do it properly. Although I do admit the romance definitely had potential at the beginning but it felt so rushed and forced; out of place.

By far the most interesting part in this whole series are the villains. The villains have actual villain-like characteristics with realistic enough motivations that it makes sense why they are doing what they're doing. The main villain had a very interesting back story and overall good character development. However that's where my compliments have to end as villain in the second part was like any other villain that just wanted power and nothing else. There is nothing this story does that is better than your every other 3rd-rate shounen series full of cliches.

The art is mediocre, Nothing interesting and quite detestable. Although i won't say it's too bad because of the detailed backgrounds with very few blacks. Overall, it not pretty but it's not bad; you can see the author took his time with it, but it wasn't my style.

Overall, i didn't really enjoy the series. It was full of cliche's with nothing new and a boring read, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless you love everything to do with shounen or maybe want a female protagonist but that's about it.