Mai, the Psychic Girl
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mai, the Psychic Girl | |||
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 The first issue. |
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| 舞 (Mai) |
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| Genre | Supernatural | ||
| Manga | |||
| Author | Kazuya Kudo (story) Ryoichi Ikegami (art) |
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| Publisher |  Shogakukan, Media Factory |
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| Demographic | Shōnen | ||
| Magazine | Weekly Shōnen Sunday |
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| Original run | 1985 – 1986 | ||
| Volumes | 3 (28 comic books) | ||
Mai, the Psychic Girl, known simply as Mai (舞?) in Japan, is a manga written by Kazuya Kudo and illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami.
The main character is Mai Kuju, a 14-year-old Japanese girl with powerful psychic abilities. She is being pursued by the Wisdom Alliance, an organization which secretly strives to control the world. The alliance already controls four other powerful psychic children, and it has hired the Kaieda Intelligence Agency to capture Mai.
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[edit] English release
Mai, the Psychic Girl is one of, if not the, first manga series to be fully published in English.[1] It, along with The Legend of Kamui and Area 88, were published in North America by Eclipse Comics and Viz Comics in a bi-weekly comic book format starting on May 26, 1987.[2] As it was one of the forerunners of manga popularity in the West, Mai was chosen for localization due its middle-ground artwork: neither "too Japanese or too American".[2] It was present in the "flipped" format that was the norm with early localized manga. Mai proved popular enough that second printings were needed of the first two issues.[2]
The series was later re-released in three volumes as Mai, the Psychic Girl: Perfect Collection.
[edit] Canceled film adaptation
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (October 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
In 1991, The Hollywood Reporter ran the article on film director Tim Burton attached to direct a film adaptation of the character with Francis Ford Coppola as a producer, however it didn't happen because the film's production company Carolco Pictures went bankrupt after Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ It is certainly not the first manga published in English. Mai is proceeded by such manga as the bi-lingual comic-strip leaflets of World War II and Barefoot Gen, first published in 1978. However, Barefoot Gen was left unfinished, and the handfull of other manga published were one-shots.
- ^ a b c Gravett, Paul. Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics. New York: Collins Design, 2004. ISBN 1-85669-391-0.
[edit] Further reading
- Napier, Susan J. [1998]. "Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts", in Martinez, Dolores P.: The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Culture (in English). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521631289.
[edit] External links
- Mai the Psychic Girl (anime) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
