Manga 101711 Mousou Telepathy

I found this Manga to be a really fun balance of both ecchi and really cute images which made this manga funny and interesting.

The art was nothing new, but that is to be expected of a manga that originally just a one-off gag comedy. But it does what it needs to do in the end and although that means it doesn't do anything amazing it at least did what it was supposed to.

The character development was extremely good with some characters doing complete personality flips in the space of just a few pages, but were still natural feeling and not completely forced. The characters also ... do not follow any obvious cliches and have some original character tropes or expand cliches in more original ways. (For example, the shy studious girl who even she knows what everyone is going to say and do is still extremely awkward when things do actually happen). There were also not really any useless characters as I feel all the characters had some sort of roll, even if it was just for the point of making jokes toward the main characters or acting as the voice of the reader inside the manga. Based on my reading I found every character entertaining in their own way.

The pacing of the story was pretty constant, it sometimes really slowed down, especially at the end where they to build suspense so the final 20 or so chapters were spaced around a few days while most chapters are based around one day or event. However, overall I thought the story was very well balanced as I read it in one sitting without ever feeling bored or wanting to skip to the next exciting parts.

Finally, the writing was done well. The dialogue was funny and did make me laugh quite a few times and was also extremely relatable in some cases. The way the differences in thoughts and actual speech was handled was very well executed as if you could believe a character would think that, but also not say that in a way where the thoughts and speech are not completely different. It is possible to notice when the writer changed from writing a one-off comedy to a full manga as the story becomes a bit more serious without losing out on its comedy or ecchi features. It also works great for those who like the finer details, as major plot points can be noticed way before they are actually revealed. You can tell the writer has a lot of fun writing and messing around with the characters as well as picking on fan jokes as well.

All I will say about the ending is that is was satisfying and was worth the hours of reading I put into it.

Pretty interesting to begin with but develops a serious issue that lasts for way too long. The protagonist struggles over confessing to her love interest which is a pretty standard romance manga plot. The problem is that the gimmick of this manga is that the MC can read minds and thus knows her love interest loves her back. This results in hundreds of pages of agonizing over what people's reactions might be despite knowing exactly what their reactions are. This is extremely painful to read. If the manga had resolved this about 500 chapters earlier it'd probably be an 8 but having to read characters ... worrying about the same problems over and over despite already knowing the answer drives this down to a 6 at best.

Due to how I want this review to affect the people who will read it, I will try my very best to avoid spoilers - even though it seems like that wouldn't matter.

Basically, two things:

1. I highly recommend you - the reader of this review - to absolutely avoid reading this manga.

2. This manga is quite possibly the biggest disappointment I've ever seen, out of any story, throughout any medium.

I'm only trying to get my point across when I say this, but I am still feeling physical pain from both the shit pacing and absolutely abhorred ending Mousou Telepathy has, about 3 hours after ... reading the final page/chapter. There was so much potential for an absolutely mind-blowing masterpiece here; at the end of chapter 153, my ongoing rating was a 9.7/10, the highest I've personally rated any one thing, ever - whether it be anime, manga, movie, tv show, music album, song, video game, video, (video) essay, anything. If there were not a few hiccups on some of the attempted comedy and a little bit of stuff that was poorly communicated to the reader, I would've actually had an ongoing rating of 10.0/10, because there would've been absolutely no flaws and literally everything would've been executed astronomically well. I do not think I can express how downright insanely amazing the first ~150 chapters of this manga are.

From that point onward, unfortunately, everything falls into an insanely boring, outright angering, and entirely out of character story progression-based loop, that happens twice and lasts for about 400 pages/chapters. Basically, the MC gets into some extensive, long-lasting embarrassing situation, doesn't want to perform a major plot point, and then gets depressed for a vaguely related reason. I'm being incredibly vague because I want to avoid describing any specific plot points that may entice someone to read Mousou, as I really think it would just make their day much, much worse.

After that, Mousou stagnates. Hard. While stuff is technically happening, the plot actually barely develops, there are an insanely large amount of blueballs, and a lot of the characterization up until this point is entirely flipped on it's head. The best way I can describe it is this: Around chapter 450, one of the characters is revealed to some information that, upon being used correctly, could bring the MC to do the one major plot point and basically end the manga (450 could be way off - I forgot to exactly document the page of this event - but I did document the next point, which basically makes having an exact page-stamp of this event pointless/unnecessary). On chapter 662, that same character performs an action that does help the MC get closer to doing the major plot point, but fails to piece together information she gained within the first 150 chapters and the information she got chapter ~450 and apply it, which would've literally definitely caused that major plot point to happen. The only way I can think this would happen is because the author simply forgot this character knew this crucial information, or insisted on not having the character break a promise she made early on. Due to how this character acts, however, and the fact that beyond the first time it's spoken, that promise is never called on or even thought of, I'm inclined to believe it's the former.

Finally, the ending. I'm not going to bore you down with how bad the ending is, since I'm sure you don't want to read another paragraph, but I will say this: The ending fails to resolve one of the manga's main points of tension, which actually existed from chapter 1.

In conclusion: 1.7/10. I'm just sad. So, so sad.

If you want a raw catalog of my thoughts as I read through this manga (which does include spoilers, unavoidably), check out this pastebin. Everything about format and whatnot is explained there.

https://pastebin.com/fMksEy2V

P.S. (This is edited in) Initially I didn't want to read the epilogue before I wrote this review because it's told by the author to the reader (in the ending thank you and credits) that it resolves the main point of tension I talked about earlier. Turns out it's also shit, as while it does technically resolve that tension, it does so in a whopping 2 pages, and only barely mentions two of the numerous initial problems it would create before ending.

Yep, this manga's shit. Goodnight.