Dust Spot!!, also known as Dust Spurt!! or, in the first English translation by Viz Medianote , Wasted Minds!, is an action-comedy manga mini-series written by Rumiko Takahashi in 1979.
Dust Spot!! revolves around the antics of the Japanese Central Intelligence Agency's first team of psionic super-agents as they are deployed against the covert operations of United Pigs, a terrorist organization with dreams of world domination. These agents consist of Yura Enjoji, a female telekinetic with augmented strength, and Tamuro Gomi, a psychoporter who can teleport between patches of garbage. Unfortunately for the JCIA, the two of them don't exactly get along...
The series ran for only five chapters, from May 1979 to September 1979, consisting of the following stories:
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Mr Pig
The mysterious boss of the United Pigs organization dispatches orders to his followers; the JCIA's first esper agents, Yura Enjoji and Tamuro Gomi, are returning to Japan from their training in America — they must be assassinated! United Pigs sabotages the plane transporting the two espers, but fail to reckon with Tamuro's powers, which allows him to save hmself, Yura and the pilots. As the espers' handler, Tadayasu Sekoi, retrieves them, he informs them that Japan has been plagued by a series of mysterious spontaneous collapses — everything from household appliances to buildings. His own car falls apart, forcing Tamuro to teleport them to the JCIA front-building; an okonomiyaki restaurant. Here, they are told that the JCIA suspects that the phenomena may be connected to the huge new toy craze "Mr. Pig". United Pigs agents attempt to assassinate the espers, giving one of their entropic pigs to Yura and collapsing a building onto them, but Yura destroys the building. With an intact entropic pig, the JCIA is able to locate the creators and the two espers (plus the tag-along Tadayasu) swiftly capture the three-man band of "The Giant Brotherhood of the Super-Sonic Pig". Tadayasu is ecstatic with the success of his first mission, but the espers glumly note that they're likely to be dealing with a lot more morons.
The Pig is Dead, Long Live the Roach
The JCIA informs Yura and Tamuro that they are being sent to infiltrate a mysterious boarding school whose students aren't allowed outside except for one day a month, during which they run riot in the streets. Sekoi was already sent to infiltrate, but is presumed captured, so they must rescue him as well. They soon discover that the school is a plot by the Greater Brotherhood of United Pigs to nurture delinquents and then release them into society, and they have indeed captured Sekoi. Between Tamuro's spying on the teachers and Yura's interrogation of the female delinquents, they learn Sekoi was thrown into the garbage incinerator, where they discover him alive and well. The United Pigs agents attempt to assassinate the three by lighting the incinerator, but Tamuro teleports them to the principal's trashcan, and they swiftly beat them down. Another Brotherhood of the Pig plot is foiled.
Water Whirled
Tamuro and Yura are sent to the beach to investigate a mysterious swathe of drownings. The cause initially seems to be a giant humanoid monster that rises from the ocean and then swamps any small boat it catches — by flooding it with garbage! After a false lead in the form of a suicidal rich girl, they discover the monster is a fake attached to a submersible vessel, in another United Pigs plot. The two espers defeat the
The Forest of No Return
Tamuro, Yura and Sekoi are sent to thwart another United Pigs plot centering on stealing the garbage from the annual Mount Fuji clean-up. During the scuffle, they crash the car that the United Pigs were escaping on, and end up lost in the woods of the mountain. Specifically, in the dreaded Blue Forest, an area whose combination of ancient growth forest and magnetic local rocks makes navigation almost impossible. They are attacked by a vicious elephant, which Yura defeats, and then welcomed into a village made up of neo-primitives who all got lost in the forest. The tribe plies Yura with fruit wine, getting her drunk in hopes of taking advantage of her, which forces Tamuro to run away with her. He stumbles across a documentary crew attempting to make an expedition into the Blue Forest, but when they try to follow their line back, they discover that Sekoi has cut it up attempting to make a noose to hang himself with. Forced to return to the village, a despondent Tamuro proceeds to get drunk — ironically, just as Yura sobers up. She realizes they can use the trash from the packaged food that the reporters brought to teleport home, but Tamuro has passed out in a drunken stupor... and the tribe begins to burn the garbage as she can only watch in horror...
Total Waste
It's time for the JCIA to assign its annual employee bonuses, and Tamuro and Yura are eagerly anticipating a boost from their current minimum wage lifestyle. Unfortunately, the JCIA high-ups, after reviewing Yura's tendency to commit wanton property destruction and Tamuro's reputation-besmirching tendency to appear in the wastebins of their okonomiyaki restaurants, decide that neither of them deserve a bonus. As they wait for Sekoi to return, they spot a truck offering petrol in exchange for garbage and immediately grab Sekoi and follow it, suspecting another United Pigs plot. Their suspicions are confirmed when the truck dumps its trash outside of the JCIA's restaurant and sets it on fire, but the United Pigs agents get away. The JCIA higher-ups accuse Tamuro and Yura of being double-agents, a misunderstanding not helped by Sekoi's self-serving cowardice or his stupidity. Yura attacks them in a fury, but Tamuro teleports her away before she can actually hurt them. He's convinced that they have to find United Pigs and prove their innocence, but Yura needs a peptalk before she'll agree. Sekoi contacts them, and they reluctantly agree to help, since it's become evident that United Pigs' real plan has been to entice everybody into hoarding their garbage in hopes of a petrol payoff. Days later, as their stakeout draws to a close, the two espers decide to run away to Paris together once this case is done. A brawl ensues between the JCIA agents and the United Pigs that is won when Tamuro and Yura aid the JCIA, but the two espers decide to go through with their plan and dramatically teleport away. But the next day, they teleport right back into their usual restaurant/office and beg for their jobs back; they couldn't speak French!
This manga includes examples of:
- Anchored Teleportation: Tamuro can teleport from one pile of trash to another.
- Berserk Button: Yura has two ways to seriously tick her off. Firstly, damaging her precious hair. Secondly, she goes utterly apeshit if somebody calls her "Gorilla Woman".
- Bullying a Dragon: In the final chapter, one of the JCIA higher-ups thinks it's a brilliant idea to not only accuse Yura, a super-strong hot-headed woman, of being a double-agent, but to then repeatedly call her "Gorilla Woman", a moniker he knows drives her wild with fury.
- Cruel Elephant: A one-eyed, perverted, elephant delinquent appears in the fourth chapter, "The Forest of No Return". It attacks Yura and even slashes open her shirt with a giant straight razor before she kicks its ass in a righteous fury.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Teleporting between trash piles sounds like a pretty lame power, but Tamuro's definition of "trash" is really quite broad, and considering that trash can be found all over the civilized world, it gives him an incredible span for transportation and spying, such as when he eavesdrops on suspected enemy agents by partially transmitting himself into their wastepaper bin in their office. In the first chapter alone, he's able to rescue himself and Yura from death when their plane falls apart around them because that makes it "trash" — and thus a viable starting point for his powers.
- Psychic Powers: Translated as "Espers" in the original and "Psionics" in Viz's first translation, the backstory of the series revolves around the JCIA recruiting individuals with psychic abilities for use as secret agents.
- The Load: Tadayasu Sekoi's contributions to the story range from "absolutely nothing" to "actively getting in the way", with the final chapter in particular making him almost directly responsible for Tamuro and Yura being blacklisted by the JCIA.
- Mythology Gag:
- Tadayasu Sekoi, Yura and Tamuro's liason with the JCIA, is the spitting image of Yotsuya from Maison Ikkoku.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The plot of "Water Whirled" initially is an homage to a classic Japanese coastal ghost story, but it's ultimately revealed to be a mechanical fake. It has a darker purpose than most examples of this trope, however, as United Pigs uses their fake sea ghost to murder innocent people for no discernable reason other than maybe as a terrorist strike.
- Snap Back: "The Forest of No Return" ends with Yura watching in horror as the neo-primitives burn the garbage that Tamuro could have used to teleport them all back to civilization, if only he wasn't drunk. The next chapter, "Total Waste", starts with them back in civilization, with no explanation how they got home.
- Super-Strength: Yura's power is that she is inhumanly strong, able to shatter concrete like it was cardboard and rip apart steel with her bare hands.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Tamuro and Yura decide to run away to France after clearing their names, having decided that the JCIA doesn't treat them well enough. But they quickly run back to Japan and beg for their jobs back because it turns out that they can't speak French.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Yura and Tamuro bicker and quarrel all the time, but at the same time they make a very effective team and they also have each other's backs. By the final chapter, "Total Waste", it's implied they have a romantic attraction to each other.
- Thinking Up Portals: Tamuro's power is teleportation-based; he can go anywhere in the world instantly, can choose to only partially emerge so he can eavesdrop and then teleport away, and can freely take multiple people with him. The downside is that he has to start and end his teleport amongst garbage, which often results in him (and any passengers) ending up getting stained.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Tamuro's fellow agents never stop complaining about his garbage-porting ability, deriding it as gross.
