Psycho Staff is a short comedy Science Fiction seinen manga by Satoshi Mizukami, the creator of The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer and Sengoku Youko. It was serialized in Manga Time Kirara Forward from 2006 to 2007.
Ordinary High-School Student Hiiragi receives a love note one day, saying: "To Hiiragi Kouichi-kun. I'll be waiting for you after school behind the school gym. Sakuragi Umeko." Having never gotten a love note before, he is surprised and complies. There he meets Sakuragi, a strange girl asking him to come to the planet R'lyeh. Hiiragi is disappointed that his first admirer was a nutcase, and leaves. When he gets home, there's Sakuragi, asking him to come again. Hiiragi is doubtful, but then again, could the planet be real? The girl is strange and he's pretty strange himself...
Not to be confused with Psychostick.
This manga provides examples of:
- Agent Scully: Hiiragi. He absolutely refuses to believe in the aliens at first.
- Artistic License – Economics: Somehow, R'lyeh uses an edible currency called dagon. It's seafood. The mangaka even comments in the bonus pages that he doesn't understand how such a thing would necessarily work.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: The war between R'lyeh and Yaddith. Sakuragi never glorifies the war nor claims the moral high ground for R'lyeh, which is odd considering how hard she's trying to recruit Hiiragi. Still, if Himehagi-sensei is any indication of what Yaddith's military is like in general, then R'lyeh still gets a lot of mileage out of being "not as bad."
- Brought Down to Normal: Hiiragi after the meteor is stopped.
- Call to Adventure: "I came here to recruit you into 'Space Esper Corps' of the planet R'lyeh!"
- Covert Pervert: Not much of one, but Hiiragi has his moments.
- Death from Above: The meteor that threatens to turn the town into a crater.
- Fumbling the Gauntlet: Hiiragi puts a hand out to forestall Sakuragi's pestering. He means the gesture to be read as "hold off," but Sakuragi sees a demonstrated psychic making a motion used to help project a blast of telekinetic force and, given her training and instincts, not unreasonably assumes he's just threatened her. She floors him in an instant with a kick followed by a throw.
- Girlish Pigtails: Worn by Sakuragi
- Hard Work Hardly Works:
- Argued and averted. Sakuragi has a huge complex about the value of her hard-won skills compared to Hiiragi's incredible native talent. Hiiragi thinks her dedication and skills are amazing, and that his psychic powers are a fluke and ultimately useless in real life. At the end, when Hiiragi's powers disappear, it's a damn good thing for him that he had felt this way, or he'd have no life skills or prospects now that he has to be normal.
- Hiiragi's classmate who occasionally appears in the background also parallels his own relationship to Sakuragi - where Hiiragi has to strive hard and study intensively for good grades, his classmate just gets good grades even when spending all his time at the arcade. Hiiragi resents his classmate's native talent being "wasted" on someone who doesn't understand how hard others have to work for results, much as Sakuragi resents Hiiragi's unwillingness to use his powers.
- Human Aliens: Sakuragi and Himehagi-sensei.
- Humble Hero: Hiiragi. His father even mentions it at the end of the series.
- I Just Want to Be Normal
- Ironic Echo: "If you don't obey me, the city will turn into a sea of flames." Said by Sakuragi first to try to threaten Hiiragi into joining her, though in her case it was a bluff; and then Himehagi-sensei uses the same threat against Sakuragi later... only it's very much not a bluff.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Sakuragi. Subverted, and Hiiragi wants nothing to do with her manic-pixie-dream offerings anyway.
- Missing Mom: Hiiragi's mother died years before.
- Mommy Issues: Hiiragi's attraction to Himehagi-sensei is based upon her resemblance to his deceased mother. Which was her plan all along, when she chose her disguise to hide amongst humans, making this an Invoked Trope.
- Lethal Chef: Sakuragi. Which makes perfect sense as she's an alien and probably doesn't know how to cook Japanese food.
- Locked into Strangeness: The mangaka's notes at the end of chapter 6 point out that Hiiragi (and all psychics, actually) have green hair, though he wasn't able to work it into the narrative. His green hair is visible on the collection's cover, though.
- Long-Distance Relationship: Incredibly long distance between Sakuragi and Hiiragi.
- Only Six Faces: Justified as there are only about six characters.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Hiiragi
- Power Incontinence: Hiiragi has a hard time controlling his powers at first.
- Psychic Powers: Hiiragi has ESP.
- Random Power Ranking: Hiiragi is a one-in-five-billion B-class psychic who has a temporary upgrade to A-class later on. Avoids the problems of Rank Inflation because the series is so short and Hiiragi is the only psychic that shows up.
- Refusal of the Call: Hiiragi doesn't believe her the first time.
- The Resenter: Hiiragi. He'd rather study to get into university than be an intergalactic hero.
- Robot Buddy: Sumeragi's size-changing robot companion, Transit. Small enough to hide in a backpack when need be, but can grow to the size of a small building.
- Scaramanga Special: Sakuragi can project a wormhole out of a gun.
- Shout-Out: Mostly to the Cthulhu Mythos. Sakuragi's homeworld is named R'lyeh, and their currency is called "dagon." The people of R'lyeh are also at war with the people of Yaddith.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Sakuragi kicks Hiiragi just after he declares his love for her. She kisses him a moment later.
- Title Drop: The ESPer corps back on Sakuragi's homeworld is sometimes called the "Psycho Staff," which is in emulation of a previous group of long-gone A-class psychics who made up the original Psycho Staff.
- Unlucky Everydude: Hiiragi
- What Measure Is a Non-Super?: Subverted and averted. Hiiragi would rather be normal and go to college than use his amazing powers in war — or much at all. Sakuragi, meanwhile, is hard-working and dedicated, traits which draw Hiiragi's admiration and which save them when "Sensei" outmatches Hiiragi with a suit that replicates psychic powers.
