English Dub Review: Psyren “Urban Legend”

Overview:

The secret society Psyren will lead humanity to paradise. Ageha picks up a strange phone card and gets drawn into a life-or-death game.

Our Take(Spoilers):

The manga Psyren was published in 2007, and to the best of my knowledge, this is the first anime we’re getting. I’ve seen a lot of fans mention this series before as a manga many people wanted an anime of. So imagine my surprise when there is an anime but for the most part I haven’t seen anything said about it. Now with one episode under my belt I have to ask, is it worth the hype?

Let’s get some of the technical stuff out of the way. What seems to be our two leads, Ageha and Amamiya are voiced by Dylan Ray Owen and Kelly Greenshield respectively. Kelly has started to become a favorite of mine with her work on An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess. As for Dylan Ray Owen, this is the first thing I’ve heard him in but so far I think he’s doing a good job since his character‘s dialogue had to carry the episode.

As for what’s going on in Psyren I think we’ll need a few more episodes to figure that one out. It seems like the world due to climate change is going in the wrong direction. Keep in mind this was written in 2007; the fact that this message is still relevant is… sad to say the least. But then when Ageha gets a pay phone card with “Psyren” written on it his whole life gets flipped upside down. Then his classmate Amamiya disappears and he decides to help her since she was there for him in his moment of need.

Somehow Ageha ends up in another world but Amamiya ends up saving him from some sort of monster. That is where this episode ends and to say I’m intrigued would be putting it mildly. I have no idea what’s going on and if they can get back to their normal world or if this is a The Matrix sort of situation. As of now I can’t tell you whether it was worth the wait or not but it does seem like an interesting story. Even if waiting almost twenty years to adapt something does have some issues currently. Like the aforementioned climate change issue and the fact that pay phones are a big part of the story for some reason.