Psychic Powers / Anime & Manga

"If you misuse a power that's all too great, you will only destroy yourself."

Psychic Powers in anime and manga.

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• Katsuhiro Otomo seems to like this trope. His first manga was a rather forgettable one about cops investigating psychic crimes, next was Domu, a story of a heroic little girl with telekinesis who must save a city pitted against an equally-powered Psychopathic Manchild, finally culminating in AKIRA, which was about the government trying to replicate the powers they saw in Etsuko's story.

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• AKIRA includes psychic characters such as the infamous Tetsuo, as well as the titular Akira, who levels all of Tokyo in a massive psychic explosion.
• A Certain Magical Index has a city devoted to artificially inducing esper powers. The process has a success rate of about 40% and no side effects at all. A very rare phenomenon is to be born with esper powers; these people are called Gemstone espers. It's mentioned that magic was invented specifically to grant supernatural abilities to non-espers. One deadly side effect to the combination of esper and magic powers is that they counteract with one another, causing severe damage to the body when one person uses both abilities.
  • The powers mentioned above are given a science-y explanation known as ''Personal Reality'' (It has something to do with quantum physics). Esper abilities work because the user believes in their own power enough to substitute their own reality and ignore the normal laws of physics, manipulating them to their advantage. They more or less work as Functional Magic, requiring complex mental calculations and following a fairly consistent set of rules:
    • Levels range from Level 0 (no powers) to Level 5 (the Superpower Lottery winners). The theoretical Level 6 may be a being on par with angels (capable of accidentally ending the world with a fraction of their power), as the strongest esper, Accelerator, tends to go into Superpowered Evil Side mode and sprout chaotic black wings whenever he hits a Despair Event Horizon.
    • Every esper unconsciously emits something referred to as an AIM field, a weak power field unique to each individual.
    • A person may only possess one type of power, though it's certainly possible for said type to cover vast applications that can bleed over into others.
• Nen'i users in Chrome Shelled Regios like Felli Loss are able to use both telekinesis and telepathy.
• The eponymous Geass abilities in Code Geass are an assortment of all kinds of Psychic Powers: suggestion (Lelouch and Rai), mind reading (Mao), pseudo-"time stopping" (Rolo), memory manipulation ( Charles), body switching ( Marianne), precognition (Nunnaly in an alternate manga), brainwashing ( C.C. in the past), etc. It apparently depends on each individual who is granted a Geass how exactly it'd work in their case.
• Cyborg 009, in which Cyborg 001 is a baby with psychic powers and Cyborg 005 is an empath. Also, a Quirky Miniboss Squad is composed of only espers who developed said powers as self-defense since they live in a Crapsack World born from a Bad Future where Black Ghost took over the world
• The Contractors from Darker than Black wield a wide variety of psychic powers. However, due to the nature of their Remunerations, there are no pure telepaths or telekinetics.
• Deadman Wonderland, a manga and short anime series, is based around Ganta Igarashi who's accused of massacring his classmates. Eventually Ganta finds out that the Red Man (Wretched Egg) gave him a red stone that makes him a "Deadman", a human with the power to manipulate their own blood for offensive/defensive purposes called "Branches of Sin".
• People with the power of One-ness in Destroy and Revolution can do anything, like teleportation at a distance, communicating with others who has the power, sense fellow users of One-ness and even go to different places if they are familiar enough with it.
• The Esper 9 in Diamond Cut Diamond are an assortment of various types of psychic powers. Among them is Kurosu who has telepathy and sensory link (connect his five senses with that of another person within a certain radius) and Yami-nee who uses telekinesis and can use elecritcal discharges to attack people.
• The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. is about an absurdly powerful high schooler who can't shut off and completely control his psychic abilities and the consequences that it brings to his life.
• Although more well known for its use of Ki Manipulation (which are pretty much all psychic abilities), Dragon Ball has its fair share of characters with psychic powers:
  • The first really notable example is General Blue. Goku's first Wake-Up Call Boss and the first in a LONG line of increasingly powerful villains, Blue does not yet have flight and energy blasts, but he can paralyze people by making eye contact with them, allowing him to get the better of Goku twice while the latter has him on the ropes. He at one point also uses his powers to animate a bunch of ordinary ropes, giving them snake-like properties and turning them into restraints neither Goku, Krillin, or even Master Roshi (at that point the strongest main character) can break free from. Notably, Mercenary Tao proves immune to his paralytic stare.
  • Master Roshi also displays mind-reading abilities in the 21st world martial arts tournament, reading Nam's mind. He has not used them again anytime afterwards, even though they would be insanely useful. Later, Goku also showed this ability on Namek when he simply decided to read Krillin's mind instead of going through his exposition to understand what has been happening so far.
  • Also, Chaiotzu. Out of all the members of the main cast, Chaiotzu uses psychic powers as his area of expertise, with such abilities as telekenisis and, again, paralysis-inducement, although unlike Blue he actually needs to extend both his arms while doing it.
  • In Filler, Goku and Piccolo both display powerful telekenisis. In manga-based materials, they haven't shown such abilities, but they are shown to be capable of contacting others with telepathy or reading minds.
  • King Kai, as well as most other Kais, can see anything in the universe and contact anyone in the universe with telepathy. Supreme Kai has also used telekinesis to lift a block of Kaitchin (the most durable metal in the universe).
  • On Namek, both Freeza and Captain Ginyu use telekinesis to carry the Dragon Balls, Freeza himself uses it to fight when he sees it fit too.
• The Diclonius in Elfen Lied can telekinetically lift objects, as well as rip people apart with a thought.
• In Endride, Eljuia has a mixed bag of psychic powers which are vague but include precognition and some kind of ability to read auras/emotions and sense the presence of beings. Ironically, when these powers are first mentioned, Shun (who is from the real, non-superpowered world) automatically believes in them and thinks it's cool, whereas Emilio (from a world where people can summon weapons from middair) is immediately skeptical and refuses to believe Eljuia actually has visions.
• The Five Star Stories has "Divers", who are descended from genetically altered Super Soldiers from an ancient civilization. "Para Divers" have telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition, "Force Divers" have telekinesis and a precious few even have both. There are also "Bayias", people who possess both Diver powers and physically enhanced "Headdliner" abilities. The fact that psychic powers are just a futuristic-sounding kind of Functional Magic is fully acknowledged in the series however, and these people are often referred to simply as sorcerers.
• Dynamis users in Gilgamesh are essentially psychics with a different name.
• From the New World takes place in a world in which everyone possesses extreme telekinesis, being able to do everything from setting things on fire to uprooting trees, to shaping the world around them at the atomic level. The implications of such powerful telekinesis are explored thoroughly throughout the series, including what happens when it goes wrong.
• Saki Hanajima in Fruits Basket. She's mainly an Empath, but she's also capable of Mind Rape and killing with her "waves". Not that she does it too often.
• In the initial run of Ghost in the Shell an ESP institute was mentioned, but they blew Aramaki off when he called them for help with the Puppeteer. A psychic investigator plays a significantly bigger role in GITS 2, at first giving Motoko a minor freakout when she contacts her using non-Electronic Telepathy, but later starts treating her as more of an annoyance.
• A number of characters in the Universal Century continuity of Gundam are a form of psychics called "Newtypes", a result of humans growing up in space colonies and often considered the future of human evolution. Newtypes have abilities ranging from limited telepathy, increased reflexes and (in the most extreme example) the ability to infuse their Humongous Mecha with the souls of the dead for a final attack. And yet Word of God from Tomino clearly states they are not Espers.
  • Newtypes also seem to have the ability to detect one another, though this varies depending on how strong they are. A weak Newtype like Char Aznable might go all but undetected, while a strong Newtype like Kamille Bidan has no hope of sneaking up on anybody, and the frighteningly powerful Scirocco more or less broadcasts his presence to everyone in the vicinity.
  • There are Artificial or Cyber-Newtypes, whose powers are awaken in labs—the process is largely unspecified, but only physiologically detected through prescent of certain drugs. They are typically quite powerful, and almost inevitably unstable.
  • Throughout the Universal Century, technology arises that’s specifically designed to interface with the psychic powers of Newtypes. “Psycommu” technology begins with telepathically-guided funnel weapons pioneered by Zeon, progresses through psycommu-equipped mobile suits that can be controlled by thought alone, even remotely, and is refined into Psycoframe technology that effectively turns a mobile suit into an extension of a Newtype pilot’s body. Psycoframe development is officially discontinued after this, as it’s considered too unpredictable. For one thing, it glows when in use, and nobody knows why. For another, it acts as an Amplifier Artifact for Newtype powers under certain circumstances, generating a “psycho-field” in which human wills and desires can physically manifest and ultimately cause the pilot to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, which definitely isn’t an intended feature.
  • Perhaps the strangest part of Newtypes are the history of the term itself. It was coined by Zeon Zum Deikun before anyone developed or theorized psychic phenomena, instead being a political concept for an enlightened space-faring people who perfectly understood each. When the empathic superpowers started developing, the term was applied in hopes they could achieve such ideal—and sadly never lived up to it.
  • Gundam 00 goes a bit easier on the Psychic Powers thing. Every Gundam Meister in Season 2 can communicate through means of Quantum Brainwaves, except for the second Lockon Stratos. This actually turns out to be an advantage for Lockon in the movie, because the ELS constantly try to communicate with anyone using Quantum Brainwaves, rendering them unable to fight due to the accidental Mind Rape. Lockon's inability to use Quantum Brainwaves is actually what also saves Setsuna.
  • Gundam AGE has X-Rounders, who are basically identical to Newtypes as described above, except that their abilities seem to activate exclusively in combat. However, while Newtypes were hailed as the next step in evolution, X-Rounders are looked upon as a step backward, tapping into the more primal areas of the brain for their powers.
• The espers in Haruhi Suzumiya supposedly have psychic powers, although it's really more in a Magical Girl-like way. As a matter of fact, Kyon asks Koizumi to lift a cup of coffee with telekinesis to which Koizumi replies "My powers aren't like that". What they can do is enter the Phantom Zone, fly around in cool energy bubbles and shoot fireballs. They also have a person-specific form of empathy, and are all able to feel Haruhi's mental state.
• The eponymous character of Helen ESP possesses a variety of psychic powers, at the start mainly telepathy and being able to sense things that are Invisible to Normals, though she later gains the ability of flight. She's not the only one with such powers, but they get preyed upon by such things as a giant cloud spider...thing.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, psychic abilities are present in the form of Stands; (usually) humanoid ethereal bodies whose powers range from the typical (clairvoyance, pyrokinesis) to the rare (time manipulation, age alteration, preventing truth-telling) to the utterly... well... bizarre (summoning rods —as in the cryptid skyfish—, creating deadly viruses, trapping people and objects in paper). Oh, and apparently anyone and everything can have Psychic Powers. Infants, an orangutan, a cat, sapient plankton, and a group of trees have formed their own Stands.
• Kagerou Project: All of the main cast possess powers linked to their eyes, which involve the manipulation of other peoples' minds, or the extension of their own consciousness. They're all the result of being possessed by Azami's snakes, due to entering the Daze (dying on August 15th) and receiving a snake compatible with the wish they held closest in their heart before death.
  • Azami: The original Medusa, creator of the other characters' powers which manifest as snakes growing from her head. She created each one when she experienced new emotions during her interactions with humans and her family.
  • Kido: Concealment; allows her (and people/objects within a 2 meter radius) to remain undetected by others. The effect is reduced if someone that knows her looks in her direction, or if she touches other people.
  • Seto: Telepathy and Empathy. He hates using it though, as A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read.
  • Kano: Deceit; he can make himself appear however he wants in the eyes of others.
  • Marry: Contact; she can lock peoples' motion for several minutes. A diluted version of her mother and grandmother's power.
  • Momo: Captivation; she draws the eyes of others to her, no matter their age, gender or preferences. This also extends to the things she does, like art and music.
  • Ene: Opening; as a Cyber being, she is immortal. When she gets her human body back, she's able to jump back into the Cyber world whenever she wishes, as long as there's a device receiving a Wifi signal nearby.
  • Hibiya: Clairvoyance; he can see/find distant objects/places by focusing on them in his mind.
  • Konoha: Awakening; a form of Bio-PK that allows him to have his ideal body (i.e. with Super-Strength and a Flash Step), but at the cost of his memories.
  • Marry (again): Combine; the Queen Snake capable of bringing all other snakes together and controlling the Daze. She received it when she was saved from the Daze by Azami.
  • Shintaro: Recording; a form of Postcognition, he can remember all of the past routes the cast has gone through. Unlike the others, his power was given to him by Queen!Marry after the first route, so he could remember the tragedy and someday help her remember. This snake is sentient, and speaks directly to Shintaro with Ayano's voice to try and help him remember.
  • Ayano: Favoring; a form of reverse-Empathy, she can project emotions and memories in her own heart onto someone else.
  • Kenjirou: Wide-Open Eyes; his snake is the only sentient snake of Azami's snakes, able to control its host's body while they are sleeping and is immune to all aforementioned snakes' powers. He (the snake) is the Big Bad.
• The Kasuga clan of Kimagure Orange Road (Kyōsuke's mother's family) all have psychic powers of one sort or another.
  • Telekinesis and teleportation can be done by all family members.
  • Kyōsuke also has shown an ability for precognition and traveling through time.
  • His little sister Manami has demonstrated the ability to erase videotapes with her mind.
  • His other little sister Kurumi is good at performing hypnosis (and potential brainwashing), though she mostly uses her powers to hypnotize Kyôsuke
  • Cousin Akane can appear to be someone else to others, while other cousin Kazuya has all of the powers Kyōsuke has, but much stronger — with a side dish of mind reading and body switching if he literally butts heads with someone else.
• The Rynax in Kurau Phantom Memory can sense each other's presence. In the Distant Finale, the human Kurau can even still perceive the return of her lost Rynax as Christmas' pair.
• In Locke The Superman, the titular character is an immortal who can fly, read minds, throw energy arrows, see through walls and heal himself and others. But wait, there's more! He can also teleport across lightyears, change his appearance and gender at will, and can even destroy entire solar systems. the term 'superman' is an understatement.
• Lily Strosek the Fourth from Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force has a limited kind of Psychic ability. She can send psychic thoughts, sometimes to the point of sending others reeling, but unlike telepaths, she can't read minds. It's also different from the telepathic ability that mages in the setting have. As a Cute Mute, she mostly uses this to talk to others, which can lead to some problems when the being she's trying to communicate with is immune to psychics.
• Mai, the Psychic Girl by Kazuya Kudo and Ryoichi Ikegami portrays the titular character’s development of her psychic powers as she goes on the run from an esper conspiracy that wants to recruit her into its cadre of Psychic Children.
• The manga Mob Psycho 100 and its anime adaptation follow the story of Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama, a 14 year old boy who has such powers and uses them to fight off ghosts and evil psychics. Mob's abilities include telekinesis and mediumship, for example.
• While magecraft is something you can learn with the right requirements, psychic powers in Nasuverse are abnormalities that generally only last one generation. That being said, they have Empathy, Telepathic Suggestion, and Teleportation (well, close). One character has the double-whammy of Clairvoyance coupled with Telekinesis.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has mind-reader Nodoka and a recent villain named Homura with pyrokinesis and possibly a type of psychokinesis (she's been seen moving objects apparently with her mind).
• Night Raid 1931 has a main cast of spies using a different psychic power each, using telepathy, teleportation, clairvoyance and telekinesis together in missions in a great show of teamwork. Later, a character with the ability of seeing the future appears and the theme of knowing what may happen and how to act upon it features more prominently in the story.
• One-Punch Man: Several espers exist in this series, with the most basic power being telekinesis. The most powerful esper in the world, Tatsumaki, hit the Superpower Lottery and is the World's Strongest Woman, capable of feats such as flight, manipulating wind into massive tornadoes, casually lifting buildings into the air, calling down meteors, creating barriers, messing up people's internal organs, and forcibly negating and controlling other espers by bringing her greater psychic might to bear on them.
• Pokémon
  • While far rarer then in the games, a few characters have shown up in the Pokémon: The Series anime. The most notable one being Sabrina, who is depicted as a dangerous character with a cruel streak until the Haunter that tagged along Ash and his friends made her laugh. Afterwards, human characters that are depicted as having psychic powers in the games usually had their psychic abilities toned down. Another notable character was Anabel, who had some degree of empathy-related abilities.
  • A few people from Pokémon Adventures. Lance and Yellow both can read Pokémon's minds and Yellow has the added bonus of limited telekinetic powers. Sabrina can 'see' even if her physical eyes are blinded and can track things and people by putting her energy into her Alakazam's spoons. Morty has the ability to see with his mind whatever he's looking for. Though she initially has no control over her powers, Caitlin reaches the point where she can transmit messages between people, with her Gothitelle acting as a signal boost.
• Private Actress is Slice of Life, but it has two psychics: a Stage Magician with telekinesis and a Fortune Teller who can see the future. From what the story says, both cases are genuine.
• Psychic powers are a normal part of the Alternate History of Psychic Squad, but the only ones who have it at a high enough level to be destructive/heroic are the eponymous heroes — three ten-years-old girls. Kaoru has telekinesis, Aoi has teleportation and Shiho has psychometry. There's also the Big Bad, who's so powerful that no antipsychic countermeasures are effective against him. He's also not limited to one type of ability.
• In Psychic Wars, as its name implies, the protagonist Ukyu Retsu and several other characters are endowed with psychic powers.
• Psychometrer Eiji, where the hero is a Psychometrer.
• As the name may imply, this is the main tool of the characters of Psyren. They divide it into three types. The first, Burst, allows the user to create solid objects or manipulate objects with PSI (telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokinesis). Rise allows the user to manipulate and enhance their body (sense enhancement, super strength). Trance is manipulation of the mind or other people's PSI (telepathy, mind control, illusion, negation). Some abilities (Cure, Visions) involve mixing any of the three.
• Read or Die has an interesting variant: Paper Masters have the ability to telekinetically control paper. At one point Donny implies that all psychic powers are possible, and that the only thing stopping people from achieving them is their belief that it's impossible.
• Rei Hino/Sailor Mars of Sailor Moon possesses psychic abilities aside of her Senshi powers, mostly slight mind-reading and seeing the future in her dreams.
• In School Rumble, the Tsukamoto sisters are psychics. Older sister Tenma is telekinetic and can bend spoons, younger sister Yakumo is an empath who can read the minds of any guys interested in her. Tenma's powers aren't used a lot, but Yakumo's empathy is vital in her Character Development since she's Blessed with Suck. Also, they can both see spirits.
• In Sci-Fi HARRY, the titular character, Harry MacQuinn, has telekinetic powers. Originally, his powers are fairly weak, only able to bend spoons and break glass. However, later on his powers become strong enough to take down TANKS.
• Kotone Himekawa from the To Heart anime sports both prophetic and telekinetic powers, thus causing the general student body to shun her for them.
• Most of the witch powers in Witch Hunter Robin are standard Psychic Powers, and are sometimes referred to in this fashion. One character uses psychometry, while Robin herself is a pyrokinetic. Telekinesis, projective empathy and psychic healing were all demonstrated by various witches.
• Witch powers in Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches always work by using and/or changing the mind, the slight exception being body-swap, though it still just makes the minds move around and doesn't alter the body or environment. This makes it easier to keep up the Masquerade since no one can see the powers being used, and except for with the body-swap, victims aren't completely aware that something has happened unless they knew about the witch powers beforehand. The following powers are known:
  • Body-swap
  • Attraction
  • Telepathy
  • Precognition
  • Retrocognition
  • Invisibility (you aren't actually invisible, but you trick the victim into thinking you are)
  • Amnesia
  • Submission
  • Mind-reading
  • Time Travel (only your mind time-travels while your body stays in the present)
  • Provocation
  • Mind Control
• This is apparently Aki Izayoi's Blessed with Suck in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. She is clearly a very powerful example, possibly a Reality Warper. Her Evil Mentor Divine was a psychic as well, but not nearly as powerful.
• YuYu Hakusho: Several characters are shown to be psychics of varying strength, whether they be human or demon.
  • Kazuma Kuwabara has had vague precognitive intuitions and postcognitive dreams, can perceive ghosts, and offhandedly mentions that the reason he's so popular in high school now is because he predicted an earthquake. Later on, he gains the ability to wield the Dimension Sword, which lets him cut through spirit barriers. It is so powerful that he defeats two of Sensui's psychics with relative ease. This made Kuwabara a target for Sensui, who wanted his power so he could destroy the barrier separating humans from demons. Genkai would go on to claim that Kuwabara's psychic powers surpass even hers, potentially making him one of the most powerful human psychics.
  • Kuwabara's older sister, Shizuru, surpasses him in that she's a much more powerful clairvoyant and can actually see ghosts rather than just sense their presence. Ironically, with all the adventures Kuwabara got up to, he became stronger than her in terms of combat.
  • Hiei's Jagan grants him various psychic abilities, including remote viewing, telepathy, and pyrokinesis. Ironically, his hybrid nature (he is the son of a Fire Demon and an Ice Maiden) made him incredibly strong, but the surgical procedure that gave him his trademark Jagan depowered him in exchange for giving him excellent mental powers.
  • The English dub also refers to Genkai and the various residents of Mushiyori City affected by the Makai Tunnel as psychics.

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