We have a new isekai manga this month that once again adapts a popular light novel series in Multi-Mind Mayhem. Bard Cornelius: the son of a nobleman of Mauricia, an empire located in a parallel universe. But Bard is no ordinary boy – he’s got three souls packed into one body! Aside from his own consciousness, he’s got Oka Sanai, a miserly samurai, and Masaharu Oka, a high school otaku who loves animal ears. With his extra knowledge of military tactics and business acumen, Bard’s ready to cheat his way to the top!
When it comes to manga, isekai (transporting someone from the real world to a fantasy world) is a very crowded genre and it can be hard for a new series to stand out when there are many heavy hitters that are still dominating the market. But Multi-Mind Mayhem has enough fresh ideas to make it stand out. By and large, isekai is a wish fulfilment type of story which sees someone going from an unfulfilling life to transporting to an exciting fantasy setting. This series turns that premise somewhat on its head by not only having the characters transported into the body of someone already living a life whilst not overwriting his personality, but also giving him two extra personalities to contend with.
The premise itself creates many fun narrative opportunities and provides plenty of comedy. Bard’s innocent personality being compromised by a teenage boy and old man who have vastly different outlooks on life (Oka being a stereotypical old samurai and Masaharu being a stereotypical pervy teenage boy) provides most of the laughs as these two personalities manage to find a surprising amount of common ground for the sake of making their life in Bard’s body as lucrative as possible. This synergy is also one of the driving factors of the story with Masaharu’s natural talent at absorbing information and learning skills alongside Oka’s samurai skills making Bard one of the wealthiest residents of his kingdom. It does however make him a target of enemy kingdoms who want his skills for themselves.
Honoji does a strong job of adapting the light novels to a manga format and their art enthuses the story with plenty of energy. Their depiction of Bard is particularly fun, as we get to see the consequence of having three different personalities at work and how they can impact one’s mannerisms and appearance.
This is a fun entry in the isekai genre which will definitely please its fans. There’s also plenty of fresh ideas to the make this appealing to those wanting something a bit different.
Multi-Mind Mayhem Volume 1 is out 16 September from One Peace Books (9781642731408, p/b, £10.99)
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