The origin of Chojo’s hobbies is revealed as an old friend comes back to play in Super Psychic Policeman Chojo chapter 44, bringing along plenty of genre tropes in the process.

Back in October, I made the claim that serialization was one of this series’ secret strengths. By eschewing the regular episodic approach of most comedy manga, series author Shun Numa is able to tell jokes rooted in canon instead of throwaway gags, which arguably makes them even funnier. Even so, this series also has another strength that isn’t so far from the surface: a very specific obsession with certain hobbies, seemingly fuelled by Shun Numa’s own personal interests.

Outside of slacking off at work, Chojo enjoys two main things: building plastic models and playing card games. It’s the latter that comes into focus this week as Super Psychic Policeman Chojo chapter 44 explores how Chojo got into so passionate about pieces of shiny cardboard in the first place by introducing his best friend from school, Dan Kotobuki. As you might expect from a name like that, Dan is about as stereotypical of a card game protagonist as you can get, complete with an adversarial team of nefarious card stealers on his tail.

You don’t write a story like this without knowing a whole lot about the card game subculture. While the characters of Dan and S.C.U.M. are obviously inspired by famous tropes from the genre, there’s moments in here such as Chojo asking to read one of the villains’ cards and eventually winning by top decking his key card that demonstrate a deep knowledge of the scene and the hobby. Considering that Numa’s last series Samon-kun wa Summoner didn’t feature anything like this, you have to wonder: is he a recent convert?

He certainly wouldn’t be alone in this. Card games blew up both in Japan and overseas once restrictions on social gathering in light of the COVID-19 pandemic eased a couple of years ago, leading to a deluge in new titles that have us wondering whether or not we have reached peak card game. Regardless of how Numa came to the hobby, however, his passion shines through here in a story that will make any duelist smile with its in-jokes and meta references.

It’s also nice to see how our characters came to be the way they are today. Chojo describes himself as an “unstoppable little brat” back when he was a kid, but losing to Dan in a duel made him realize that using his psychic powers to cheat at games wasn’t the right thing to do. Putting aside the fact that Chojo still uses his psychic powers to torment children to this day, the extra detail provided in Super Psychic Policeman Chojo chapter 44 should go a long way in fleshing the cast out when paired with the series’ serialized approach.

You can read Super Psychic Policeman Chojo chapter 44 in English for free via VIZ Media’s Shonen Jump.