Reading Manga - Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro
"The mystery is already on the tip of my tongue."
Looks like I'm finally on a roll, adding yet another cycle of potential things to write about to my stock of habitual writing. This'll be my first time writing about a manga series. As this is a personal blog, nothing professional, I've decided to write about something that I hold pretty near and dear. This first half of this post will not contain spoilers, the second half will be marked to note for spoiler warnings.
Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, otherwise known as Demon Detective Nougami Neuro or Neuro: Supernatural Detective, is a manga that I believe slipped under the radar pretty hard when it came to most non-Japanese readers. By the way, this is the manga that came from the same author of Ansatsu Kyoushitsu (Assassination Classroom).
The manga was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump back in February 2005, written and illustrated by Yūsei Matsui. Before creating his own work, he was an assistant of Yoshio Sawai, the artist of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. The art style is definitely different and can dip into disproportional zaniness, that ends up adding to the appeal. It's not like the standard manga. Does it have to conform to other art styles where figure proportion is meticulously done? Definitely not. The style ends up giving readers more feeling, more of that unhinged stuff untethered by what we know. I'll say it straight, the art style shouldn't discourage you from reading it.
So, it all starts off with high school student Yako Katsuragi at her own father's wake. He was brutally murdered, but it seems as though the investigation team at the police department couldn't quite figure out the "riddle" behind the case. They were stuck, and Yako knew it.
Before long, an enigmatic and bizarre figure coming from Hell itself manifests in front of Yako, searching for "The Ultimate Riddle". He's the titular character, Nougami Neuro. While she obviously thinks this is weird and shouldn't happen, he doesn't give her much room for thoughts, forcing her to come along with him while explaining a bit of who he is. He's a demon of some kind that feeds on mysteries, the complex feelings or emotions that could possibly lead someone to kill or do other horrible things. That negative energy is what he feeds on. Yako? She's now his face. When their first puzzle presents itself in the cafe they're in, Neuro introduces Yako to the police investigators as "the great detective".
This really sets the stage for most of the manga, leading to many "mystery of the week" type chapters. The dynamic duo does it with Neuro's high intellect and his 777 tools of the Demon World, each of the tools having a crazy appearance but amazingly practical application -- but also, importantly, Yako's ability to understand humanity. How people tick.
The manga spends a good amount of time establishing who the abilities of not just Neuro and Yako, but the secondary characters as well. People from the police department are fleshed out very well, like detective Sasazuka and his careless counterpart, Ishigaki. Not to mention, new additions to Yako's detective agency, Godai and Akane. Each of them very interesting. The only reason why I can't go more in detail with this is because, honestly, it'd be great if you could experience it for yourself.
Eventually, the "mystery of the week" formula disappears and major story arcs arrive, and they are absolutely epic. For those of you who know me personally, you probably know that I hate that word. "Epic." "Epic" gets thrown around recklessly ever since the early growth period of Youtube. I wonder what started that in the first place? Anyways, when I use that word, I don't undermine the actual meaning of it. I'm talking about, it's so epic I've probably read through this manga about 7 times so far. It's not often I re-read manga too. It's over the top in all the right ways, and it's an entertaining read all throughout.
... but don't be tempted to watch the anime.
To keep things simple and short here, the anime rendition of Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro fell short. It strayed from the original plot and opted for a gecko ending since the manga wasn't finished yet, so viewers were treated to a rather lackluster final few episodes. If I had to give props to the anime for one thing, it would be the OST.
The opening song, "DIRTY", performed by ナイトメア Nightmare was such a cool opening song. I mean, it's Nightmare. At that time period, they churned out hits after hits, many of them being used for popular anime shows. In beautiful contrast, the ending song "Kodoku no Hikari" by Kagami Seira is such a sweet, chocolately tune. Normally, using so many instruments could muddle a song, but I feel like everything mixes so well that it just brightens and brings out the vocals.
Probably best to stay away from the anime, but do give the OST a listen. it's rather amazingly done.
Anyways, in conclusion, without spoiling anything here for you... It's a classic to me despite it not reaching high popularity in the States -- which is a puzzle itself. The only caveat being that it does have some rather mature themes about it. How I feel about it? Maybe wouldn't recommend it to someone who has an emotional age of 13 years old or lower. In another post, I'll go into detail about why I rate based on emotional age (maturity) instead of physical age.
I'd definitely, whole-heartedly, enthusiastically recommend Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro to just about anyone. I feel that confident about it.
Pre-score notes: The art style fits the theme of the manga, although sometimes unclean and out of proportion. It'd be hard to convey some of the absurd things the series wants to if it were more realistic. Other than that, everything else is hard to resist. A personal favorite.
Final Score
Design: 7.5
Plot / Character Development: 10
Personal Preference: 10
Overall: A-
Spoiler Warning: Don't read on unless you've completed reading the manga or just don't care about getting the story spoiled. You've been warned.
Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro is one of my favorite manga series. Why? It sets up everything right. There's ongoing themes of humanity and cruelty, love and hate, struggle of identity loss, and what makes somebody good or evil. The concept that people can wear masks day to day, and that their true self is the one that comes out when the truth is exposed. It all comes into play in small doses at first, then hits you with the heavy stuff later on. All of these themes. They're sandwiched by fantastic storytelling, usually with a balanced amount of comedy mixed in. I mean, every time the story shifts, it does so almost flawlessly. I'll explain.
Like how I explained, it started off as a "mystery of the week" type series where we were treated to already lovely, memorable characters. These lovely, memorable characters, through just the first arc, were already going through character development. We even have our dear Yako being mentored by people who had criminal or evil pasts, and she grows remarkably from them -- learning the essence of that side of humanity.
We get treated to the Godai and Sasazuka, who are each others foils, helping Neuro and Yako in the ways they know best. Godai used his strength and criminal expertise while Sasazuka used his highly feared and respected capabilities as a police investigator. Godai being the hypertensive butt monkey to Neuro, Sasazuka being the hypotensive calm supercop. Both of them, while they're supporting characters, they feel so very well detailed, which supplements the later parts of the story.
The "mystery of the week" arc, of course, explored a lot about what it is to be human. How can we be driven to do cruel things, like killing? What were they like before that? Keep this in mind for later. In addition, when people do these cruel or unusual things, they tend to wear masks. They seem normal. They blend in with everyone else. This isn't so far-fetched of a theme, this is relevant. I've had classmates that I thought I knew. They were happy people a lot of the times, never really showed an ounce of displeasure. Later, I found out that one went to jail for attempted armed robbery, and another ended up getting killed over a drug dispute. Anyways, while this theme was commonplace in the earlier chapters of this manga, it almost completely disappears until much, much later.
Another mention about this arc before we go on, we're treated to a whole slew of Neuro's 777 Tools of the Demon World. These weird, supernatural tools were highly entertaining to see be put into use. Each of these make for a unique chapter almost every time.
We soon get teased about Phantom Thief X, this legend of a criminal who takes a belonging of the victim and leaving his victim in a gory mess, inside a glass box. These "Red Boxes" were then left out there, just left there for the detectives to find. This wasn't the average criminal. Far from it. If I recall correctly, his motive was simply to find out what other people's insides looked like. Very childlike and unable to understand the values of human life, he just does as he pleases with humans as if they're toys. To boot, he's got superhuman strength and endurance. Along comes Neuro though. Neuro's not a human. So what does his insides look like? There's that fuel, that motivation, and that challenge.
Does Neuro's insides... Look like his own insides? X can't remember who he was, and that's driving him to do these evil things. He can't even understand himself when he has no one to really compare to.
Eventually that arc concludes with Neuro beating X in a construction site, with X determined to beat the demon Neuro as soon as possible. This was because Neuro admitted that he was becoming weaker the longer he stayed on Earth. It's that natural process. He doesn't have enough demonic energy to maintain the great strength he has -- He'll have to go back to Hell for that. Anyways, X gets crushed under debris and... that's that?
The HAL arc introduces a criminal, psychopathic Artificial Intelligence to the story. An obvious reference, HAL is this intelligent AI who does rather bad things. How bad? He has an electronic drug that brainwashes people via displayed waves, like TV broadcasts or computers. HAL was created by the neurologist Eisuke Harukawa, a neurologist who loved a woman named Setsuna. Her brain eventually degenerated due to some unknown disease, and they couldn't bring her back. She was dead. They both wanted to bring her back to life by digital recreation.
Which brings up an interesting question. If someone's brain patterns and likeliness were recreated bit by bit, would it still be them? What exactly is a human, then?
Harukawa gets killed out of mercy by HAL when the latter revolted, knowing that it's impossible to bring back the dead. But... that doesn't stop HAL's programming. He has to keep going. Thankfully, the whole crew pulls through and saves the day. Quite literally the whole crew too. While it was Neuro that took down's HAL's defense and Yako who uninstalled HAL in the end, everyone had such an amazing part that led up to those things being successful, or at least, minimizing the damage of the electronic drug itself.
Then, the final arc. The Sicks arc. What a way to wrap up the manga.
"Are there people that are born evil?"
That question is posed at the beginning of the arc. If I were to go into detail about how elaborate this arc is, I'd spend my whole day doing it. So I'll cut it down. It turns out, the previous major arcs were all caused by Sicks. X ends up being his 11th clone, and turns out X was a she all along. X's companion Ai was also shot and killed immediately during the introduction of Sicks. Setsuna, Eisuke's love, was affected by a disease caused by Sicks -- which led to the whole HAL incident. HAL is briefly booted again as HAL 2.0, only to be taken in as a part of X, who now becomes Xi. Sasazuka's family wasn't killed by X. X was framed. It was Sicks who did that, long ago. X was merely released into the world following the murder of Sasazuka's family.
And this leads to one of the biggest mask pulls of the century. Sasazuka's.
Before during the "Mystery of the Week" stuff, it was strictly criminals who had revealed themselves. They took off their masks and bared their true selves. Instead, it was Sasazuka who revealed himself. He had to take revenge, going up against Sicks, X and Sicks's top men in an abandoned warehouse. Almost with psychopathic glee, he snared his enemies up and ruthlessly took them down, killing them.
But Sasazuka went in without his trademark calmness. He didn't know what Sicks was capable of. And well... If you've seen what, you know what I mean.
It's not just Sicks either. It's him and his entire clan, The New Bloodline, ruled by him and the Five Fingers. They're humanity, evolved with evil intent -- with the exception of Kasai. Kasai's a damn remarkable pyro, and the uncle of reformed criminal Homura.
The ending isn't quite something I can put into words yet. I'm too inexperienced for it, and I'd really rather not try when I know I'm still in the infancy stage of my writing. Just know that I absolutely enjoyed reading this through-and-through-and-through-and-through, and I don't regret a single moment doing so.
Maybe some day, I'll revisit this post and tidy up this end. I'd love to.
