Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro

-INTRODUCTION- After finishing the great anime adaptation, I found myself craving for more mysteries, more of the clever humor, and of course, more Neuro. I hesitated at first because of the artwork. In fact, I spent the first few chapters complaining about it. But before I knew it, I got completely sucked in and ended up reading most of this manga in a marathon. -STORY- 10/10 The manga mostly consists of short cases. And although the criminal is usually made obvious to the reader, the process of deduction and explanation is still exciting. This is the kind of mystery series where the author focuses on the "How" and"Why" parts of the case rather than the "Who". Each story is interesting in its own way, and each criminal has unique reasoning for breaking the law, usually having to do with a psychological condition of some sort. Later on, as the main plot progresses, the readers are exposed to stronger criminals that Neuro has to face, and eventually, a main group of antagonists. One of my favorite aspects of Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro is the humor. The overall story is rather dark and psychologically disturbing, but the author manages to "lighten" the mood with some equally dark comic relief. It may sound contradicting, and perhaps it is. Because Matsui-sensei makes the reader laugh at things that are not funny at all. I am certainly not a fan of violence or cruelty, but I always find it somehow amusing when Neuro tortures his prey and destroys their psyche. Most likely it is because Neuro himself is a contradicting individual, which is where my next favorite aspect comes in. -CHARACTERS- 10/10 This has got to be one of the best (if not -the- best) parts of this manga. Let's start with the title character. Neuro is most certainly one of the most unique characters I have ever encountered throughout the many years of being into anime and manga. I may have said this about many others, but I am definitely not exaggerating when I speak about Neuro. What makes him interesting is his ability to capture the reader's heart with his... negative qualities. He is selfish, sadistic, manipulative, hypocritical, and plain psychotic. He takes pleasure in inflicting mental and physical torture upon others, including his partner Yako, and will not miss a chance to belittle human beings. He might as well be the main villain himself. However, Matsui-sensei successfully makes this character lovable to the public. What is Neuro's charm? What makes such a seemingly repulsive individual so attractive? Is it his eccentric appearance, or his childish demeanor, or the overall mystery that surrounds his very existence? There may not be an answer. Neuro is a paradox, a hateful character that cannot be hated. Our co-main character is Yako, a pretense detective and Neuro's favorite "toy". She may appear as an ordinary girl and quite a pushover, but she actually has a very strong personality and a lot of courage. She is not afraid to speak her mind when confronting the criminals, and is deeply concerned about their motives. Her main purpose is concealing Neuro's true identity, but she is also an important aid in solving the cases, because she is very knowledgeable about human psyche, unlike Neuro who only cares about solving the puzzle. She is very open with Neuro too, even though her life is in danger every time she talks back at him. As the story progresses, Yako also matures and starts living up to her title of a detective. There are numerous other characters, and I will not go into detail about all of them. I don't think there is a single boring personality in this manga; both the positive and the negative characters are intriguing in their own way. I have noticed that Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro does not have the overused stereotypes that are often present in this kind of setting. There is no invincible hero who does not get hurt and can easily get out of any situation. The legit detectives are not as useless as they usually are in a story where an amateur is involved in an investigation. The group of antagonists are not your typical gang bent on taking over the world; in fact, there is no good versus evil scenario here and no two sides are clearly defined. There are no "flat" characters; all of them grow and change, for the better or worse, which makes the story very exciting and at times unpredictable. My only concern is that absolutely nothing is known about Neuro himself. Everyone seems to have some kind of back story and motive, but Neuro just exists. He is from Hell and he eats mysteries, that's it. Whether or not the author planned it this way, for the protagonist to be the biggest "enigma" himself, is unknown. In fact, I am not sure whether there is really a need to learn more about him. Even though he is a mystery, his character seems to be complete, and it didn't even strike me until the end. Only after I finished reading the manga, I thought back and realized that I don't really know anything about him. Maybe Matsui-sensei plans to have some sort of revelation in the second series. Or perhaps it is just another paradox. -ART- 8/10 As I mentioned earlier, I was a little repelled when I just started reading. The proportions don't seem to be realistic and there is some general inconsistency throughout the designs. The main focus goes to the foreground, while the characters on the background are drawn with a lot less detail, to the point that some of them don't have facial features at all. It appears that the author certainly focused on developing the story and the characters a lot more than on making it visually appealing. Even though the actual panels are nothing extraordinary, the full-page chapter inserts are definitely worth looking at. This is where the artist shows his talent by drawing the characters with a lot of detail and in difficult perspectives. Among them are some very fascinating illustrations that add to the disturbing side of the manga; for example, an image of Yako sitting in someone's eye and looking up from under a contact lens. Also, looking closely at those inserts, we can see how they depict some of the character quirks; for example, an image of Neuro wearing a kimono and black boots inside a Japanese house, which is clearly unacceptable, and thus shows his indifference and disrespect toward the humans and their customs. --- Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro is in my Top 5 most favorite manga series, and Neuro is among my Top 5 all-time favorite characters. I highly recommend this to everyone -- it will surely keep you entertained. There is a "to be continued" notion after the cliffhanger ending, and I am definitely looking forward to a second manga series.

Imagine a magician appears to levitate and pull rabbits out of his ass. Now imagine he explains the trick in full detail to kill off any potential mystery. The result is basically this manga. To be perfectly blunt, this manga was mediocre at best. I'm sure I'll get lots of "not helpfuls", but c'mon, let's be reasonable here! It's a "psychological mystery" manga that basically has nothing mysterious or interesting about it. Neuro solves every mystery the moment it begins. See, psychological stories are interesting because they leave you on the edge of your seat guessing what's gonna happen next. However, in this manga, youwill never find yourself on the edge of your seat. You will just be sitting back and watching Neuro expose the "trick" behind the murder. - - - S T O R Y - - - Well, every incident revolves around a murder. The murder is commited for some petty reason and uses some sort of "trick" to cover up the criminal's tracks. The police arrive at the scene of the crime, being incompetent and writing it off as an accident or something. Neuro tells them that he has immediately solved the mystery with 100% accuracy and explains how the murder occurred. Next, he gives the criminal an ironic (lol) punishment using his demonic powers. The weak cases go on for a while. Around chapters 60-90, there is a more interesting arc involving artificial intelligence. Honestly, I felt like I should just stop reading after that arc ended. It gave decent closure. However, I foolishly let my guard down and believed that perhaps there would be more interesting arcs... then I got stuck reading this thing to the end for the sake of having some closure. After the AI arc, things took a turn for the stupid. The enemies became more supernatural and things pretty much just became ridiculous. It was pretty much just a mediocre battle manga hiding behind its facade of being some sort of detective story. There's nothing believable about the story, so you can't feel any sense for the gravity of the situations; you're basically just going along for the ride and looking at pictures of Yako having her eyes gouged, neck twisted around, or being smacked in the face. This manga has no rules or laws; it's pretty much anything goes, which just makes it completely unfit to be called a mystery manga. - - - A R T - - - The art is not very good, but it improves as it goes along. It isn't too appealing, anyway. - - - C H A R A C T E R S - - - Yako: Useless puppet who is dragged along for the ride. Her character shows some promise during the Aya Asia arc, but then she returns to being completely worthless. She basically just exists as "comic relief". Neuro: Invincible "detective" who instantly explains every mystery. He's basically that guy who spoils the end of a movie when you just started watching it. Very annoying personality - just not a likeable character. Aya Asia: Too OP. I think she just made repeated appearances because the mangaka liked drawing her. Her arc was okay, but she was made out to be too god-like. After her arc was finished, she shouldn't have appeared again. It just lowered the value of her character. Harukawa/HAL: This was the only interesting character, really. Despite the arc being so far-fetched, he was the only one that felt convincing. You could feel his attitude loud and clear, he didn't have any stupid "comic relief" involved, he had deep emotions, and he had a true motive. X: Wildcard with no personality. Sicks: Hitler wannabe. Everyone else: Pretty much pointless and irrelevant. - - - E N J O Y M E N T - - - The constant S&M stuff was pretty stupid. I swear, 50% of this manga is just S&M. It completely degrades Yako's credibility as a character and also just makes Neuro a really bratty and annoying character who you can't take seriously. Also, it fails to be funny unless your sense of humour is so lowly that you'd be amused to see one person get whacked over and over for no reason. The characters are pretty much all just one dimensional. It's hard to feel any attachment to any of them. In the final battle, I honestly didn't care if Neuro would die or not. I mean, really, who gives a shit? He didn't really contribute anything to the story. Barely anyone did besides Harukawa/HAL. - - - O V E R A L L - - - If you're expecting a mystery manga, this isn't one. Just don't bother reading this, it has very few interesting points.

This manga is something exceptional. It surely isn't for everyone, as it's humor is pretty weird and the story is just erratic. However, if you stick with it, you'll realize it's actually great. Story-wise, it's weird, honestly. The manga is basically all of the genres; it ranges from comedy to even horror (!) and psychological thriller sometimes. However, it handles each part so splendidly that you won't notice the conversion from funny and weird to serious and unsettling. Yuusei Matsui really did a great job. Also, it does cover many mental states via the villains and several characters. And it does that pretty nicely. Other thanthat, the story consists of four basic arcs; 1) the first part (up until chapter 60) where there are many, separate cases that don't connect with each other. It's basically an intro for the characters and some development. Also, they do introduce the main villain, who doesn't do anything exceptional. 2) the best arc. A new villain appears and decides to rule the world. The thing is, it doesn't get boring at all, the motives and continuation are perfect and the arc ending is so satisfying. You might even get emotional. 3) the main villain starts to do shit and the protagonists have to stop him from completing the said shit. Pretty great, I sadly cannot say anything that won't count as spoilers. 4) the last arc, where the final, true villain appears and does worse shit than the main villain. The thing is, some situations really do cause anxiety and/or disgust on a whole new level. The ending is pretty generic in my opinion, but I weirdly didn't mind. It did leave a lot of possibilities open, so that might be why. The characters are all great, with more than enough development for each one of them. This manga is one of the cases when you just cannot hate any one of them, no matter how evil they are. Even supportive role characters that do seem useless are pretty likeable. As the story progresses, some of them die. And that sucks. A lot. I even shed several tears for one of them. Other ones got injured pretty badly and I was in pain, just like them. They are just so realistic that you can't help but care about them. The art was the only difficult part to give a score to. It's kind of bad, especially in the beginning. However, it does get better later on. The thing is, there are some certain parts that are handled PERFECTLY. The meanings, the absurdness, the comparisons are shown the way they should. The art there is just exceptionally awesome. I cannot really describe it, you'll have to find out what i mean on your own. Overall, I enjoyed it very much, although I felt like it would get kind of boring mainly at the beginning. My advice is, don't stop it. Clench your teeth and keep going. It'll be worth your time later on.

Main conclusion: not brilliant, but certainly a good read. story; A girl (Yako) whoes father was murdered comes across a deamon (yes, it is consequently spelled as deamon) aka Neuro that solves the 'riddle' of this unsolved case. Neuro feeds on riddles and he wants to eat riddles from the human world. He uses Yako to navigate through human society and makes Yako a famous detective. Her role within their detective agency is mainly to smile friendly and keep close contacts with the police. The first 60 chapters are short stories. Of course there is a big villain (X), but he's in the background. The short stories areall about a murder case where the murderer tried to hide he did it through a 'riddle'. There were several riddles that were way too far fetched, but overall it was nicely done. After the first 60 chapters of only short stories there comes another big villain comes along: A computer virus that turns people into criminals. This keeps us occupied for another 30 chapters. So after about 30 chapters containing a bigger plot we're back to short stories. X gets a bigger role and appears more. Short stories, with a red thread concerning the cat and mouse game that develops between X and Neuro - we're heading towards chapter 120. It turns out X is only the beginning of the trouble that awaits. There is a super villain responsible for X. This villain and his evil plans will be the grand plot of the story. So it is 80 chapters only the super villain and his minions against Neuro and the police squad. The switches between little stories and the main story are, in my humble opinon, too big. When you read this manga in one go, somehow it doesn't feel good. The way how people from different stories fit to gether in the bigger picture manga is nicely done. art; On the first glance you'd say Matsui-sensei's art isn't worth mentioning. You couldn't be more wrong. When you look closer at the art you'll be pleasantly surprised. It is clear that Matsui-sensei likes art and he shows this in multiple ways. For instance trough a story concerning a artist. The sculpture Matsui-sensei has drawn for this story was awesome. Matsui-sensei's drawings are clearly based on several artists. Neuro's deamonic form for instance, reminded me somehow of the creatures in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Other deamonic things had aspects you could defenitly link to Dalí. Several pictures (with Neuro sitting on the ceiling for instance) were obviously inspired by the works of Escher. Matsui-sensei is also clearly into (Picasso's) surrealistic cubism. character; The characters evolve. You can see they really change throughout the story. Some don't change for the better. This way it is realistic. I also like it Matsui-sensei doesn't have too much trouble with letting characters die. However the way several of the murderers or the supervillain are portrayed is far beyond realism. Enjoyment: It was a nice story to read. I liked it, but I can't say I loved it. The comic relief was nice. Neuro's sadistic traits were funny, and Yako's eating habbits were hilarious. In the translator notes I read much jokes were untranslatable because the jokes were in the kanji readings. Too bad, it would have made the story even better.