Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro by Yuusei Matsui

After researching for my Beelzebub post, I found out some exciting news, well, in my opinion as a manga and video game fan. Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, which recently had it's 45th anniversary a few years back, runs chapters of just about every famous manga every week for boy's manga fans including One Piece, Dragon Ball, Toriko, Gin Tama, Yu Yu Hakusho and so on (more info here). They've also put out several games that pit all these characters against each other, but, since just about everywhere outside of Japan the manga have been

licensed by different companies, these games have never been imported. Until now, that is. The newest installment, J-Stars Victory VS, will be arriving on the thirtieth of this month. I'm very excited about this, even though I can't afford to buy it, so I decided to continue to read some other Jump manga included in the new game's roster. Of course its not as easy as that, since most of the manga are still ongoing (looking at you Kochikame, with your 1976 start date and over 1800 chapters) but luckily, I had this here manga waiting for me and I've been wanting to read it for about a year now so while I may not find a third manga to go along with the release of this game I at least get to read a manga I've been thinking about reading for some time a now.




Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro by Yuusei Matsui

Art and Story (c) Yuusei Matsui

Genre: Supernatural Crime Shonen
Length: 23 Volumes – 202 Chapters


              Take typical silly shonen art and add to it mind-bending images of insanity and you will then have the art of Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro (or, more plainly Demon Detective Neuro Nogami). The proportions are a little off in the beginning, typically with head size, but considering the first time you meet Neuro he is

See, leering.

standing sideways and at an unnatural perspective, sometimes its hard to decide what is lack of practice and what is lack of respect for what is considered normal. Still, beyond that the art remains remarkably the same through out the whole run so its hard to really nitpick. Within the first volume, the strange art really infects your reading and I found myself giving them a second or third look just to try and dissect them. Meaning, you get used to it quite quickly, even though it gets grosser and more disturbing. That also means, it could be off putting to some due to its violent and demonic images. Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro is definitely not a manga for younger shonen fans. Beyond that, the character designs are quite unique, unless they are purposefully generic, even then all the characters are unique in one way or another. The eyes are quite lively (a nice way of saying they are often evilly leering at you) though there isn't a lot of different shapes to them, the faces are generally all different (and leering at you). The clothing is, at a glance, mostly suits, but there is also a lot of variety to the clothing in keeping with characters who wear them to the point that the main character looks odd when she is not wearing her school uniform. The backgrounds also became stranger the longer the manga went on, they were there for the most part, too, though there were some blanker pages from time to time, but when people are twisting themselves in to caricatures of themselves all the time its pretty much forgettable if a background was there or not. The hair is all over the place, truthfully, its drawn with a chunkier style of tresses but there were a few hair cuts that often looked out of place. Very unique all the way to the end, though, and sometimes it felt like the stranger the better for Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro.
             Yako Katsuragi recently lost her father in a murder that the police don't seem to be able to solve, and her spirits, already low from his sudden death, spiral even

further with out knowing the reason why he was killed. Unluckily, this atmosphere is what brings to her side a man calling himself Neuro who plainly states he is a demon who wants to eat the human world's mysteries created through the complex puzzles humans make when they commit crimes. Chosen instantly as his puppet in the human world, Yako has no choice but to follow at this demons beck and call, as she is his 'face' to hide his true demonic origins while he searches for the next meal in hopes of finding the ultimate puzzle that will give Neuro a feast to fill his stomach completely.
             To call this manga weird is an understatement, but it still describes Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro well enough. I remarked it's strangeness with a smile every time a popularity poll came up, because with popularity polls there are always lots of background people to show up with a surprising amounts of votes, but as far as this manga was involved the strangest characters would appear, characters such as 'starch,' 'fried oysters,' and 'statue of Liberty lighter' just went to show that the things that went on in the story had to be out of the ordinary. Yet, its so interesting that all those weird things become the manga's strong point. The silly gags mixed together with Neuro's demonic imagery make a much better pair than would be thought possible. This unique combination made for not only a story line unlike anything I've read, it make such a strong impression very quickly that even if you only read one chapter you'd remember Neuro. Which is in fact what happened to me so many years ago that I had to look him up even when I'd forgotten everything but his two-toned hair. All that combined really makes me want to read this mangaka's other works now that Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro has ended, in fact Ansatsu Kyoushitsu (also known as Assassination Classroom) is running still in Jump and though my first glance of it did not endear me to it before, knowing it's by the same author certainly changes that opinion a bit. Back to Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro, this manga is a bit of trick, it starts out as a crime solving manga with a little bit of supernatural criminals mixed in for drama and action, but the supernatural starts to eclipse the simple human crimes until the whole manga is about how humans can be as demonic
as the demon. I'd say the last third of it completely left the 'crime' genre and went into more of the 'fighting' genre, truthfully.There were times I missed that simple crime solving aspect, but there were also times that the criminals were a little too over the top to be as fun as they interrupted the longer running plot. Of course, since I am reading things with the intention of reviewing them I also tend to look more closely than someone would normally; the plot, though it does change, does so in a normal upscaling of events than anything abrupt. The ending was also quite satisfactory, which I don't often get. To compare it to my previous Jump post, Beelzebub, which had the same type of 'its over but not really' ending, Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro felt so much more complete. Continuing the comparisons, Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro also does not have an English release which is also a shame. I suppose the violence is the cause of this one, but Neuro is such an amazingly horrible hero that he deserves much more exposure here in the human world, since everyone in the demon world already knows his name. I can see some types of readers not liking this manga, there was quite a bit of gore through out, it was rather wordy at times, and the art work can be called disturbing, but the characters are very memorable and the story isn't like anything else I can bring to mind. I was surprised myself at the heart the story was given when it has so many other slapstick elements. I've been waiting for the right excuse to read this and so my anticipation was quite high and Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro didn't disappoint me even a little.



5/5 A bloody mix of demon tools and evil intent, poured just right.

...yay....