Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro

Trust me, you don't want this guy running your life.

This mystery is already on the tip of my tongue...

Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro (“Demon Detective Neuro Nougami” but popularly Woolsey’d into “Private Evil Eye Neuro Nougami”) is a supernatural detective manga and later anime that follows Neuro, a demon who literally eats mysteries. Having eaten all of the mysteries in Hell he goes to Earth in search of the ultimate mystery. There he meets Yako Katsuragi, a schoolgirl whose father was recently murdered. In order to keep his identity as a demon secret Neuro sets up a detective agency under Yako’s name, pretending that she is a brilliant schoolgirl detective and he her assistant. With the aid of his 777 Tools of Hell Neuro spends his time solving the murders he deems interesting while, naturally, dragging Yako along with him.

The plot itself bounces between solving the individual cases of one time murders and much larger overreaching situations such as the mystery of the Phantom Thief X. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the series is when the culprit reveals his/her true nature and transforms into another form entirely. At this point Neuro reverts to his demon form and devours the mystery. That said, it should be noted that since any bystanders (Yako excluded) never see Neuro doing this it can be interpreted as more of a mental representation.

While the search for the ultimate mystery at seems like a typical Excuse Plot for a Mystery of the Week setup, once the character dynamics and the world are established, the series kicks into high gear with the HAL arc. As it turns out, despite the usual Shonen conventions, Neuro was not kidding when he said that he was starving to death. A main character that is gradually growing weaker the more he uses his power instead of getting stronger ad absurdum, a female character whose growth is important to the story and a whole lot of crazy people make this a very unique and surprising series.

Pity about the anime.

Both the manga and the anime are complete at 202 chapters and 25 episodes. Gecko Ending beware.

Tropes used in Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro include:
  • Abuse Is Okay When It Is Netherworld Detective On Unlucky Schoolgirl: And any person who has the misfortune to meet Neuro. Just ask Godai.
  • Adaptation Decay: Poor, poor Yako. In the first chapter of the manga, Neuro solves the mystery of Yako's father's death, and then leaves. He only shows up in front of Yako again after she muses that actually, the whole thing was pretty awesome. After that, it's shown that Yako stays despite the way she's treated because she's grateful to Neuro for what he did, but mostly because she secretly likes doing this crazy stuff but would never do it without the excuse of someone 'forcing' her. Despite the fact that Neuro is that powerful and does all that stuff to her, she's anything but downtrodden: power struggles with Neuro are the center of two storylines, and in both cases, Yako wins and it's implied Neuro was using her pride and refusal to submit to motivate her. There are two cases where Yako considers just up and leaving Neuro: the first time, she decided to stay after Neuro reassured her that she wasn't a burden or putting him in danger. The second time, he let her go instead of disciplining her and forcing her to stay. Anime!Yako, on the other hand, patiently waits for Neuro to get around to solving her mystery and is generally far more passive and submissive. Since Yako is the series' viewpoint character and so much time is spent on her interaction with Neuro, making that relationship more stereotypical makes a big difference.
  • Alternate Character Reading: Common in the anime's episode titles.
  • Ambiguously Gay / Mistaken for Gay: Godai. Maybe. On one hand, Neuro seems to think so, complete with literally throwing musclemen magazines at him. On the other hand, Neuro would do that sort of thing anyway because that's how he rolls. On yet another hand, Godai denies it. On the final hand, Godai's encounter with a Camp Gay policeman indicated that his life apparently works like a gay Dating Sim. So it all comes down to a big who knows.
  • Amusing Injuries: Unlike many examples, the series has no qualms with subjecting female characters to this. Poor Yako.
  • Animal Motif: Quite a few villains have one. Especially obvious with the creator of the social network (bees) and the bomber mom (dogs).
  • Anti-Hero: Neuro is a very strong type V if not outright Villain Protagonist, while Sasazuka is type IV after his arguable Face Heel Turn
  • Anti-Villain: Professor Harukawa / HAL. He just wants to bring back his true love.
  • Anyone Can Die: Sicks has killed off and corrupted major characters that we didn't expect him to.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Neuro's 777 "hell techniques". (Perhaps it should be 666, but as long as you view a daemon as a fallen angel, 777 fits well)
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Early in the manga, there's a throwaway exchange where Neuro is talking about how in his world, it's normal for the weak to submit to the strong. The person he's talking to asks if there's anyone Neuro would submit to. The answer is no. The obvious conclusion was later confirmed. The long version of the name of the Seven Weapons was another clue.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Anime only. Sasazuka and Godai have one towards the end. While Godai has his hands tied behind his back no less!
  • Badass: Neuro, so very much.
  • Badass Normal: Detective Sasazuka.
  • Big Eater: Yako never gets full, paralleling Neuro's appetite for mysteries.
    • This is increasingly Flanderized as the series continues to the point that she regularly eats meals several times her mass and has admitted to trying to eat underwater before. One scientist even comments that what she does is physically impossible.
  • Big No: See Cool and Unusual Punishment below.
  • Blue and Orange Morality: Neuro, to the point of Xenofiction. At first, it seems as though he's forcing Yako into this, has no respect for her & views her as an inferior life form equivalent to a paramecium. Then, the series shows how Neuro acts towards people he detests (Sai), considers far over the Moral Event Horizon (Sicks) and actually holds in contempt (Yako, when she decides to stop being a detective). Realizing that Neuro treats Yako that way because he actually respects her and is often proud of her verges on Mind Screw.
  • Brains and Bondage: Neuro and Yako, anyway. The New Bloodline, not so much.
  • Broken Aesop: Ep. 14 ends with a message about how people shouldn't be so intolerant of other people's cultures. The irony is that this is delivered in reaction to the antics of possibly the most xenophobic and offensive depiction of an American in anime since 1945. Of course, a later chapter reveals that the American was the first test subject of the electronic drug, so the Aesop is strongly reinforced, since if Yako and the others hadn't been blinded by stereotypes of Americans, they would have noticed something wasn't right much earlier. So, don't be blinded by xenophobia or a crazy computer will conquer the world?
  • Butt Monkey: Ishigaki. To a lesser extent, Yako and Godai for Neuro.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: One of the most disturbing examples ever; the series explores what would happen if someone really believed in being Evil.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Neuro.
  • Catch Phrase: "The mystery is already on the tip of my tongue."
    • "The criminal is... you!"
    • "Itadakimasu/Let's eat!"
  • Character Development: Unusually for a Shonen manga, Yako's is a major focus, with Neuro undergoing some as well.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Several. For example, Neuro mentions a few details about himself either right out or offhand that turn out to be very important. The fact that he's starving to death and needs mysteries to feed on seems like an Excuse Plot that certainly wouldn't be a real problem for an invicible Shonen hero until the HAL arc, where Neuro gets exhausted and seriously hurt for the first time. And there's no miraculous cure or power up.
  • Clueless Mystery: A big user of this trope.
  • Consulting a Convicted Killer: Aya Asia often advises Yako.
  • Continuity Cameo: The anime has cameos of a few characters that are in the manga but are not otherwise used in the show.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: At the end of HAL arc, Higuchi is forced to watch 12 hours worth of etiquette training CD.
    • And then it happened again but this time with 24 hours of tapes.
  • The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Yako's father was killed via his head being cut off with a chainsaw, and his blood was used to paint the walls. Since there was no way to enter the room, it was ruled a suicide by the police. :Face Palm:
    • Only in the anime. In the manga, his body was pincushioned with knives. And in the manga the police don't think it's suicide, obviously.
  • Crazy Cultural Comparison: Neuro makes a few comments on how human society is different from his own.
  • Crossover: In one of the omakes of Muhyo and Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Arguably, Neuro. The series spends a lot of time on Yako's character growth.
  • Demoted to Extra: In the manga Ai is Sai's loyal partner in crime and Foil. In the anime she only appears once as a cameo.
  • Dissonant Serenity: Sai is more or less the very incarnation of this trope.
  • Driven to Suicide: Honjou towards the end. And long before that Higuchi's parents.
  • Eagle Land: Again, episode 14, which takes this trope farther than any show before it, which is very far indeed. However, it turns out that Professor Harukawa chose him as the first victim/test subject of the electronic virus. Harukawa using the American as the trial run, since people would believe an American would do something like this, makes this an Exploited trope.
  • Everything Is Online: The classic "hacker controls the traffic lights" variant.
  • Evil Chef: Shirota.
  • Evil Diva / Musical Assassin: Aya Asia. She can blow your brain with her song. Don't worry, I'm just kidding.
  • Evil Gloating: What Neuro does every time he beats an enemy—often accompanied by ironic torture.
  • Evil Mentor: Neuro to Yako, also Aya Asia to Yako. And those two mafia guys... Yako has a lot of these.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Neuro vs. all of the villains.
  • Evil Versus Oblivion: Neuro vs. Sicks
  • Evilly Affable: Tierra is the most prominent example.
  • Evolutionary Levels: Neuro uses this to describe the times Yako Took a Level in Badass. Learning to read people, developing super strength, and so on. Being Neuro, he still manages to make this sound insulting, but if later-series Yako is to a normal human what a complex, multicellular organism with built-in armor is to a paramecium?
  • Face Heel Turn: Sasazuka in the latest chapters partially performs one of these, changing from a hero to a not-quite-villainous, but significantly more ruthless Villain Protagonist , in order to seek revenge against Sicks for the murder of his family. He doesn't get to enjoy it for long, though, as the confrontation ends in his Family-Unfriendly Death
  • Fate Worse Than Death: What awaits you the moment you really piss off Neuro.
    • Sicks too if he doesn't kill you outright.
  • Fetish: The page image linked here if it's been changed.
    • Neuro himself might count, although possibly not on purpose. Then again, it's hard to handwave all that random object licking. Among other things.
  • Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Naohiro Usui at first. He gets a good deal better as the series goes on.
    • Averted with Higuchi, though he doesn't always wear his glasses and instead keeps them up on his forehead most of the time.
  • Gecko Ending: Instead of introducing the New Bloodline, the anime has a confrontation with Sai in Brazil. She meets a bunch of Yakuza Aztecs: a random touch of Mayincatec.
  • Genre Shift: Weirdo human criminal, weirdo human criminal, weirdo human criminal.....zzzzz....PSYCHO SHAPESHIFTER! :gah!: weirdo human criminal, weirdo human criminal SUPER AI TAKING OVER THE MILITARY AND CRIME, weirdo human criminal (okay, we're getting used to this now, it'll take something special to surprise us) SOUTH AMERICAN YAKUZA/MAYANS Luke, I Am Your Father, Holy crap it's a plot!
    • In the manga, instead of that last part, it turns into an action series with Neuro facing against a group called The New Bloodline. However, the series manages to go about it in a completely different way than most other action anime and manga, with, among other things, Neuro actually growing weaker as the series goes on, and the regular humans even managing to take out two of them by themselves.
  • Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Yako, under Neuro's influence, Once an Episode: "Hannin wa... omae da!"
  • Gone Horribly Right: HAL was stuck doing exactly what he was made to do, knowing that it was impossible and he'd kill a lot of innocent people in the process.
  • Go Out with a Smile: Sasazuka
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: Sometimes Neuro likes to use Yako as a club.
  • Hot Springs Episode: And poor Yako does not even get to enjoy the hot springs because one of Neuro's devilish creatures was set loose on the water.
  • Humanity Is Infectious: Averted, or so Neuro claims. Since he's fundamentally incapable of understanding how the human mind works, that's the other thing he keeps Yako around for.
  • Humanity Is Insane: This is apparently why Neuro can't understand us: it's also something the manga spends a lot of time observing. It's also the reason Humans Are Special: since we're so insane and illogical, we can commit premedited crimes for really strong, twisted reasons, and it's that energy Neuro eats, and why he won't let the New Bloodline destroy humanity.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: HAL
  • Iron Butt Monkey: Yako stays surprisingly intact even after being made Neuro's chewtoy, doesn't she?
    • Same for Godai.
  • Joshikousei: Yako.
  • Karma Houdini: To a certain extent, Kasai.
  • Kid Detective: Subverted in that although Yako is supposed to be the leader of the agency, in fact all the detective work is done by Neuro.
  • Kid with the Leash: Neuro tells Sasazuka that Yako controls him and is taking terrible advantage. Their relationship seems like an inversion, but when Yako is serious about no longer being a detective, she does what she wants.
  • Kill All Humans: Manga only villain Sicks, to a T.
  • Lack of Empathy: Neuro is a demon, after all. The idea of giving a shit about what beings other than him want or feel generally does not occur to him.
  • Lethal Chef: Yako's mother in the manga. Part of Yako's talent with cooking is to enable her to eat anything handy and the other part is allow her to have anything safe to eat. Her mother's food has both resulted in nitro-glycerin and radioactivity.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Professor Harukawa / HAL
  • Mad Artist: Including a furniture designer who kills people who look down on furniture, a hair dresser who cuts off people's heads so he can style their hair and a stand-up comic who kills people because it's funny. There is also a singer who killed her friends to make her songs sound sadder, however she is one of the series sanest characters.
  • Mad Bomber: "Histerrier"
  • Mad Scientist: Professor Harukawa.
  • Meitantei: Subverted: it may seem like Yako is a brilliant detective, but she's really a dense, and easily manipulated girl who owes Neuro a big favour.
    • While she's not the true "brains" behind the operation, Yako slowly reveals superb talents at reading human intention that Neuro himself cannot match.
      • She herself becomes a Negotiator at the end of the manga; someone who can solve the mysteries in people's hearts; preferring to help the living instead of avenging the dead.
  • Mismatched Eyes: All those possessed by the electronic drug have one red eye.
  • Moe: Miyasako Mutsuki, a little girl who wants Yako to help her grandfather.
  • Motive Rant: Happens with every single villain.
    • But then turns into a Chekhov's Gun of sort when they come across an arsonist who doesn't have a motive. It indicated that he was under the influence of the Electronic Drug.
  • Necromantic: HAL
  • No Export for You: Despite occasional rumors of Viz picking it up, it pretty much looks like the series is never going to be translated into English at this point for reasons unknown.
  • Nuke'Em: Referenced by Neuro. When he first arrived on Earth, a nuke wouldn't have put a scratch on him. Of course, by the time he's saying this, he's weakened enough that ordinary guns could kill him. Like the one the man he's talking to, who has tried to kill him before, has right there.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Neuro acts like a puppet of Yako and speaks with a friendly accent in front of suspects... just before turning into a bird-headed monster that eats mysteries.
  • Occult Detective: Who'dya think?
  • One Head Taller: Yako is noticeably shorter than Neuro.
  • Our Demons Are Different
  • Oxygen Meter: Earth's atmosphere is poisonous to Neuro, constantly draining his health. He tries to breathe in miasma when he can, at the hot springs and the village where Sai kidnaps Yako.
  • Parasol of Pain: HIME in the anime
  • Playful Hacker: Higuchi who hacked into the Metropolitan Police Department's computers...and transformed their website into a department store website complete with replacing all of the departments and personal with lookalike shops and employees.
  • Playing Against Type: Well... sort of. But come on - hearing Kana Ueda (who played serious Rin Tohsaka in Fate/stay night) play confused and victimized Yako is just plain hilarious.
  • Plot-Sensitive Snooping Skills: Subverted, as Neuro is just as happy using his abilities to investigate the lives of his co-workers.
  • Power Degeneration: Neuro.
  • Prehensile Hair: Akane consists of nothing but living hair.
  • Punny Name: A furniture dealer named Ikeya. I wonder if he's Swedish...
  • Pyromaniac: Kasai, and to a lesser extent his nephew Homura.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: With Sasazuka as blue and Godai as red.
  • Redemption Equals Death: In the manga, Phantom Thief X/Sai.
  • Sadist Teacher: Apparently Neuro thinks that the best way to help Yako grow is to torture her.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Err, box. And a red one at that!
  • Self-Made Orphan: Sicks.
  • Serial Killer: Quite a few of the villains.
  • Serious Business: Mysteries, for Neuro, which makes sense since he's starving to death and they're not his food, but they're evidence that the energy he eats should be present. This becomes a problem during the HAL and Sicks arcs, when crimes are being caused not by human twistedness but the electronic drug, biology, and so on. See No Mister Bond I Expect You to Dine.
  • Sidekick Ex Machina
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Some human beings are just plain evil: others are crazy and even a mild-mannered housewife can decide to start planting bombs. Even good people can have disgusting obsessions and our minds are at the mercy of our biology (poor, poor Setsuna, not to mention Sai). Except...
  • So Last Season: Subverted, then inverted. While Neuro makes more use of the Seven Weapons during later arcs, they're not power-ups or new attacks but techniques he's had all along: they just weren't needed until now due to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil. In fact, the reason he's using them isn't that he's gotten stronger but because he's growing weaker as he starves to death, and he needs the most powerful spells in the demon world to do things he could have done with normal tools before. Turns out to be a double subversion, since the power that turns the tide in the last story arc is one that hasn't been a big deal before: human allies.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": X or Xi which is pronounced Sai.
    • And on that note, i or Ai.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: In the manga you first have the regular murders, then ones who we find are being stirred up by Professor Harukawa's research. That leads to HAL, and then X takes on HAL's powers. Then finally Sicks shows up and sweeps X off the map with his minions are coming in order as well.
    • Justified however in that Sicks send out his minions one after the other in order to weaken Neuros powers. If they had tried to team up on Neuro in the begining he would have easily curbstomped them.
  • Surprisingly Good English: Seriously. Not even one "spilled" R. The fact that a word is mispelled in English is a plot point, even.
  • Takehito Koyasu: as Neuro, who else?
  • The Power of Love: In the manga, Neuro doesn't eat mysteries per se but the energy that would drive someone to do terrible, shameful, twisted things, knowing they're that wrong (otherwise, why try to hide them?). When he finally devoured the energy that caused the creation of HAL and the entire HAL arc, there's so much of it he acts like he's sugar high.
  • The Virus: The electronic drug. It hacks the victim's mind and finds something to exaggerate in order to make them useful to HAL. For instance, a childhood fondness for digging holes in the sand becomes an obsession with making holes in people.
  • Training from Hell: In hindsight, everything Neuro does to Yako.
  • Transformation Sequence: When a culprit is revealed he/she undergoes one of these. YMMV with how well it works, as some people consider it to be rather narmy.
  • Troll: Neuro, oh so much.
  • Unholy Matrimony: X and Ai are a cute couple...when you get past all the killing.
  • Wall Crawl: Neuro makes gravity his bitch on regular basis, even sleeping on ceilings.
  • White-Haired Pretty Boy: Sai arguably fits the trope. Despite the fact that he can change shape, his chosen form seems to be that of a white haired Bishounen, and there is no doubt that he can be very cruel.
  • Villain Protagonist: Reality-warping, mind-screwing monster protagonist, no less. Thankfully, Neuro has nothing to gain from harming humans, so the worst you can usually see from him is Comedic Sociopathy towards Yako and other unfortunates.
  • Xenofiction: The series spends a lot of time exploring just how alien Neuro is, and both his value system and biology are extremely important to the plot.
  • You Are Number Six: Sicks; as well as Setsuna. (The number closest to zero. "Setsuna" is pronounced the same as the Japanese way for saying 1/100000000000000000.)
  • Your Favorite: Yako and Sicks, both to Neuro.
    • Instead of giving Neuro chocolates for Valentine's, Yako gives him the wrapping paper. Which is made up of leads to potential mysteries, what he actually eats. It's a CMOA for Yako, that's she's grown to understand him so well, as well as a CMOH.
    • Sicks invites Neuro to meet with him, and tries to arrange a meal for him by forcing several people to kill, right there, by threatening their families and so on. He's wrong in that it's not the mystery itself Neuro eats, but the psychic energy of the motivation behind it, the twistedness that would drive someone to commit murder and try to hide it. Sicks's sick little tableau was the equivalent of offering a starving man diet soda. And then, since they hadn't pleased Neuro, he killed all of them, meaning that they would never be able to produce a real mystery. At that point, the reader learns how Neuro acts when he's really, really angry.
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