I don’t know what to make of this manga really. At first, I thought this would be like Ghost Sweeper Mikami where there would be a main character that would get pleasure in making the other character suffer. At times it’s fun and comical in an almost satanic way. I’m not sure if it’s the translation that I read or how the manga really is written so it’s hard to say but the story got very complicated after a while. Trust me when I say you will get confused, you will get lied to, and you will go ‘What the fuck?’ while reading this. You have been warned. The start of this manga is basic with a demon ending up going to the human world and forcing a human to help him.

Lets talk about the main characters for a moment. Neuro is a demon who has come to the human world looking for riddles which is his main source of food. He acts like a rather playful child for most of the time though, even if his play is very satanic and torture style. He was born and lived in a land of suffering, the underworld where they did as they wanted and where the concept of death and horror mean nothing. Take that same character, put them in our world and let them do as they please. Ten times out of ten, the demon would not understand why it’s not ok to play with someone’s mind or show them horrific images. This is why I consider him more of a child playing with his food then an actual demon as the riddles he eats are made by humans. The reason he came looking for riddles was to find the ultimate food to quench his hunger. (Toriko eat your heart out… no really, this is a demon we are talking about. Toriko is a good example, maybe an overboard example, of just what that can be like in human terms.)

There is one other point that I would like to bring up with Neuro. Although he is childish and has a lack of knowledge of being human, he also has a rather strange understanding that almost seems physiological.There is a point in the story where he talks about how humans surprise him with their way of surpassing his expectations. It actually got me thinking a bit in how the psychology behind different things in the manga and outside it. Things that seemed to be over exaggerated in the manga did have a bit of place here in the world. For example, there was a singer who sung beautifully but only when she felt that she had no one who cared for her. Because of this, she choose to kill the people she loved in order to sing again. The fact that he is a outsider looking in actually seems to make me believe that he understands humans much more then he actually lets on or knows himself. When he gets into this psychology, to me he seems to feel more human then when he is normal.

Yako is… well she is not really as fleshed out as Neuro is. She just seems like an ordinary girl who can somehow withstand Neuro’s special attacks. I mean, what human can live with their head being twisted 360 degrees or having her jugular smashed in several times? It makes me wonder if she herself is also a monster, especially with how she eats. She says in the beginning that she doesn’t like riddles but she does grow to seem to understand them at least just by the second book, starting to show a interest in whatever Neuro is about to do. She has a very strange way of looking up to Neuro, almost to the point that I would say she likes him a bit… but only a little bit. It’s odd to see some shoujo aspects to a manga made for Shonen. What that means is aspects for girl comics in men’s comics.

The artwork is very close to the occult but with Shonen aspects to it. I can tell that it was made mostly for men but then we have a character that was definitely made for the females who read it as the demon Neuro is really… cute in his own way? I know I said this about a monster that does show his original form that isn’t so cute but he has this sort of playful way he acts and especially around Yako. It may not be romantic in anyway, it actually closely resembles a cat playing with a small mouse, but in a way it has this sort of childlike ‘I’m not poking you’ feel. He never actually harms her (seriously anyway… at times it may seem that he does though but she always seems fine after) and so I can’t say that he ever feels any malice to her. He just sees her as his ticket to another meal and if they had feelings like friendship, I’m sort of sure he would feel them. Putting that all aside, the artwork gets really horror filled with things that seem to come out of a surreal painting with fish-eyed glass style and strange details in the riddle or hands similar to the weapon they pick. We even have times where you can see a rather simple character turn very complex as they get close to figuring out the ‘riddle.’

This manga is a rather strange one and again, its one that can get really complicated. I still don’t fully understand half of what was going on near the end. It’s still a good manga but you might want to read it carefully to understand it more. And can someone please explain some of the ending to me because it just confuses me.