Tadahiro Nasu is a Tokyo convenience store worker who dropped out of school and lives with his mother. The only thing in his life that he values is Misaki Kanzaki, a former classmate of his who has become a pop music idol. At the end of a particularly bad day at work and at home, Tadahiro decides to end it all and fatally electrocutes himself.
Except the suicide doesn't take.
With his apparent death, Tadahiro discovers that his consciousness has been transformed into pure electricity, allowing him to do anything and everything he wants. And the first item of his agenda is aiding the career of Misaki, the object of his obsession, by any means necessary...
Denjin N (Electric Man N) is a horror manga by Yuu Kuraishi, published in Comic Days in 2019-2020.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Question: Sudou asks Tadahiro what he likes in Misaki more, her appearance or her personality, then cuts her nose. Tadahiro goes into Unstoppable Rage, but Sudou asks the question again. Tadahiro shuts himself up.
- The Bad Guy Wins: After holding the entire world hostage, Tadahiro's evil half manages to make Misaki the world's number one idol. He gets Killed Off for Real by the combined effort of his better half and Sudou at the same time though.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- When it appears that Tadahiro kills Sudou via a military drone, it turns out Sudou has set up a virtual enviroment of the surrounding area in the laptop with AI copy of themselves, so Tadahiro gets trapped in the laptop without realizing it.
- As their final gambit, Sudou finds a cop with personal grudge against Tadahiro and asks him to shoot Misaki at the end of her concert to catch him off-guard so his Even Evil Has Standards split personality can sneak into the system and finish off the evil personality. Misaki is on the ground bleeding, and Sudou discussed killing her before, but they've loaded the pistol with rubber bullets at the last minute before giving it to the cop.
- Can't Take Criticism: Misaki's idol group is noted to be not very good and she's aware of it. Tadahiro responds to any criticism in the media towards them, valid or not, with murder.
- Crazy-Prepared: Just in case Sudou is up to something, Tadahiro splits his consciousness into two and hides the smaller part as a backup. Sudou manages to outwit and capture Tadahiro, so his other part manages to rescue himself.
- Creepy Doll: Tadahiro uses a baby doll as his backup Soul Jar, and later crudely upgrades it with cameras, legs and weapons.
- Creepy Twins: The Sudou detectives are two formerly craniopagus twins with Creepy Shadowed Undereyes and a poor habit of making the police go along with odd or outright violent plans before explaining their practicality. The police treat them as effectively one person.
- Curse: The murders are initially believed to be a supernaturally odd series of misfortune deaths by the public and Misaki before Tadahiro reveals himself.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Tadahiro's murders are shown in gory detail, with people being cut apart or pierced by falling objects.
- Determinator: Despite being shot and his brain physically exposed, Detective Yanagida still tries to destroy Tadahiro to prevent him from escaping by any means necessary, though it proves to be futile.
- Driven to Suicide: Tadahiro was violently bullied by peers, abused by his mother and treated like crap by his employer. It's ambiguous if he intended to die or just went insane, but plugging wires from the VR headset directly into his ears killed him.
- Evil Is Petty: Despite using the world's best men to prepare Misaki's idol group for the concert, Tadahiro's evil personality kills one of them for slipping up the lyrics mid-dancing and then another for getting distracted because of that.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: From a high school dropout and lowly convenience store clerk to a supernatural being with power over electricity.
- A God Am I: Tadahiro views himself as an all-powerful being and shows no regard for human life aside Misaki's. The Sudou twins admit it's hard to argue with it, because if their plan fails there really isn't any way to stop him. Near the end, Tadahiro holds the entire world hostage and even the world's leaders have to attend Misaki's concert.
- Good Is Not Soft: Sudou deduces that Misaki is Tadahiro's Morality Pet and blatantly threaten to kill her if he doesn't obey and do injure her a few times during the investigation despite his promises on destroying the world if she's hurt. Tadahiro ultimately decides to hear Sudou out.
- Great Detective: The police hire the infamous detective twins Sudou, who are incredibly aloof, creepy, and very quickly deduce the killer is a supernatural being and his abilities, and manage to defeat him, twice.
- Heel Realization: Tadahiro realizes surprisingly early in the story that killing people around Misaki is only making her scared and miserable, and he resolves to leave her alone. When the police begin suspecting her of the murders, he decides to come back into her life to protect her from being wrongfully arrested and resumes the killings. When Tadahiro splits himself into two, one of them is willing to destroy the other because he causes Misaki distress.
- Idol Singer: Misaki Kanzaki is the lead of Les Fées (fairies) idol group. She's passionate about it, but as many point out the group isn't really remarkable compared to other idols, which is something Tadahiro can't stand. In the ending Misaki decides it's really not her thing and quits.
- Invincible Villain: Tadahiro has the ability to manually control any electronic or electric device within his reach, able to instantly track down people by their username and also has some proficiency with robotics. His range and awareness of what's happening near the devices proves to be infinite, and Sudou note that Tadahiro can Take Over the World with ease if he wanted to and there's no real way to prevent it, which he does eventually and Sudou get really lucky Tadahiro's split personalities are conflicting.
- Literal Split Personality: Tadahiro splits himself into two before the confrontation with Sudou, and the other half gets to rescue the other after it gets captured. The split proves to affect their mentality, as the "laptop Tadahiro" calls himself exclusively as Electric Man N and is obsessed with making Misaki number 1 idol with no regard of her well-being, while the "doll Tadahiro" is protective of her and agrees to cooperate with Sudou to stop the other half.
- Logical Weakness: Tadahiro can be only in one place at a time and can only move through the electromagnetic fields. Sudou holds a meeting in the mountain area and asks everyone to leave their phones, making Tadahiro come up with another way to reach them. Sudou later invite him into a truck with special surface cover, use a faked webcam feed in the laptop, and then lock the laptop in a jar filled with liquid nitrogen rendering him powerless. If Tadahiro didn't come up with a backup plan, the case would have been closed.
- Loony Fan: Tadahiro is the biggest fan of his former classmate and now Idol Singer Misaki Kanzaki and her group. He's willing to kill off any critics of her and goes after every other idol group in Japan just to make her more popular.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The police higher-ups go behind Sudou's backs and try to violently arrest Misaki and her family on the suspicion of being involved with murders, even though the detectives believe she has no idea what's going on. Tadahiro, the real culprit, who already decides to leave her alone and stop the killings, returns to massacre the police squad and panicking Misaki says she doesn't mind him supporting her without considering what she has actually approved.
- The Pollyanna: Misaki is a hard-working idol and doesn't really find having Ax-Crazy stalker too concerning and quickly recovers from the police hurting her and her family. From her point of view, in order it's been explained to her, he's her biggest supporter, then protected her from the abusive police, then is mentally unstable and needs help, then would stop killing as long as she does as he says. At the final concert, she manages to continue the performance as her groupmates are killed off one by one and shows no signs of trauma after Tadahiro has been stopped for good.
- Psycho Electro: Tadahiro transforms into a being of pure electromagnetism and resolves to murder anybody who gets in the way of Misaki's idol career.
- Real-Person Cameo: Out of the world leaders invited to Misaki's final concert, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elizabeth II, and Xi Jinping are present.
- Ride the Lightning: After shedding his mortal coil, Tadahiro's essence is transformed into pure electricity and allows him to travel throughout Tokyo instantaneously through electrical currents. This allows him to cause blackouts, spy on people through CCTV, or stage fatal accidents for anybody who wrongs him or Misaki.
- Stalker with a Crush: Tadahiro is in crazy love with Misaki but can't express himself at first. He keeps a hankie used by Misaki from school in a plastic bag and flips out when his boss at the convenience store throws it away. After he kills himself and gains the ability to Ride the Lightning, he decides to use his powers to advance Misaki's idol career with extreme prejudice.
- Sue Donym: Tadahiro Nasu presents himself as "N". The Sudou note that out of Misaki's fans on the forums, Nasu so happens to be the only one whose name starts on N and use that to their advantage.
- Taking You with Me: Following Sudou's plan, Tadahiro grabs his evil Literal Split Personality N and destroys himself with him.
- Vengeful Ghost: Tadahiro's first order of business after dying and becoming the Electric Man N is killing his convenience store boss out of spite, before moving on to become Misaki Kanzaki's evil guardian.
