Shoot 'em up!
"Dark hero of destruction and desire! The big bomb!!"
Jagaaaaaan is a Supernatural Action-Horror Seinen manga written by Kaneshiro Muneyuki (yes, that one) which utilizes Body Horror in the spirit of Tokyo Gore Police combined with an unique artstyle, provided by Nishida Kensuke. It ran in Big Comic Spirits from 2017 to 2021.
Shintarou Jagasaki, who is a neighborhood police officer, lives with his girlfriend while working a job that is killing him slowly with annoyance. It looks like he will end up marrying soon and live a boring life with a nuclear family - a grim future for a guy with dreams! One such day, a mysterious monster appeared on the train and he suddenly can shoot with his right hand like Master Buppanatsu, the eggplant mascot of his city!
However, trouble piles up at the horizon as he discovers how the monster on the train wasn't the only one loose in the city...
Tropes this Manga include:
- A-Cup Angst: Bell gets insecure when she notices that Yumama has huge breasts.
- Amusement Park of Doom: Deader Land, a theme park run by fractured humans with the intention of churning out more.
- Animal Motifs: Shura Yukimaru's powers give him cat-like features such as sharp claws and fangs.
- Assimilation Plot: Nomen does not take the collapse of his plans particularly well and begins absorbing every baseline human he can get his gelid mitts on.
- Back from the Dead: Doku-chan reveals that once Jagasaki has killed all Fractured Humans, his next objective is to blow his own brains out to take care of his own Fractured self. Once that's done with, Doku-chan will obtain the power to resurrect a single life. Jagasaki insists not to revive him, but instead to revive his fiance, whom he killed to defend himself.
- Big Bad: Chiharu Matsuyamachi has been responsible for lots of bad situations happening in the manga and a real pain in the ass to Jagasaki, The Hero.
- The title ends up going to Nomans Nomen, after he manages to unlock an Enlightenment Superpower and begins plans to kill the entire human race with utter bliss.
- Body Horror: The Fractured Humans are not a pretty sight when they manifest their minds and emotions through their bodies, warping them into nightmarish shapes in the progress.
- Boss Subtitles: Every single Fractured Human gets one upon their introduction, stating their mindset, occupation and finally, their names.
- Brand X: There's a chicken place called BFC in this series. We don't know what it stands for but still.
- The Bully: Bandou and his friends. During their high school days, they bullied future serial killers Kemu and Imocchi. In present day, Bandou still keeps his bully-like personality.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Nakadai is a seemingly half-witted fellow officer of Jagasaki and Bell's with a constant stupid grin on his face. It later turns out that not only is he a member of S.K.A.T. with the fractured human ability of invisibility, but he's a top undercover agent who sussed out Jagasaki for S.K.A.T. to begin with. His personality doesn't change following this revelation, so it makes him this.
- But Not Too Foreign: Clarabelle "Bell" Kawamoto is half-Japanese, half-English.
- Central Theme: Humans, and their relationship with their inner desires. People often suppress their desires for the sake of saving face, and more often than not this leads to more harm than good. Fittingly, the final villain of the story is someone who wholeheartedly welcomes desires, but is immune to drowning himself in them.
- Character Development: Jagasaki starts off the series completely loathing the banality of his life, constantly dreaming about Going Postal and shooting up basically everyone he sees—including his fiance, whom he considers as more or less an annoyance. But when he becomes a Fractured Human and is forced to kill his fiance when she turns into one as well, he turns around and devotes the rest of his days to atoning for his actions.
- Cool Old Guy: Despite his gambling and womanizing, Yukimaru's grandfather imparted important lessons upon him. When Jagasaki is inadvertently responsible for his death, Yukimaru vows to take revenge.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Robahata does not react well when he watches Karen lose her virginity.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Maroha was molested by her father at a young age. She finally got her revenge when she became Fractured and cut off his penis.
- Mikazuchi reveals why he hates Fractured Humans: his son got turned into one, forcing him to kill the poor boy.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Because Kemu and Imoto revealed to their teacher and everyone's parents that he's been bullying them, Bandou got someone to accuse Imoto's father of sexual harassment and flung a golf ball into the windshield of their car, causing Imoto's mother to get paralysed in the crash. His father later hung himself.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Jagasaki's fight with the fully fractured Misogi consists of building up power into two round balls behind his gun arm, while Yumama, an attractive woman, helps him handle his gun warns him to not fire prematurely.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Belle-Jagaaaaaan, Jagasaki's Super Mode. Created after Bell reawakens Jagasaki's desires in full following his Despair Event Horizon, this form has the ability to fire bullets that act as a Power Nullifier capable of destroying Fractured Human cells without killing the target.
- Fair Cop: Bell.
- Fanservice: There is a lot of female nudity in this series. Then again, it is seinen (young men) manga.
- The First Cut Is the Deepest: Robahata fell in love with Karen, but some misunderstandings about their relationship and seeing her having sex with someone who hurt her feelings drives him over the edge. Even as he becomes a serial rapist who brainwashes girls into being addicted to having sex with him, it's clear that he's still extremely hurt by Karen's perceived betrayal.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: The final villain's plan amounts to pumping the entire human race with so much desire that they die in orgasmic bliss thinking about their most wanted situations while ignoring their bodies bursting from over-stimulation.
- Going Postal: Jagasaki dreams of doing this because of how utterly boring he feels his life as a police officer is. But when he becomes a Fractured Human, he gets a full taste of what his wish entails.
- Hate Sink: Bandou is a thuggish, spoiled bully who made Imoto and Kemu's lives utterly miserable. When they get back at him by playing a soundclip of him bullying them in front of the classroom, he ruins Imoto's life and continues to bully Kemu even harder. As an adult, he becomes a corrupt defense attorney, putting up a façade of an inspirational motivational speaker and decent family man, but in reality retaining the same sense of entitlement and cruelty that he had as a teenager. He doesn't care about anything but himself and his own status, and gleefully looks down on anyone he considers inferior. He's so incredibly despicable that Jagasaki wonders if protecting him from Kemu and Imoto is even the right call. In the end, although his life is saved, Karma hits him hard. His corruption and immorality is exposed by investigators, his wealth is seized by the police, his legal license was revoked for malpractice, and his wife realizes his true nature and takes their daughter away, filing for divorce, leaving him in the hospital with nothing to show for the awful life he's led. On top of all that, just as he vows to climb back to the top, it's revealed that some of Imoto's poison powder got into his system, meaning he's slowly being poisoned to death.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Robahata frequently insists that he is a lonely loser who has accepted that he will die alone. He uses this as justification for his hobby of breaking into girls' homes and setting up cameras to watch them have sex.
- It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Jagasaki and Bell temporarily break up after Jagasaki is framed for the assault on Deader Land.
- The Lost Lenore: After his girlfriend becomes a fractured human, Jagasaki kills her before she kills him. From then on, Jagasaki's motivation to go along with Doku-chan's plan is to bring her back to life.
- Love Confession: Chapter 53 sees Jagasaki and Bell fully admitting that they're in love with each other.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: The Fractured Humans are all about this, and so is the protagonist himself, completely by accident.
- Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Yadori starts touching himself almost immediately after waking up in a female body. He then stops, because he has no idea how to arouse his new body.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event: The whole fractured frog rain phenomenon, but taken to a horrifying extreme in Chapter 40, where Chiharu creates a artificial fractured frog rain-revealing that he's been hoarding the fractured frogs he collects instead of eating them, and releasing the hundreds if not THOUSANDS of fractured frogs over/into the massive crowd gathered to protest the fractured human bill, unleashing completely insane fractured humans, rampaging and murdering throughout the crowd.
- Monstrosity Equals Weakness: Justified. The half-fractured humans who can suppress their transformation are a lot more dangerous than the people who fracture all the way because they can plan and strategize.
- Monstrous Humanoid: The Fractured Humans and by extent Jagasaki.
- Nightmare Face: The Fractured Humans gains truly horrendous ones once they transforms.
- "Not So Different" Remark: In chapter 112, Jagasaki starts to see himself in Yukimaru while the latter starts killing Deader Land guards.Jagasaki: I get it now... he’s been searching for the truth behind his desires. Similar to the way I was back then.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Jagasaki's opinion about his life, much to his dread until ''excitement'' finds its way in his life in the bloodiest way possible.
- Official Couple: Jagasaki accepts that he will soon die and makes the best of it by starting an intentionally temporary relationship with Bell.
- Ominous Owl: Doku-chan, a ball-shaped owl with a pair of pilot glasses, fulfill all requirements as he enters Jagasaki's life and gives him a roundabout briefing about what's going on after his first encounter with a Fractured Human.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: Medetaurus, a bride with a horse's body replacing her lower half, her right arm converted into a lance and her left into a organic crossbow, all crowned with the mother of all slasher smiles on her face.
- The Peeping Tom: Robahata. He breaks into houses of cute girls, hiding cameras in their rooms, then he goes home watching the girls the cameras are recording.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Bell is half-English, so you can guess what color her hair is.note
- Power-Upgrading Deformation: Being turned into a Fractured Human is anything but pretty, usually ending in a mix of Body Horror and
Nausea Fuel in the process, not like they could care any less about it. - Pyrrhic Victory: Although Bandou was saved from Immochi and Kemu, a bystander investigated him and exposed all of his corrupt practice and bullying to the public. Even if he wasn't arrested for his actions in the past due to the Statute of Limitation, Bandou lost everything: his wealth, his license, his job, his reputation, and his family. And on top of all that, he's slowly being poisoned to death from Immochi's poison powder.
- Rain of Something Unusual: The plot kick-starts when all of a sudden, amphibians start raining down over the city from a clear sky.
- Rape as Drama: Mostly courtesy of Robahata, who eventually becomes a fractured human with the power to brainwash women into having sex with him, becoming a serial rapist.
- Refusal of the Call: Jagasaki's freaked-out response to Doku-chan explaining his mission to hunt fractured humans is to shoot the bird in mid-sentence and run home. Unfortunately, The Call Knows Where He Lives.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Chapter 112 introduces Deader Land Guardians "Fujin and Raijin", which are names after the Wind and Lightning god in Japanese Mythology.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: As a big-eyed, spherical owl in pilot glasses, Doku-chan is utterly adorable - at least in terms of appearance.
- Seppuku: Misogi attempted this after witnessing large group of innocent people, who he sworn to protect, turn into fractured humans.
- Sex Slave: Every girl that Robahata brainwashes is used to have sex with him.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Robahata is a peeping tom who regularly jerks off to people he spies on having sex out of a nihilistic feeling of loneliness. He has a chance encounter with one of his targets, Karen, and they discover they have mutual interests. His outlook improves, though he still uses information gained from his spying to accelerate their friendship. However, just as he planned to confess his feelings for her, his spy cameras record her having sex with someone who had previously rejected her. His whole world comes crashing down, completing his transformation into a Fractured Human.
- Shout-Out: Robahata's fractured form is essentially a humanoid Xenomorph.
- Stepford Smiler: Jagasaki at the beginning of the manga, frequently getting called out for his fake as hell smile and coping with his life by daydreaming about shooting everyone that annoys him.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Yin-Jagaaaaaan, Jagasaki's penultimate form. Born of Mikazuchi's Heroic Sacrifice, it uses what appears to be extremely powerful singularities to intensify the cell-destroying effects of Jagasaki's bullets but worsens Jagasaki's mental state to the point of near-fracturing.
- Traitor Shot: Moroha gets really well illustrated one in chapter 37, it really highlights how manipulative she is.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Nomans Nomen is really adored by the media. Too bad he's also responsible for creating more half-fractured humans.
- Visual Pun: The mascot Buppanatsu is an eggplant with arms and legs; it combines the phrase "buppanasu" (to fire a gun) with "nasu" (eggplant).
- We Hardly Knew Ye: All members of Team Kaishu are killed off 2 chapters after they're introduced.
