Tesla Note is a manga written by Masafumi Nishida and Tadayoshi Kubo and illustrated by Kouta Sannomiya. It began serialization in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from January to July 2021, before it moved to Magazine Pocket in August 2021, and later ended in April 2022. Kodansha USA has the rights to publish it for English-speaking countries.
An anime adaptation aired as part of the Fall 2021 anime season, with animation done by Gambit Studio and directed by Michio Fukuda. Funimation has the rights to stream it in North and South America.
The manga starts when Botan Negoro visits her grandfather, Jingo Negoro, in Hida, Gifu Prefecture. She learns that from childhood, her intense ninja training was meant to help investigate and protect the rest of the world from strange events caused by Tesla Fragments. Before Nikola Tesla died, he entrusted the Negoros to make sure that the fragments are safe.
From there, she and the rest of the private security company Japan Safety and Promotion Company (JSPC) investigate what the fragments are and who wants to benefit from them under Mission T, Starting from an incident in Oslo, Norway.
The manga provides examples of:
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy:
- Nikola Tesla was responsible for creating the Tesla Fragments that housed many of his inventions.
- Harry Truman was supposedly told by Tesla to safeguard his Shards. When Truman became president, one of the CIA's tasks is to secure the shards.
- Censored Child Death: A NSB Class 73 suddenly teleports to the downtown core of Oslo. It's suggested that it crashed onto the mother and her son.
- Comically Missing the Point: Botan suggests in "A Consideration on "Divine Thunderbolts" that a mafia gang's number two can be a potential culprit. Kuruma shoots her down since she's basing it on gang movies.
- Driving Question: Who or what is responsible for the mysterious incidents caused by Tesla Fragments?
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Botan infiltrated the crime scene in Oslo while in full disguise as a female forensics officer, the actual officer came back to the place. As a result, the disguised Botan was accosted by armed Beredskapstroppen and was about to give an explanation when the actual officer showed off her ID card. Seeing that Botan did not have access to it, she was forced to take down the Beredskapstroppen operators and flee the scene.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The episode "A Consideration on "Truth" showed Oliver Thornton's CIA profile
. - Medium Blending: The anime mixes Motion Captured 3DCGI with 2D hand drawn animation that pops up at random moments.
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: A Small House.
- SWAT Team: The Norwegian Beredskapstroppennote was tasked to protect the crash site in Oslo. They're the main reason why Botan had to use a disguise to infiltrate the crime scene.
- Training from Hell: Botan wondered if her grandfather was going senile after she was given intense ninja training when she was young. Her grandfather resents it.
- Wham Episode:
- The end of the North Caucasus arc has Elmo examine a photo of him, Pino and Oliver when they were still child soldiers/wannabee terrorists.
- After the shard in the Japan Safety office was robbed, the viewer learns that Ryunosuke is a mole for A Small House and a photo shows him with Pino, Elmo and Oliver as child soldiers/wannabee terrorists.
