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Iron Knight is a manga by Tomohiro Yagi about a boy named Teppei living in a world where a mysterious disease called the "Goblin virus" wreaks havoc across Japan. Waking up in the middle of his now ruined city, he tries to find out what happened. After encountering a man with the goblin virus, he finds out he too has it. But inspired by how his father, a policeman who tried his hardest to protect the city, he uses his new power to protect humanity as the Iron Knight.

Originally a oneshot, it was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump during 2013-2014, but was cancelled after 16 chapters. A seventeenth chapter was added to the third volume when it was released. All seventeen have now been scanlated.

Compare other manga like Zetman or Devilman.


Contains examples of:

  • After the End: The series starts the day of the apocalypse, with reports of strange bodies in the water and gang violence in the streets. As Teppei is walking home, he falls unconscious somehow, and wakes up hours later to find the entire city on fire.
  • Break His Heart to Save Him: Teppei pretends to lose his humanity in order to get all the citizens to flee from the city and find a new hope, because they wanted to stay and fight with Teppei because of their hope in him.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Played with. Teppei, being a young boy, tries to call his attacks during battles because it's cool and he actually believes doing that empowers the attack, but quickly realizes it's difficult to do it when battling a group of monsters.
  • Childhood Friend Romance: Teppei and Himegami.
  • Childhood Marriage Promise: First chapter, guess who.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Teppei, as he looks up to his police officer father. He even promised his dead mother to protect everyone.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Himegami was not happy to see a female shop owner complement Teppei.
  • Conditioned to Accept Horror: By chapter 2, Teppei does not flinch when seeing corpses. He was calm-headed enough to see that the corpses in chapter 2 were in an unusual condition.
  • The Determinator: The series ends with Teppei vowing to never stop fighting against Amachi Zenjiro despite the latter's immortality.
  • Distant Finale: The epilogue takes place in the future where Humans and Goblins live peacefully as equals and Teppei's adventure as Iron Knight becomes an urban legend to many.
  • Everyone Can See It: Teppei and Himegami. When they were ten, everyone seemed to know.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: Teppei gets shown this by the criminal his dad took in that morning.
  • Heroic RRoD: Teppei learns that if he uses his power too much, he literally starts to melt himself.
  • Hope Bringer: What Amachi Zenjiro wanted the half-goblins (Teppei and Yuki) to be.
  • Hope Springs Eternal: Deconstructed by Amachi Zenjiro. It is because the people have hope in Teppei that they will always believe in him and not flee the city when Amachi threatens it. This is what Amachi intended from the start.
    • Reconstructed with the final chapter. Despite the citizens believing that Teppei has "lost his Humanity" (see above), they will continue to fight and survive until the day Teppei "turns back", and even if they lose that hope they will find a new hope.
  • Heroic Willpower: After Teppei wins his first fight, he's so exhausted he can barely stand. Then more goblins round the corner...
  • Hot Blade: Teppei develops this as a counter to an enemy's immense size and regenerative ability.
  • Immortality: Amachi Zenjiro claims to possess this compared to Teppei's "generation", indicating he is of an earlier generation of Goblins.
  • I Should Have Been Better: Teppei runs into this, in chapter 2. He finds fresh corpses of a family and feels that if he hadn't taken the long way, maybe he could have saved them. He was scared of using his powers too much (and the consequences) and avoided as many demons as possible.
  • Like Parent, Like Spouse: The shop owners in chapter one, say that Teppei has the same taste in women as his father.
  • Made of Iron: Teppei is a literal example.
  • The Magic Comes Back: Karasuba claims that the monsters of the world went into some form of hibernation hundreds or thousands of years ago, and now have returned to reclaim their place at the top of the food chain.
  • Playing with Fire: Teppei has the ability to shoot fire balls.
  • Required Secondary Powers: Unfortunately for Teppei, he does not posses immunity to fire and using too much of his power can result in increasing his body temperature too much.
  • Smug Snake: Karasuba is extremely arrogant over his powers, and how superior he was to even the other monsters. He is killed by Teppei before the end of the first chapter.
  • Time Skip: A month passes between chapters 1 and 2. Teppei spent that time killing monsters in the general area and looking for survivors. He didn't find any, but he personally cremated every corpse he came across. Chapter 13 ends with another time-skip to one year in the future. Another time skip happens again with the epilogue many years in the future where humans and goblins live peaceful with each other.
  • Transhuman Treachery: Teppei is apparently the first monster to not turn on humanity the second he awakened to his monster form. Karasuba seems to believe that pure monsters (like Teppei) are just ravening beasts with no control, but Teppei obviously proves that wrong.

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