Red Sprite is a manga series published in Shonen Jump, written by Tomohiro Yagi (of Iron Knight fame).
Sometime in the future in a world not exactly unlike Earth, a nation named Edenia has taken over all but a small portion of the land under the command of Supreme Leader David Atlas. The majority on the world runs on electricity produced from Plasmarrow, which has allowed a variety of technological advancements, including the advent of airships. However, Plasmarrow energy holds a dark secret; the best place to harvest it from is from literal human resources. A series of children, altered from birth and capable of generating massive amounts of Plasmarrow, are kept in an orphanage run by Professor Durant away from the eye of Edenia. After an attack which results in most of the children kidnapped and Durant dead, the sole survivor, Tatsu Frampt, takes matters into his own hands to overthrow the corrupt system and free the Plasmarrow people.
Running for fourteen chapters over a course of three months, Red Sprite went the way of Yagi's previous work Iron Knight and was unfortunately cancelled in November of 2016. All chapters have been scanlated.
This manga provides examples of:
- A Child Shall Lead Them:
- Tatsu declares himself the leader of the floating nation of Magonia to oppose Edenia's exploitation of Plasmarrow humans.
- The Nalbion Kingdom is also led by Queen Beatrix Artolius Nalbion, a nine-year-old girl, following the death of her father two years prior. Despite her young age, she's Wise Beyond Their Years and was sharing responsibility for managing the kingdom even before ascending the throne.
- Best Served Cold: Tatsu spent six years training and waiting for the Scirvir and Shepherd to be in the same city, all so he can interrogate Shepherd, kill her, and take the ship all at once. He even kills her in the exact same way she killed Durant.
- Big Bad: Supreme Leader David Atlas is the ruler of Edenia and the one behind the Plasmarrow system, which enslaves children and harvests energy from them to power his society. Tatsu Frampt seeks to overthrow him and stop his system.
- Bullying a Dragon: Garnet teases Tatsu for being unable to hold his liquor and complaining about how awful wine tastes, handing Tatsu a cup of grape juice with a sneer on his face. Tatsu responds by burying Garnet's face in the nearest wall.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Tatsu is a self-taught Master Swordsman and a One-Man Army who can take on all but Edenia's best in one-on-one combat. He can also be remarkably mature for his age, proposing peaceful resolutions when possible and understanding the value of propaganda. But he's also a Kid Hero and about as rambunctious as one would expect a child his age to be, being irritable enough to bury Garnet's face in the wall for teasing him, complaining to Randolf and demanding that he install a cannon like the Excalibur's on the Red Sprite, and approaching death-defying stunts like he was going on an amusement park ride.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: One sip is all it takes to floor Tatsu. Granted, he's a kid.
- Child Soldier:
- Tatsu volunteers himself as the new nation of Magonia's leader and main fighting force, taking the enemy head-on while the rest of the kids pilot the Red Sprite and handle logistics work.
- Albert is the War Hero of the Nalbion Kingdom, acting as its greatest defender against Edenia's forces thanks to his superior control over electromagnetism giving him unparalleled firepower.
- Coat Cape: Tatsu wears any jacket he's given like this, only putting it on normally during more formal occasions like meeting the heads of other countries.
- Cool Airship: A bunch of them, all powered through Plasmarrow energy. Tatsu's own airship, the titular Red Sprite, Bristol's Excalibur, and the Atlas come to mind.
- Crapsaccharine World: On the surface, Edenia appears to be a peaceful, thriving society with access to clean energy and vast, bustling metropolises. But peeling back the veneer reveals that the leaders are all brutal warlords who smash any resistance and cover up the truth that Plasmarrow energy is extracted from people being used as living batteries.
- Cut Short: The story got the axe at 14 chapters, leaving the plot hanging on And the Adventure Continues.
- Does Not Like Spam: Tatsu spews his drink after tasting wine for the first time and declares that he never wants that slop near his lips ever again
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Though this runs in a Shōnen magazine, more than a few are present. The worst are probably Durant having his heart crushed by Shepherd, Shepherd herself suffering that exact same fate later, and Atlas electrocuting one of his own men into a smoking skeleton.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Shepherd derisively refers to Plasmarrow humans as "inferior living batteries" and that their putrid blood is only useful when they're plugged into an appliance.
- Bristol believes that Plasmarrow humans are less than human and declares that there's no need for anything like "human dignity" while fighting with them, adding to his already irritating Upper-Class Twit behavior that enrages even his own men.
- Floating Continent: "Magonia" is a mythical nation hidden among the clouds that Tatsu and the others loved to read stories about. After seizing the warship Scirvir, which has the ability to manipulate cloud cover to cloak itself, Tatsu declares himself the leader of Magonia with the ship, now renamed the Red Sprite as his headquarters.
- The Force Is Strong with This One:
- Tatsu considered assassinating the leaders of Edenia outright, but staring at them left him frozen in his tracks, realizing that they're far stronger than him on his own.
- Mono's ability to produce and emit electricity is unparalleled, even though he lacks the fine control of Tatsu and Albert. Edenia is able to tail the Red Sprite by following Mono's energy signature.
- Harmless Electrocution:
- Subverted. Electrocution is depicted as incredibly harmful, especially when used by Plasmarrow humans on regular humans. Shepherd mortally wounds Durant by violently electrocuting him until his heart convulses so badly that it bursts, and Tatsu kills Shepherd the same way years later as a Karmic Death.
- Sufficiently powerful Plasmarrow humans can play this straight, as the ability to channel and release enormous amounts of electrical energy is a Required Secondary Power for them, though they may come out of it looking comically singed. After riding a railgun shell, Tatsu needs time to cool off, visibly steaming as wet towels are placed on him and Mono fans him. That said, taking sufficiently high amounts of electricity is still painful, and Tatsu is sore all over after taking the full charge of a weapon tailored to torture Plasmarrow humans.
- Heroic RRoD: Tatsu's Plasmarrow ability doesn't let him generate a lot of electricity relative to the amount he can channel and put out. Because of this, he needs regular recharges to continue operating at maximum capacity, but he doesn't have a power source strong enough to fully recharge him until after he rescues Mono, meaning that he's running on fumes in the days following his initial raid on Edenia's capital.
- Hot-Blooded: Tatsu is incredibly passionate about his mission to free the Plasmarrow humans of the world, journeying into enemy territory with a Grin of Audacity, loudly proclaiming himself the leader of Magonia on a world stage to turn himself into a Propaganda Hero, and making an enormous show of his entrance and exit from a battle. Even realizing that the leaders of Edenia are all as strong if not stronger than he is just makes his blood boil from excitement.
- It's All My Fault: Mono blames himself for Durant's orphanage being found and getting the children separated. Tatsu disabuses him of that notion, declaring that Mono is only an enemy if he willingly chooses to continue powering Edenia's prized warship, the Atlas.
- Karma Houdini: Atlas, although this is more fault of cancellation rather than deliberate evasion of justice.
- Kid Hero: Tatsu Frampt. He's only a child in the first chapter and isn't much older than a teenager after six years pass.
- Lightning Bruiser: Obvious Pun aside, Tatsu is able to move faster than the eye can see and strike with far more force than his size would suggest by channeling electricity through his nerves and muscles. Grown men are sent flying from the force of his attacks and he can parry bullets with his sword.
- Lightning Can Do Anything: The electricity produced by Plasmarrow humans can be utilized for a variety of effects. For instance, Tatsu is able to send lightning coursing through his nerves and muscles to increase their effectiveness many times over thanks to the unique nature of his blood, achieving superhuman feats of strength, speed, and agility. Meanwhile, Albert is able to command electromagnetism to greatly increase the power of any gun in his hands while also utilizing slabs of metal as shields or platforms as a vantage point.
- Living Battery: Plasmarrow humans are inserted into machinery to be endlessly used as power sources until they finally shrivel up and die. The seven Plasmarrow children Durant takes under his wing are especially powerful, having been engineered from birth to have exceptionally high ability to produce, channel, and release electrical energy. Mono in particular is able the power the Atlas single-handedly, and his energy signature is equal to that of a warship and all its weapons and equipment.
- Meaningful Rename: After seizing the Scirvir, Tatsu renamed it the Red Sprite, alluding to both his red lightning and the ship he and the other Plasmarrow children promised to pilot one day.
- Oh, Crap!: Tatsu pinches the cheek of a girl intervening in a conversation between him and Albert with annoyance, only to realize afterward that this girl is the queen of the Nalbion Kingdom and he could've sparked an enormous diplomatic incident. Luckily for him, Beatrix doesn't take it personally, though Tatsu is clearly regretting his decision.
- Parental Substitute:
- Durant took in all seven of the special Plasmarrow children, loving them as if they were his own despite the risks and how badly they drove him up a wall. Tatsu, Mono, and Albert look back on him fondly.
- Sir Gehrman also acted as Albert's father figure, taking him in during the five years since Albert escaped to the Nalbion Kingdom. Gehrman sees himself and Albert's father, and despite lying to Albert to prevent him from going back to Edenia to rescue the other children, Albert says he could never resent Gehrman.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: The dark secret of Plasmarrow energy; since only so much Plasmarrow can be taken from natural resources like fossils, most of it is cultivated directly from people who create Plasmarrow, ultimately leaving them as dried husks.
- Propaganda Hero: Tatsu makes a global announcement that he is the leader of Magonia to turn himself into one, rallying any and all oppressed by Edenia to join him and oppose the regime exploiting them.
- Railgun: The flying battleships in the story are armed with electromagnetic cannons that can launch slugs of metal hard enough to penetrate clean through most other ships. The most powerful of them all is mounted on the Excalibur, which gives it the title of "strongest destroyer".
- The Reliable One: Alfred is the oldest of the seven Plasmarrow children and the most responsible of the bunch, always reining in Tatsu's more outlandish ideas by grounding them in reality. He also feels so indebted to the Nalbion Kingdom for taking him in that he can't imagine leaving it to join Tatsu even at the latter's request. The rest of the children of Magonia instantly declare Albert cooler than Tatsu, much to the latter's annoyance.
- Riding the Bomb: Tatsu makes his entrance at a major military parade by riding a railgun shell onto the top of a military base. Then he inverts this by having the renamed Red Sprite draw him back onto the ship by inverting its railgun.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: When Fall scrupulously points out that Tatsu is underage and shouldn't be consuming alcohol, Tatsu declares that it's okay since he makes the rules on Magonia.
- Shrinking Violet: Mono was this during his time at the orphanage. Granted, although he's still quiet and soft-spoken six years later, he seems to have mostly grown out of this when Tatsu saves him.
- Super-Soldier: The Crusaders, members of Edenia's army and Plasmarrow people who are said to be at least as powerful as Tatsu and Mono.
- Sword Plant: Tatsu plants his sword (with the scabbard still on) on a rooftop in Edenia's capital while making his big entrance and declaring his intentions to the world.
- Time Skip: Six years pass between the beginning and the end of the first chapter, during which Tatsu trains himself to be capable of attacking Edenia's soldiers with his command over the Plasmarrow energy running within him.
- Training from Hell: Shepherd speculates that the training Tatsu put himself through to maximize the use of his electricity must have been hellish, along with an image of Tatsu burying his face in his hands while electrifying himself in a pool of water.
- Upper-Class Twit: Richard Frederick Bristol is a hoity-toity noble who considers his life far superior to the lives of tens of thousands of "second-class citizens" and doesn't care if those commoners die if it means his personal glory by capturing Tatsu and the Red Sprite.
- Would Hurt a Child: Shepherd is only too happy to bomb an orphanage and use the children Durant is keeping as living generators until they are reduced to literal husks. Same with Bristol, who gleefully tortures Tatsu with an electric rod while gloating the power he's using to torture Tatsu with comes from a massive amount of Plasmarrow people harvested.
- You Are What You Hate: Atlas is implied to be a Plasmarrow human himself despite his usage of them as cattle, if his ability to electrocute a subordinate of his to ash through touch alone is anything to judge.
