Where can I find an mastermind manga without it being ecchi?

[TimeVolt]

Whenever I find a manga that has a mastermind as the MC, it turns out that they probably in some way or another will end up fucking a person, or something of the similar vein. Does anyone know of any mastermind manga that don't do this? I don't like how a certain subsection of manga that I mostly enjoy reading is entirely (or not and I just get really unlucky) ecchi.

 

[QuantumLeap215]

I may be missing the mark of what you mean by a mastermind MC, I just kind of understood it as them often being the smartest person in the room, but a few series that do a pretty good job of making the main character be clever are Log Horizon and Battle In Five Seconds After Meeting. Those generally rely more heavily on the action than the strategy though, so maybe The Promised Neverland would be more up your alley? At this point I'm just throwing out recommendations so maybe check out The World God Only Knows, mostly just because I like it

 

[noobchicken]

Overlord?

 

[TimeVolt]

@QuantumLeap215 What I mean is yes, they mostly are the smartest person in the room, but they also have a plan as to why they are in the room and have carefully either planned out like, twelve different backup plans, or have manipulated most of the people in the room into the set of actions that would be most beneficial to them. Oh yeah, they mostly always have some sort of plan to bring them closer to their goal. I haven't read any of your suggestions YET. So maybe I have a lot of them in my MDList but haven't dug that far in to it yet. But judging by the description, The Promised Neverland isn't really a mastermind manga (at least to me), because I like to think that the MC in one should always be in control of the situation. And The World God Only Knows just sounds like a detective/police/vigilante manga with a twist.

 

[PantsMan]

Try Kaiji, or any of the Fukumoto gambling manga.

"""Mastermind""" manga are rarely done well, since the authors are rarely smart enough to invent plans an actual mastermind would come up with outside of a couple scenarios. That's how you end up with lazy crap like "he's successfully predicted what everyone in the room was going to do just because I'm going to write the story to go that way, then write it off as 'he's really smart, okay?' " Kaiji strikes a good balance for that, and has good back-and-forths between people trying to outwit each other without any "always twenty steps ahead of you" shit.

 

[Thoraxe41]

Classroom of the elite is a good read. Light Novel is really far ahead and I reccomended that. There is some occasional fan service but it's not known for the ecchi.

 

[Sem]

Gambling manga are really great for that.

In addition to the mention of Kaiji, I'd like to add The Liar Game as well. It starts off as a story about a super intelligent grifter and a naive, honest girl teaming up together to survive a gambling competition, but Nao slowly levels up to become a force considered equal to Akiyama. I don't actually even remember what happens but when I found it I went into a trance and binged the whole thing because it was so interesting.

 

[shiokashii]

I enjoyed Gu Zhen Ren, or Gu Daoist Master, or Reverend Insanity (multiple titles lol) a lot when I picked it up. The MC is a mastermind but there are also moments where he messes up or something unexpected happens. Heck, at the end of every major arc, he ends up almost dying because of something he didn't predict! He's a cold, calculating demonic cultivator, and is a very interesting character! By the end of the first arc, he does end up with a female partner, but she goes away after the end of the second arc. (warning, he does kill and abuse quite a few innocent people, but he always does it as a "necessity")

The manga is on Mangadex rn with around 50~ chapters, but the light novel has over 1000 chapters (0-0). I'm on about chapter 430 of the light novel.

 

[minmanga]

I am not able to recommend a manga but if you are also into novels, then check out the Jeeves books by P. G. Wodehouse. In these books you have a super smart butler solving all kind of difficult problems.

 

[Dunslax]

Usogui, One Outs

 

[Haikaka]

Death Note is too obvious, right?