Moving from a manual ICE to electric, it's still night and day. And the manual felt like night and day compared to a lot of automatics...

I own a ICE car with a manual gearbox. The lag is there. The engine needs time to find his torque at low RPM so you need to drop one or two gears if you want some power. Mine doesn't have a turbo, but when I drive manual cars with Turbo, the turbo lag is huge. A manual gearbox doesn't fix this problem. You may drop gears before you need the power, to overtake someone for example, because you plan ahead and want the full power, but that's slow.

And even when I do it fast, I'm much much slower to manipulate the clutch and change gears compared to a modern automatic gearbox.

I doubt that most people can operate a manual transmission significantly better than the "eco-junk software" that controls a modern automatic. Almost nobody is a race driver, but everybody can feel the nicer behavior of an electric engine.

Your statement is utterly incorrect.

1) Electric v. ICE? No contest. Electric wins. Not at dispute.

2) "Manual Transmission" v. "Eco-Junk Software". Please see the following: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/does-sport-mode-really-do-anyth...

At a minimum, some "fly-by-wire" automatic ICE cars default to an "eco" mode which significantly impacts throttle (gas) responsiveness.

No doubt ECO mode does something well, and no doubt that modern automatic transmissions shift well.

My original statement was: "Electric (very responsive) => Manual (...) => Automatic (perceived unresponsiveness of ICE engines)"

Almost nobody is a race car driver, but the fly-by-wire in some ICE cars definitely affects driving feel in a way that is different than both manual transmission ICE and electric cars.