Toko is a shy, awkward girl who hates her summer holidays. They just don't seem to end, and she's right. She is stuck on August 31st. Every day's the same as any other August 31st, except when a new character comes and changes how her whole day goes, and what she learns later on is not what she wanted to know...
Your body is their business! Five young students at a Buddhist university, three guys and two girls, find little call for their job skills in today's Tokyo...among the living, that is! But all that stuff in college they were told would never pay off--you know, channeling, dowsing, ESP--gives them a direct line to the dead...the dead who are still trapped in their corpses and can't move on to the next reincarnation.The five form the Kurosagi ("Black Heron”-their ominous bird logo) Corpse Delivery Service: whether suicide, murder, accident, or illness, they'll carry your body wherever it needs to go to free your soul! The kids from Kurosagi can smell a customer a mile away--it's a good thing one of the girls majored in embalming!
After a long absence, the young shaman Samizo Kohei returns from the dead with a prophecy of the apocalypse. Or part of him returns, at least - most of his body has been replaced with the transplanted body parts of his former friends, all retaining their distinctive personalities. He returns to his home in Shinjuku, where he works as a psychic surgeon in an unlicensed clinic. Here he serves as the unofficial guardian of the Shinjuku underground, solving paranormal murder mysteries, with the assistance of an assortment of other bizarre mystics and semi-human allies. Meanwhile, the others wonder exactly what Kohei has become, and whether he has returned to prevent the apocalypse, or to initiate it.
MADARA tells the story of an apprentice blacksmith in a rural village who gets by using artificial limbs created by his adoptive father. But when a chance encounter with the demon Moki reveals Madara's true destiny, he's catapulted into a mythic quest! His real father, the evil despot Miroku, feared long ago that Madara was destined to kill him and rule in his place. After Madara was born with tremendous powers, his body was cut up, and the parts divided amongst eight evil generals. Now Madara, with the help of a band of freedom fighters and a magical sword, sets out to retrieve his body parts and defeat his brothers, who covet the throne. As he fights his way across the world, he contemplates the prophecy: How will he wrest control of the kingdom from his father and win the people their freedom?
The main character is a detective, Kazuhiko Amamiya, suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder). Starting out as a violent detective series with a twist (the twist being the variant personalities that take over Detective Amamiya at various intervals), the series evolves into an exceptionally complex and involved sci-fi conspiracy story. Related Series Tajuujinkaku Tantei Psychoco (Spin-Off)