These stories are about love, desire and friendship of women. Told by women.
Every day in Japan, 2500 people die due to any number of causes. Do you think you'll be one of the ones to die? No, of course not. Do you think you'll win the lottery? You'd like to think so, we all would. But Sumida is different. He wants the status quo to remain in every way; live a normal life, get a normal job, have normal kids, never to be anyone fortunate or unfortunate, content in normalcy. Anyone who doesn't agree is foolish, doomed to live their life scraping up a mountain that they can never conquer, fated to die in despair wishing things had been better. When his mother kicks his father out of the house and onto the streets, he thinks he'll be fine. When his mother leaves him to live with her boyfriend, he makes the best of it. When he realizes that he's no longer average, he strives to make his life worthwhile the only way he knows how. When the demons in the back of his mind speak to him, he tries his best to ignore them.
After five years since his last book, “Danny Boy”, Toranosuke Shimada presents an everyday drama about a man going through his daughter's divorce. Nothing feels vastly different, as he continues on with his daily routine. However, in his heart, the landscape reflected in his eyes begins to change it's colors just a bit.
The Nightmare of Fabrication is a beautifully drawn full-colour manga from Yoshitoshi ABe. The 18 page short story can be found in the Lain Omnipresence in Wired artbook. It's a bonus story which apparently isn't related with neither the anime nor the PS game. It shows characters who were included in the PS game but not in the TV series (like the psychiatrist), but also determinant characters from the anime who didn't appear in the videogame (like Deus).
Rahzel is a young girl who is thrown out of her house by her doting father with instructions to go “see the world”. And so her adventure begins, however, she won't be doing it alone. Rahzel quickly befriends an albino man named Alzeid who is seeking revenge for his father's murderer (who, coincidentally enough, looks similar to Rahzel herself). The two strangers are drawn to one another, even though they don't get along. This may be because of their shared magic powers –or it may be because of his mysterious past. The reluctant allies soon meet up with Baroqueheat, a self-proclaimed womanizer who is also deeply tied to the person known as “Alzeid”. The three strangers come together, travelling from town to town, using their powers to protect the weak, while discovering themselves along the way. Unbeknownst to Rahzel, the beginning of her so-called “adventure” sets the gears in motion for something much greater. It seems as if someone from the shadows is manipulating the events of the present for a reason yet to be understood...
Spin-off of Kakegurui that focuses on Ikishima Midari and when she began her role in the Student Council.
One day, Kyung-min, whose self-esteem has hit rock bottom from being Tormented/Bullied by his friends, suddenly receives an invite to ‘DeathCord’, a chatting room where you can kill people through voting. Anonymous death penalty vote in the chat room! Anonymous participants invited to the chat room are keen to kill people for their own reasons. However, one of the chat participants becomes the target of the death penalty, after that, the participants in the “DeathCord” chatroom start struggling to identify each other…A murder game that won’t end unless each other kills each other!
The Nagare family was a happy home of three people. However, their son Kiritaka was secretly bullied at school. Then, an incident occurs, and the mother Mari's love for her son goes out of control.
The story takes place in the '60s, in a mysterious city where madness and lust seem to be the citizens' constant companions. A detective named Sada (with a "certain" wound) pursues a woman accused of murder.
Takafumi Ten is called to a mahjong club one night to play again Ikawa Hiroyuki, a young mahjong player. Having just robbed Ten's friends blind at mahjong, Ten arrives to take back his winnings.. Ten's mahjong style becomes more apparent as the game progresses...amateurish! Ten cheats in the last round, using a move called the Tsubame Gaeshi, and winning with a Tenhou hand. Hiroyuki is angered once Ten admits he cheated after the game. Will he come to understand Ten's "Way of Tenhou", where Ten willingly cheats and gets beat up in response for his friends? Will Ten unlock his true mahjong potential or cheat forever?
From Obsession: Long ago, his mother had killed his father and had hurt him also; that may be the reason why Izumi Takuto, a soccer player in school, acts so "cold" to other people. He didn't want to trust anyone, or give his love to others, so he went to live on his own when he was adopted by another family. One may think that by now he would forget about the murdering incident in his life, but when he encountered someone in the street one dull rainy day....everything changed. The drunk happened to be the famous idol popstar named Koji Nanjo. Ever since their encounter in the street (or rather at Izumi's house), Koji had taken an interest in Izumi...his interest later became deeper than that... A feeling that may be known as "desperate love".
This manga's story is based on a thriller by Keigo Higashino. The main protagonist, the shy Jun Naruse, is a rather average guy who works for a electronic company and loves to draw. He falls in love with Megumi whom he met at a shop selling drawing materials and an intimate relationship develops. A few days later the office gets attacked and when the criminal tries to shoot a little girl he saves her by jumping in front of her. A month passes until he wakes up again and is told that half his brain got destroyed and he only survived because someone donated half a brain. Everything seems to be fine, he quickly recovers and is happy, however he begins to change...is the donated brain the reason for that? Or is it just a side effect of the medicine?
