Mio is a girl in high school who slacks off. She and her childhood friend Arata and best friend Madoka spend their after-school days in Ikebukuro hanging out. One day, Madoka tells Mio that she loves Arata, and Mio realizes that she loves Arata, too. But she’s scared of their relationship falling apart and lies, saying she’ll help them. Mio deliberately acts coldly to Arata, and they get into a fight. She decides to work things out with Arata, but gets into a car accident on her way to meet him. She wakes up in a mysterious world. It's the Ikebukuro she knows, but something’s different...
A woman was killed by a truck wheel, which flew off while the vehicle was in motion. As the freight company which owns the truck becomes the target of the public and the media’s wrath, Tokuro Akamatsu, the president of the freight company, realizes that a structural defect within the truck itself may have been to blame. A conspiracy of the wheel manufacturer's attempts to cover up a defective product is uncovered.
When the suspect of an arson case refuses to cooperate with the investigation, the detectives search his house and find a locked-up little girl. She doesn't talk and there are no clues to her identity, so assistant psychology professor Narumi Saku is asked to counsel her.
On board at the boat Kanikosen, where fish and crabs preserves, forced workers to work under miserable conditions, with minimum wages. Some can not cope with conditions and even death from malnutrition, and is also the supervisor of the more vicious variety. Shinjo, one of the employees, trying to convince the others that they will get good luck and fortune in his next life, and persuades them because they commit suicide to get there faster. It ends, however, in a single major failure. Rather than flee Shinjo being picked up by a Russian ship. Once there, he is overwhelmed by the social conditions that are completely different from those he has just left and decided therefore to return to Kanikosen to save their employees.
