Hikari

12

PG-13

Seraphim Call

What's it like to feel like an average girl in everything... except for your one special gift. Eleven young hearts with eleven dreams. Deep in their hearts, each girl has a secret dream of love and sadness. They meet together at Acropolis Tower to see if their dreams will come true. Imagine what happens when eleven average girls with eleven special talents join together to make the world a better place! (Source: Media Blasters)

TV Fall 1999 6.2

13

R-17+

Serial Experiments Lain

Lain Iwakura, an awkward and introverted fourteen-year-old, is one of the many girls from her school to receive a disturbing email from her classmate Chisa Yomoda—the very same Chisa who recently committed suicide. Lain has neither the desire nor the experience to handle even basic technology; yet, when the technophobe opens the email, it leads her straight into the Wired, a virtual world of communication networks similar to what we know as the internet. Lain's life is turned upside down as she begins to encounter cryptic mysteries one after another. Strange men called the Men in Black begin to appear wherever she goes, asking her questions and somehow knowing more about her than even she herself knows. With the boundaries between reality and cyberspace rapidly blurring, Lain is plunged into more surreal and bizarre events where identity, consciousness, and perception are concepts that take on new meanings. Written by Chiaki J. Konaka, whose other works include Texhnolyze, Serial Experiments Lain is a psychological avant-garde mystery series that follows Lain as she makes crucial choices that will affect both the real world and the Wired. In closing one world and opening another, only Lain will realize the significance of their presence.

TV Summer 1998 8.09

13

PG-13

Servant x Service

Frustrating, insufficient, and irritating is how most citizens would describe civil servants. However, three new employees are about to discover what really happens behind the scenes. Lucy Yamagami, bent on revenge against the civil servant who allowed her comically long name to be put on her birth certificate; Yutaka Hasebe, an easygoing guy always on the lookout for a place to slack off; and Saya Miyoshi, a nervous first-time worker, are about to experience the underwhelming satisfaction of being government employees. They are supposed to be trained by Taishi Ichimiya, but he has no idea how to do so, even though he has worked there for eight years. With an incompetent senior colleague and unfavorable confrontations with clients, the trio starts to lose faith in their chosen occupation but encourage each other to do their best.

TV Summer 2013 7.62

26

PG-13

Seto no Hanayome

During his summer vacation, middle school student Nagasumi Michishio travels to the Seto Inland Sea. One day, while swimming at Mio Sun Beach, his leg suddenly cramps. No one is close enough to notice his desperate screams for help, and so he sinks into the ocean, where he is left to drown alone. Just as he loses consciousness, however, a mermaid appears and saves his life. That night, Nagasumi is visited by his savior, a girl who introduces herself as Sun Seto—a mermaid from a yakuza family. As it turns out, under mermaid law, a mermaid whose identity is revealed to a human must be punished by execution. To avoid this harrowing outcome, the Seto family propose a solution: Nagasumi must marry Sun or die at the hands of Gouzaburou, Sun's father and boss of the Seto clan. Faced with no other option, Nagasumi takes her hand in marriage. Now, the newlyweds face the difficult task of keeping their relationship secret. Between Gouzaburou's unending attempts on Nagasumi's life and the eccentric antics of a slew of antagonists, a genuine and innocent love blossoms between the pair as they adapt to their new life.

TV Spring 2007 7.66

R

48

7.62