Coffee-shop waitress Kanako, divorced with a young son, finds herself obliged to honour a rash promise she made to a long-time customer. He always wanted to be buried in the land rather than a cemetery, so that his body would be 'useful' - and now he's dead. Kanako and her boy enlist the help of a friendly florist with a small truck, steal the corpse, and head for the mountains.

Betrayed and disgraced, big-city reporter Kazuya Mizuno is banished to a desk at Kaname's boring little town newspaper. But Kaname isn't as boring as it seems on the surface. Not with characters around like Shimeko, a girl genius with a childlike lack of propriety, and her ace fisherman/folk-singer dad. Or the overbearing and unpleasant local Shinto priest, a former Christian cultist. Or Endo, Kazuya's new colleague, a bitter drunk after his son's suicide. Or Kin, a former terrorist, now a hermit on his boat engaging in secret "research." Or perhaps most importantly Teruko, the hypnotically beautiful bar owner, the focus of all manner of innuendo and intrigue. Something mysterious, even mystical, is going on Kaname, and hapless Kazuya is about to be thrown into the middle of it.

It is 1980. Sadatomo is at a secondary school in a small town. His parents barely take any notice of him. The strict teacher Kobayashi has hung up a 'humanity index' in the classroom, divided into the categories 'delinquents', 'scum' and 'people'. In each category he has hung name-cards of pupils. One day Kobayashi finds out that Sadatomo and his friends have stolen some things from a shop for fun. Their fathers are informed and as punishment, the children have to write a 'self-critical' essay of no less than thirty pages. For the first time, Sadatomo is beaten by his father. Shocked, he writes a piece entitled 'I am an onion', in which the teacher thinks he can detect a first sign of humanity. That is the start of a confusing situation in which it gets hard to distinguish lies, truth, justified self-criticism and opportunist wheeler dealing, even for the boys.

A young teen's father dies, and he is sent to an orphanage. He's teased because he stutters almost runs away, until a beautiful, androgynous boy, Yasuo, convinces him to join the choir.

Benkei, a master fighter and killer, vows never to take another life after his conversion to Buddhism. His faith in pacifism, however, is shaken and ultimately broken by the attacks from a trio of fighters known only as the demons. Taking up his sword once more, he sets out to end their murderous terror.

One day Kyoko watches television and sees a man turning himself in to the police after murdering a family. Something within Kyoko connects with the man, as she recognizes a similar soul. Despite the worries of the killer's lawyer, she approaches the killer and the two start corresponding.