Ikebukuro West Gate Park

Makoto and his friends are heading out to spend their New Year's Eve at IWGP, where all of the hottest guys and girls go to hook up and have fun. On the way to meet his friends, Makoto runs across a helpless girl pursued by a lecherous-minded group of guys. Makoto comes to the girl's rescue, and finds that she is also meeting up with friends at IWGP. Hikaru immediately takes a liking to Makoto, who seems to only have eyes for Hikaru's more sensual friend Rika. A few days later while the group is hanging out, they are approached by a policeman who asks if they have heard anything about a serial rapist with a penchant for strangling his victims. When Rika is later found strangled and left for dead at a local motel, Makoto enlists the help of the local gang leader, Takashi, in order to bring her murderer to justice. After a few red herrings, Makoto believes that he's found the true killer, only to discover that not only have the gang punished the wrong guy, but now Hikaru has been kidnapped by Yamai, a violent person from Makoto's past!

Running to Hikaru's rescue, Makoto finds himself face to face with a person he hasn't seen in years. Hikaru is held seemingly captive by Yamai in a small run-down room. Yamai refuses to surrender Hikaru, telling Makoto that the Hikaru he thinks he knows is not the true Hikaru. After a violent struggle, Hikaru begs Yamai to stop and stabs him, screaming that Yamai had promised to do whatever she said. Makoto demands that Yamai leave, insisting that he will protect her from whatever is bothering her. Yamai reluctantly leaves, insisting that Makoto does not know what he is getting himself into. Makoto returns to find Hikaru scrubbing up the blood off the sofa, seemingly in a daze.

Calling herself Hikariko, she says that if she doesn't clean up the blood her mother will punish her. True realization of past events hits Makoto, as he realizes who is truly to blame for Rika's death. Makoto gets Hikaru to admit that she was the mastermind behind Rika's death, getting Yamai to strangle Rika. Unable to stand the idea of Rika being with Makoto, as well as the idea of her being left alone, Hikaru ordered the death of Rika, styling it after the local serial rapist. Hikaru's tragic past is also revealed, showing that her mind was warped and broken from a lifetime of being brutally molested by her father at a very young age. After everything is resolved, Yamai goes to prison for the murder, and Hikaru is sent off to Nagano to start a life away from her father.

In the same volume, Makoto runs across another old classmate, Chiaki, who begs his help in clearing the name of her boyfriend, Kashif. Kashif was trying to save Chiaki, who was trapped in a life of prostitution and drug addiction, and attacked her drug distributor. Makoto agrees to help Chiaki, and enlists the help of his friends. Realizing that the only way to stop the drug pushers is to have them arrested, Makoto makes Shun dress as a girl in order to videotape the drug runner selling his product. With a setup in the works at a local movie theater, Makoto and local police hope to arrest the drug pushers, putting an end to their crimes once and for all!

Makoto and friends find themselves at the center of another seedy crime when yet another of Makoto's old friends appears, asking for help. Sho is a talent scout for Fairy's Garden, an adult website where people can watch the everyday life of young girls. However, one of the viewers has taken to stalking the site's star, Asumi. The stalker has managed to find Asumi's address, and has memorized her every move, from what she eats to who she has over. He sends Asumi all sorts of creepy letters and gifts, which he retrieves from the trash whenever she tries to throw them out. When he finds that Makoto is at her apartment to safeguard her, the stalker becomes more violent. Makoto calls for a meeting with the stalker, intending on asking him to stop stalking Asumi. However, Asumi follows Makoto to the meeting site and becomes angry, throwing food at the stalker, and demanding that he stop following her. This action brings the tension to a head, as Asumi's stalker breaks into her apartment intending on making his twisted fantasies a reality!

Makoto has been drafted by a yakuza boss to discover the whereabouts of his wayward daughter, Princess. The boss promises Makoto that he could marry her if successful, but if he fails, then Makoto can kiss his life and his beloved IWGP goodbye! While most of her acquaintances merely think she has gone on holiday with her latest boytoy, her loyal attendant Fujio Saitou believes that something more sinister has happened. Makoto enlists the help of the G Boys, who scan the entire area for any hint of what may have happened. The only information anyone can dig up is that she was last seen in front of a convenience store. With no apparent leads, Makoto is all but ready to admit defeat, until he receives a series of mysterious text messages from an anonymous sender who promises more clues to the disappearance. Following a bread crumb trail of clues, Makoto finds himself face to face with an old classmate, Glyko. Glyko used to be the class rep, but dropped out and now sits up in her room watching the world go by. Through her, Makoto finds the true fate of Princess, as well as the culprit behind her disappearance. But if she were to turn up dead, what would be the fate of Makoto?

Also in this volume are three individual stories that are unrelated to IWGP.

The first, I Can See Tomorrow, surrounds a young boy, Ohba, who dreams premonitions of the day to come. While he sees this as a blessing, his long suffering girlfriend, Hiiragi sees it as a curse. Ohba refuses to do anything major that he hasn't yet dreamed of, much to her chagrin. When Ohba dreams of their first kiss turning into their first time, Hiiragi is upset, but a classmate Uyako is more than happy to step into Hiiragi's place. Can the path of true love ever run straight when one of them is clairvoyant?

The second, Heisei Shangri-la, is about a young businessman who discovers a disturbing secret late one night! While indulging in a dalliance with his co-worker/girlfriend, Hino makes a tasteless joke about being a zombie, only to discover that all of the night workers are undead themselves! With the whole pack in hot pursuit, Hino will soon discover more about the undead than he ever wanted to know. But wait-they're saying he's a zombie, but how can that be?

The final story, Love is S&M!!, concerns a young man, Fuyukii, and his adorable girlfriend, Misaki. While his girlfriend Misaki is faithful, Fuyukii still wants more, and asks his co-worker out on a date. However, the co-worker is not all that she appears to be, and after going to a love motel, she reveals herself to be a S&M Mistress! Can he ever escape her clutches?

• The setting of the first volume of the manga is on New Year's Eve, and all of the male characters already know each other. In the TV series, Makoto & Masa first meet Shun while he is shoplifting books, and while it is set during the fall, it is just a regular day.
• In the TV version there is a new chief of police who (at first) makes it his goal to throw Makoto in jail. Later he actually uses Makoto as a way to catch culprits "unofficially".
• There are characters that are left out of the manga series, such as a part-time help girl that Makoto's mother hires to watch the shop. She later becomes Makoto's love interest, but never girlfriend.
• In the TV version Makoto meets Hikaru and Rika while Shun is drawing in front of the fountain. In the manga version, Makoto meets Hikaru while she is running from some would be attackers, then meets up with everyone else at IWGP, where he then meets Rika for the first time.
• In the manga Rika is more concerned with Hikaru than in the TV version, hinting around to Makoto about Hikaru's dark past, and the importance of promises to them both.
• In the manga, Shun dresses up as a woman in order to get the drugs from Chiaki's drug pusher and have it videotaped as evidence. In the TV version, it is Hikaru, as well as Makoto's mother, who are willing to help out in a pinch.

On September 2, 2019, it was announced that the novel series would receive an anime television series adaptation by Doga Kobo.[3] The series was directed by Tomoaki Koshida, with Fumihiko Shimo handling series composition, Junichirō Taniguchi designing the characters and Daijirō Nakagawa and Ryūichi Takada composing the music. The series was originally set to premiere in July 2020.[1] However, it was delayed to October 6 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[4][2] The Pinballs performed the opening theme "Needle Knot," while Innosent in Formal performed the ending theme "after song." Funimation acquired the series and streamed it on their website in North America and the British Isles, and on AnimeLab in Australia and New Zealand.[5] The series ran for 12 episodes.[6]