Kaine ISBN4-592-12229-1 Hakusensha C9979 price: 390yen + tax first print: 10.25.96 collection: Showa 63 HY Monthly, Showa 64 HY 1, Heisei 2 HY Monthly, Heisei 8 HY 6~7

• kaine

Kaine is the story of a band at the top of its fame, with the vocalist named Kaine, and music written by Die (and these two are unusually intimate in some of these pictures if you ask me ^^ Shounen-ai or no). It begins with a car crash, and Saito Shinogu wakes up in the hospital days later and everyone who saw him called him "Kaine". He insisted that he was not Kaine but his twin brother Shinogu but no one would listen to him. In the mirror he saw his own hair dyed red like Kaine's.
He meets the woman Oda Yuka, producer of the Endorphines (band), who threatened him and told him that Kaine had in fact died in that car accident. But there are too much at risk here and the outside world only knows that "Saito Shinogu" had died but Kaine was still alive. Anything to keep the Endorphines at the top and he was forced to pretend to be Kaine in front of people... or else.
Strange suicides began to occur on the news, with the common fact that all the girls were great fans of the Endorphines. Also strange accidents around Kaine/Shinogu, and he began to recall the car accident which was no accident. When he go on stage, he gets nightmare visions of Kaine emerging from hell and grabbing a hold of him (just your usual stage-fright ^^). Die tells him old stories about Kaine and his rotten life, he had a dream girlfriend once and thought that she was pure and innocent, but one day he returned home and found that Kaine had slept with her. The girl covered her face in shame but Kaine just dried his hair and said, yo I borrowed your shower.
The innocent Shinogu began to get an idea of how rotten Kaine was when the girlfriend of another band member Sin came to find him and said that she was pregnant. Even Die did not know that Kaine was Shinogu and only thought that he had lost his memory, he mentioned all of their terrible past and the sacrifices they made to have come so far and Shinogu remembered the times that he spent with Kaine back then. Kaine whom he always admired, who was always in light and glory, he had seemed to confident then, not revealing the scars behind his struggles.
Then he saw a photo of Die, behind was his car and the same car that appeared in his dreams of the accident that night. He asked Die if he hated Kaine and Die was approaching him very dangerously when Shinogu pulled out a gun. But Die outsmarted him and the situation was reversed, Die now pointed the gun at Shinogu and asked who he was if not Kaine (Shinogu did act very uncharacteristically). Die did a very good job of freaking Shinogu out (ahahahaha~) and Shinogu told him everything. However Die says that he didn't kill Kaine. That day he received an envelop from Kaine with keys of his apartment saying that he was about to commit suicide if Die doesn't come to save him (which he does quite frequently) but when Die arrived, there was no one there and his car parked downstairs had also been stolen. With the envelop also came the the message "#ImaSHIme no OTO", in short as Kaine.
Next when the band members were all hanging out one day, Maiko, Sin's girlfriend, suddenly went crazy and jumped from the balcony and died. Shinogu noticed that she had been listening to a CD walkman with one of Endorphines' CDs, but the female producer shows up again and stopped him from digging any further. Back in Kaine's apartment, Shinogu and Die analyzed the message that Kaine left, noting that marks were made on the I, SHI, O and TO and they realized that it could be the numbers 1-4-0-10 (shi=4, to=10 in Japanese)
They figured out that it was the password to Kaine's computer and logged in only to discover a great conspiracy. The CDs that the production company sold were made with a secret technology where it generates hormons that make the listeners addicted. However an excessive amount of the hormon would poison the brain with Endorphine and they would be driven to do what the lyrics sing.
Then they got a phonecall from the producer, people were now suspicious of all the events surrounding the Endorphines and so tomorrow night "Kaine" must appear in person to perform on stage. Shinogu knew that it was impossible since he had only just started learning how to sing, but Die grabbed the phone and agreed, however it will be the very last performance they ever put on for her. Oda in her house decides to carry out a plan that will create so much mystery and publicity, yet making this performance certainly their very last.
On the streets, Die sees a car passing by and it was really his own. He acts like he's was hit and the driver came out to check on him and he pinned the man to the ground. It was Sin, he's long known about Kaine and Maiko. Sin regrets what he did as well but he said that Maiko's child was really his but she wanted Kaine and would even use that as a way. Die remembers that Sin was the one who taught Kaine how to use a computer and said that there was still something that he could do.
Backstage, Oda hands Shinogu a bouquet planted with a bomb which she mean to have him killed in front of all the fans and become the biggest news, but Die shows up and saves him. In the flash of the explosion, Shinogu saw many things... Suddenly Die began to play a song: Imashime no Oto, Kaine's song since before it all began. Oda thought it was all over, for it wasn't one of Kaine's official songs and Shinogu doesn't know it. But just then, Shinogu picked up the mic and sung, jumping right into character as Kaine, that voice was Kaine on stage once again. Many things came to him, a mother who loved him dearly but that love finally grew twisted and obsessive; Die, a strange friend; and freedom, he wanted freedom and killed his own mother. The night that he sent Die the envelop, he got his twin brother Shinogu drunk and switched their hair colors. He meant to kill Shinogu at the beach and pretend that Kaine died but he couldn't. And then the accident happened.
He sang that song on stage with die, the production company was ruined because Sin put up all the confidential information about the Endorphine project onto the internet. Shinogu said that he was the real Kaine but Die had already known and there he shot himself and fell toward all the fans. Miraculously he did not die, although the doctors said that he had suffered from multiple personality disorder. In the hospital Kaine woke up and there Die was at his side. I had a nightmare, he said, where I killed my mother, killed my brother and everone hated me and wanted to kill me, and finally I killed myself.
It was all just a dream, a bad dream, said Die, and this is reality. And there was still the two of them in the end.

• magical mystery tour

A girl named Saya gets a phone call that she had just won a free trip to LA, alone. Does it sound too good to be true? Well it is. She had fun for the first few days with her guide Minobu, lived in a great mansion but on the first night, she had thought that she saw a ghost when she awoke startled to find someone standing by her bedside with candle light. Then on a social party, people all surrounded her calling her "Shoko" and saying that she was discharged from the hospital and asking if she felt better now.
Minobu and the hostess lady Madam Tojo would not tell her a word about Shoko. In a later conversation, Madam Tojo ordered Minobu to take Saya "downtown". The ghost showed up again and left a photo ouside of Saya's door, it was a family of four: a man, a woman (Madam Tojo), Minobu and a girl who looked just like her. When she became suspicious and wanted to call home, Minobu locked her in the room. There through the old type keyhole, she saw a girl approach...
Next day, Minobu drove her downtown and left her in the car. Some punks came and dragged her out of the car. Minobu heard her calling for help from where he hid and his conscience won over at last and he showed up and ordered the men away. He remembered what happened to Shoko when they were at sea and Madam Tojo pushed her overboard because her husband had left everything in his will to his daughter from the first marriage Shoko, leaving Tojo and the stepson Minobu with nothing. But with Shoko gone, they needed a body in order to inherit the fortune left by her husband and as if knowing that her son would mess up, Madam Tojo showed up personally to kill Saya.
Then Shoko appeared, she had been saved by a fishing boat and realized their plan when she saw Saya. With her plans foiled, Madam Tojo fired at Saya but Minobu jumped in and pushed her away. The bullet missed him by an inch and it was all over. Tojo and Minobu were arrested on the spot and Saya's trip ended, but before she left, Minobu promised that they would meet again (and another love was born -_-).

• orange time bomb

This is a rather cute little piece ^^ about a popular duo called Orange Bombs that was said to be breaking up. One of them, Tatsumi, ran into a girl in the park one day and immediately covered his face and ran off, thinking that she now knew his "secret". The girl comes knocking on their door and threatens Tatsumi to go out with her. By the way, his secret is that he has a blushing symptom which is why he always wears sunglasses -_-
In a coffee shop, Tatsumi opened himself up to the girl and told her about when he and Gai were still in school and how they finally formed the Orange Bombs. Gai, the vocalist of the duo passed them by on the streets and thought that Tatsumi was acting quite out of character and so he ditched his own girlfriend and joined them. The rest of the day became the three of them trying to chase down a reporter who took a photo of Gai and the little girl in an intimate pose... while trying to dodge all their fans x.x;;
Gai and Tatsumi kinda made up in the process and the little girl said it was only a couple fight ^^;; Just then they saw the reporter again and after a very long and painful struggle, the camera flew into a pond and was all soaked. But now Gai and Tatsumi completely settled their argument: Tatsumi wasn't happy with Gai going out to do his own thing and Gai promised that he would not sing anyone else's song again.
In the end, a very inappropriate picture of them (which was taken when they bumped into each other in the face earlier) appeared on the papers labeled with headlines "The Bombs' Dangerous Love!?" (typical tabloid). All the film was soaked but the reporter managed to save one... and all their manager can do is cry~

• tokyo top

This... is just as funny a story, and about Gai of the Orange Bombs. Gai is shooting a movie with this female idol named Satsuki. She obviously likes him. Satsuki is quite violent in nature but in order to act like an idol, she pretends to be all cute and stuff. There comes another guy named Ibe from her high school days and he's always following her around everywhere though she doesn't like him at all.
Satsuki becomes very jealous of Gai because he has so many fans and wouldn't admit that she likes him, in fact they get into a huge argument on set. Ibe realizes that Satsuki likes Gai and so he got a group of guys and went on set as extras in a fight scene but they mean to beat up Gai for real. Satsuki shows up and kick all of their asses although that ruined her idol image ^^;;
Gai admits finally that he's liked her as well and the shooting ends with a last kiss scene. The smart director took that real fight scene and put it into the movie (ahahahah~)... so I guess it ended happily ever after although you must pity Gai because... he's simply very pitiful, being stuck now with this very violent girlfriend ;_; That was the great hit movie that spawned true love.