Toshiki Kokubo

The posthumous wish of Eiji's wife is for her ashes to be scattered in the ocean near her hometown. Eiji also learns that his wife letter for him at the post office before she died.

A lowly but academically diligent warrior named Bessho Hikoshiro finds himself unable to move up in the world due to the stifling caste system of the Bakumatsu era. After being expelled from the household into which he was adopted through marriage and separated from his wife and son, he moves in with his disapproving elder brother and his wife. He meets his old class rival Enomoto Takeaki, now a commander of a naval ship, and is later told by a kindly noodle shop owner that Enomoto's rise in social status came about after he prayed at a shrine in Mukojima. Stumbling home drunk one night, Hikoshiro falls down a riverbank and comes across a small run-down shrine which he is convinced is affiliated to the one in Mukojima. Pressing his hands together in prayer, he unwittingly invites the unwanted attentions of the gods of poverty, pestilence and death..

Stuck doing show-biz schlock, an investigative reporter stumbles on a scheme to swindle pensions through an attractive gold futures scam, a potential news-story.

Part time worker at a cafe investigates a stalker case that turns into a murder case.

For generations, the galaxy has been ruled by the mighty Magadras Empire. Ken, a super-patriotic volunteer to the imperial army, is assigned to the Hayabusa squadron on a remote planet. The squadron, full of quirky characters, receives absurd orders from their superiors, and Ken follows them anyway.