Shôjo

The artificial island is severely hit by the burning sea phenomenon and by a following unidentified impact wave. The violent impact causes a power outage on the entire island and the life-support devices in the hospital have stopped operating. In order to resolve the crisis, Haru's young assistant Minamo runs on the abandoned monorail track heading toward the electrical substation. Meanwhile, Haru plunges into the Meta-Real Network. Inside this new environment, he feels a new "sea," and begins to utilize his ability to a completely different kind of diving, this time inside the human brain.

Masamichi Haru, Minamo Aoi, Sota Aoi, Holon, Eichiro Kushima, Secretary General, Sayaka, Yukino

After the world-hit "Ghost in the Shell" animation franchise and following the highly anticipated "Ghost Hound," Production I.G and manga artist Shirow Masamune collaborated once more in creating the world of "Real Drive" (original title: "RD Senno Chosashitsu").

This neo-futuristic SF suspense animation TV series was directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi of "Le Chevalier D'Eon" fame, while the screenplay was entrusted to Junichi Fujisaku, director of "Blood+" and scriptwriter for many episodes of the "Ghost in the Shell S.A.C." series. Manga artist Tetsuro Ueyama ("Metal Guardian Faust") was in charge for the character designs.

2061 AD. Fifty years have passed since mankind developed the Network society. It was anticipated that this new infrastructure would realize a utopia where people connected with each other at the level of consciousness. However, new social problems such as personal data leaks and proliferation of manipulated information began to surface. Nevertheless, people still relied on the Network to exchange information, and proved unable to opt to abandon it.

In due course, a new Network realm with more effective security measures was developed. This was called Meta-Real Network, usually abbreviated as "the Metal."

The Metal accommodated personal memory data within protected virtual stand-alone organic cyber enclaves called bubble shells and eventually pervaded the everyday lives of people.

However, people gradually learned to release and explode their instincts within the secure environment of the Metal. The unleashed instincts pushed each individual's consciousness to drown in the sea of information and to be exposed to the pressures of desire. Meanwhile, norms and regulations continued to bind their real world lives. Thus, strange friction between the two worlds began to manifest themselves as aberrations beyond the bounds of the imaginable.

Experts who challenged the deep sea of the Metal to investigate and decipher such aberrations were called cyber divers.

This is a story of a cyber diver, Masamichi Haru, who investigates the incidents that lie between Reality and the Metal.