User:Starwed/AbenobashiDraft

Story

Childhood friends Arumi and Sasshi are residents of the Abenobashi shopping district in Osaka, Japan. After an accident, they find themselves transported to another Abenobashi, in another world — a world based on RPG-style video games such as Dragon Quest.

Arumi and Sasshi attempt to get back to their own Abenobashi, but willy-nilly find themselves traversing a series of apparently nonsensical worlds based on genres including science fiction, war, fantasy, dating sim games, and even American movie genres such as film noir. Their quest to return home is at core a Bildungsroman because the Abenobashi dimensions are mostly hobby worlds of increasing sophistication. Not only does each alternate Abenobashi manifest Sasshi's otaku fetishes in surreal fashion, they are peopled by surreal analogs of Arumi and Sashi's relatives and acquaintances. They also repeatedly encounter a mysterious blue-haired stranger who is eventually revealed to be the man who developed the shopping arcade itself decades before: the legendary onmyoji mystic Abe-no-Seimei.

Eventually it is learned that Sasshi does not want to go home, and in fact is the sole force propelling them between worlds. While chasing the cat in the first episode, Grandpa Masa (Arumi's grandfather) fell off the roof and died. With this new trauma pressuring him in addition to his apprehension about the destruction of the shopping arcade and the Asahinas' moving away, Sasshi was no longer willing or able to cope with reality, and unbeknownst to even himself, he had caused their dimension to rewrite itself into worlds echoing his escapist obsessions.

However, Eutus and Mune are quite real. During the Heian Era, Abe-no-Seimei (aka Eutus) was a close childhood friend of a noble named Masayuki, and his wife, Mune. While he was away from the palace, Masayuki often asked Seimei to stay by his wife's side, guarding her and keeping her company. However, during the time they spent together, Mune and Seimei fell in love and became increasingly romantically involved. Unbeknownst to them, Masayuki soon learned of the affair, and became overcome with grief and jealousy. One day while Seimei was on a trip to Edo, Masayuki snapped, murdered Mune and committed suicide. Guided by a premonition, Seimei rushed back to his hometown only to find that he was too late. Overcome with guilt, he decided to perform a forbidden Onmyo ritual that would allow him to resurrect the dead by transferring himself into a completely different world where they were still alive. In doing so, Seimei soon found himself as "Mr. Abe" in mid-20th-century Osaka, where Mune Imamiya and Masayuki Asahina were pre-existing residents of this alternate world. Now, Masayuki was an ambitious, but largely unsuccessful young man who had enlisted Mr. Abe's permission to build the Abenobashi Shopping Arcade. He was also madly in love with Mune, a local girl whom he tried to woo (with little success) at every possible occasion. It was not long, however, before Mune fell in love with Abe, constantly pursuing him and offering him home-made lunch. Abe tried for a time to resist her advances, but eventually he was no longer able to contain his feelings, and made love with Mune in his apartment. Unbeknownst to them, an instantly-jealous Masayuki accidentally discovered the truth. The next night he became staggeringly drunk and invited Abe to meet him at the Abeno Shrine, planning to murder him with a hidden butcher knife when he arrived. At first unsuspecting, Abe arrived on the scene, but once he saw the decrepitly drunk Masa he knew what was underfoot. He promptly bid Masayuki farewell, then disappeared, going back to his job in the Heian Era, leaving a pregnant Mune behind him; her child is Sasshi's father.

Because of Masayuki's death in the real world, Sasshi, the grandson of Eutus, subconsciously triggered the same Onmyo spell that Seimei had originally used to bring himself, Masayuki and Mune into the "real" world; therefore, although each world exists as Sasshi had envisioned it, Masayuki, Eutus, and Mune existed in each one; since he had not previously known Eutus and Mune, they retain the same appearance as they were when Eutus first cast the spell.

After revealing all this to Sasshi, Eutus decides to train him in the ways of Onmyodo, so he can figure out how to return himself and Arumi to their proper world. However, Sasshi is still reluctant to return to his world, as he cannot bring himself to tell Arumi the truth about her grandfather. After visiting several more bizarre (but increasingly elaborate) worlds, Sasshi finds himself with no other places to escape to, and he and Arumi are confronted by none other than Sasshi's father, who had apparently remained unaffected by the changing worlds the entire time. He tells Sasshi that he cannot keep running from reality, and that it is time to return to his and Arumi's proper world. However, when Arumi realizes the truth, Sasshi suffers an emotional breakdown, and suddenly transports them to another world again. This world, however, is a world of pure nothingness, and the only other person there is Mune-Mune. After confronting Mune as his grandmother and undergoing a long process of internal reflection, Sasshi hesitantly agrees to go back home. However, as Arumi soberly thanks him (for what is a subject of potential debate) Sasshi is overcome with frustration over his own helplessness to change his world, and calls out for Abe-no-Seimei, angrily demanding to know why he is "still a child".