Ryotaro is a cheerful professional soccer player devoted to the game he loves. He has risen to national team member, and come through with decisive goals when it counts… until injury begins to plague him. Facing retirement at 37, he realizes it is a little late for him to enter normal working society. Enter a sports management company called “Victory” which offers him a new lease on life. Yet somewhere in his heart, Ryotaro has not quite accepted his retirement, and he will need to reconcile with new challenges as an old rookie.

Suzu Urano is an innocent young woman who loves to draw pictures and lives in the seaside town called Eba district of Hiroshima. At the height of World War II in the Pacific with all the men off at the front, she finds herself as eldest daughter assisting with the family business of seaweed to make ends meet when an offer of marriage arises. The suitor is Shusaku Hojo, a young stenographer at the military court-martial who had fallen in love with her at first sight, but Suzu doesn’t remember ever having met him. Though uncomfortable with the idea of betrothing a man she doesn’t know, she gets swept along by the people and circumstances around her until marriage becomes a foregone conclusion. She finds the task of winning acceptance by Shusaku’s family hard going despite all of her pure and earnest efforts in this touching story of family love and survival amid the crucible of war.

Aki Takano is a homemaker who has built an ordinary yet amply content family life. When she and her family move into a luxurious, high-rise condo with all the latest security advancements, Aki anticipates the start of the kind of family life of which dreams are made. Until, that is, she meets her creepy and scary neighbors. Behind the walls of this ivory tower, life is a social ecosystem dictated by strict rules and decorum of vainglorious housewife residents. There are “compulsory Halloween parties”, “hellishly exorbitant lunches”, “floor discrimination”, and even “strictly enforced proper attire for putting out the trash.” Though farcical and comical at first glance, the housewives’ behavior easily becomes sinister, as Aki begins to discover in unexpected ways. Someone is trying to tear her life and family apart.
Will she have be able to stand up and defend her beloved family? Is there another reason why the neighbors are targeting the Takano family?