Neji ISBN4-592-17784-3 Hakusensha C9979 price: 390yen + tax first print: 06.25.01 collection: Heisei 4 HY Monthly Apr, Heisei 5 HY Monthly Aug, Heisei 13 HY 7~8

• neji overview

Neji is (just like Count Cain) a story which Yuki Kaori began in her pre-fame days before Angel Sanctuary, one of those short stories that was left hanging open after the first two acts. After the completion of AS, she went back and added in Act III so that it was enough to be collected into one volume and published. Therefore if you go through her full work chart which I took great pains to compose, Acts I and II were from 1992 and 1993, where Act III is dated 2001.
The story is not necessarily complete since it leaves off at where the main characters journey on into other adventures and it also doesn't say "The End", leaving it open to possible Act IV and V's. But I don't really know if it will ever be continued and if so, certainly not in the near future, though the ending of Act III can just be taken as an end to the story that is told and leave all that is untold to your imagination.
The art again, is so-so for Acts I and II and awesome for Act III. It is a rare gift to be able to draw like that *sighs with starry eyes* Neji in Japanese means "screw" and it is the name of the main character. Here follows a brief summary of the plot.

• act i - awakening

A boy has a dream of watching a girl getting shot, and another vision of a boy tattooed with the number 66 who said blankly, I'm a neji (in other words, I'm a screw). And then he wakes up, finding himself in a completely unfamiliar place, in a laboratory many years into the future. There, he was told that he had been executed as a first degree criminal in his lifetime and was now being revived to be a test subject for GERA - the government agency researching psychic powers. When asked his name, he couldn't remember anything from his past life but the boy in his dream and so he said I am Neji... and that became his name.
Now the man who awakened him brings him to see a girl under cold sleep known as Snow White. The boy doesn't remember much of what happened before but he did recognize that she was the one from his dreams. For her sake, he was now forced to work for GERA as an assassin and he had enormously strong psychic powers. But one day when he touched Snow White, his memory from the past life came back to him in bits where she was once a rich girl and he was a street punk and they always saw each other from afar. His foul companions wanted to kidnap her for ransom one day and he saved her and they tried to escape, but they were shot and both died.
The girl's father spent money for them to be both put into cold sleep so that they may possibly be revived one day when new technology becomes available. It was all different from what Loser (the man who awakened him) had told him and he rushed to the database and looked up old information. There he found the boy #66 (Neji is #205) Sharif Haiman but all his data was erased. Loser told him that 66 was dead and in his rage Neji's powers explodes, almost destroying the lab, but he was finaly contained.
When he awakes again, he escaped his guard to find Snow White, only to arrive too late and she had already been killed to be used for human experiment. He explodes again, killing all the scientists and defeats Loser who was also strong in psychic powers. Before he leaves, Loser gives him a fake ID card to help him pass through, to Neji's surprise, Loser tore his sleeve and reveals the number 66. He says that Haiman is dead when he chose to become a demon. He let Neji go, saying that the next time they meet, he will kill him. Thus Neji escaped GERA and became a desperado on the run.

• act ii - x

This act introduces a one-eyed boy assassin, a new project of GERA's named X. His body doesn't have to leave GERA's command center and he can kill sending out only his psychic spirit. One day after completing a job, he passed by Neji and was completely stunned by his powers. X works for GERA because of his sister Heather, whom they would only show him photos of. His project is controlled by a powerful official named Sonia, daughter of one of the top GERA executives. There's a long history going back between Sonia and Loser, and she was the one who turned him into an obedient operative.
X is named X because the last image in his mind before GERA revived him was a x shaped scar. After that meeting with Neji, he was quite beside himself and was determined to kill that "white hair bastard". Now there is a girl friend of Neji, Melanie, who was with him that night they ran into the one=eyed boy, she has a x shaped scar above her breasts on her chest (Neji got slapped for touching it ^^;;) Her boyfriend Bill was one of the victims that were killed by X.
GERA next planned a mission where X traps Neji in a nightmare world where he watched Snow White die, while in real life, operatives rushed in to capture them both. But Melanie's voice pierced through the dreamworld and awakened Neji, the operatives retreated and X realized that there's a girl who could synchronize with his psychic waves. He went to ask Loser, who told him that Neji was once a Rebirther like him and then he gave him a key and a location. X went as directed and found that he was looking at a CG of Heather and voice samples but none of it was real.
Meanwhile, Melanie had snuck inside GERA and Neji also came after her. They were finally surrounded by Sonia and she shot and killed Melanie just as X arrived onto the scene, and sees Melanie's x scar through her torn collar. In his mind, Heather was still supposed to be a little girl, not realizing that 5 years have passed in his cold sleep. Sonia tells Neji that X and Heather are both his descendents. Neji had a brother in his life who had a daughter that married into the Garland family. Her children were X and Heather.
Neji was captured, but X mourning for his sister, digs out his own left eye by which Sonia has been controlling him and throws it back at her. At the same time, the main controls explode due to Loser's talent at deconstruction and Melanie uses the last of her psychic powers to awaken Neji who was pinned to a experiment table. Neji and X escapes thanks to Loser, who remained in the burning laboratory. When Sonia saw him, she thought he had come to help her but he kills her instead and says that all evidence will be erased in this explosion and the blame will be placed on her. He on the other hand approaches ever closer to the demon and will do whatever it takes now to rise to the top of GERA.
Closing, X and Neji buried Melanie/Heather and poor Neji~ He's now stuck with a cocky, one-eyed grand-nephew(?) who looked just about his age, and their adventure together has only begun.

• act iii - noma jean p013

Act III is in the two chapters, it begins with a nationwide murder case of a puppet doll on the market named Noma Jean and all of the over five hundred thousand units sold all went wild at the same time and killed their masters. Even the head of the company that had developed it did not escape this fate. Now his son Jiggy Raidon, new head of the company and hereforth known as sunglasses man, is insisting that the dolls will have to pay, thus began the great doll hunt. Meanwhile, Neji and X are working in this diner... rather, Neji is working in the diner and X is eating, ordering him around like a waiter (which he is, Neji: *vein*).
Just then, the roof collapsed on them and a girl fell through, landed right on top of X. That is Noma Jean Prototype P015, sunglasses man enters and captured her, taken to be executed, but Neji and X being psychic heard a voice, a voice that said: I want to live. They help her escape and now the real hunt is on.
X and Neji tried to help P015 find some sort of identity for herself and they were slowly succeeding. She says that her name might even have been Relis (or Release?). Just then, three freaks calling themselves the "Jumping Jacks" show up to take her away and they have ways to deal with psychics. There ended part 1, part 2 begins with a big fight between X, Neji and two of the freaks. A third had taken Relis away and X holds off the remaining two, telling Neji to go after her. (Note: they keep on showing the Statue of Liberty, am I suppose to assume that they are in NYC? *ahahahahah~* hope I get to see GERA here one day ^^)
As Neji made his way into the company headquarters, Jiggy was having a little chat with Relis. She remembers now this vision of a man beating a little boy, that boy was Jiggy. He was abused when he was young by his father and he programmed his memory into them and killed his own father. Just as he was about to shoot her, Neji busted in and all three of them fell into a large pit that was the graveyard of all the dolls that were executed.
In the struggling fight, Jiggy's sunglasses and contacts had come off and his pupils had the markings of a doll as well. Relis was freaked out but Jiggy said that the memories belongs to the real Jiggy who was the son of the dead chairman. He had a twisted love for his own son and contemplated to create another personality in his son. That became transplanted into the Noma Jean puppets then in development and finally sold. But the man killed his own son who had become rebellious and used him as a substitute - Noma Jean Prototype P013.
However his only mistake was that in order to create a perfect replica of the original Jiggy, he transplanted even Jiggy's unparalleled hatred for him and the torture that he went through. Being a puppet, P013 is bound by his program not able to assault his master and therefore he mindcontrolled the puppets. Now destroying all the dolls that knew his secret, the revenge for the original Jiggy inside him will be complete.
Just then, all the supposedly dead dolls rose and clutched onto Jiggy, he flees the pit and calls for security outside. But there he saw that all his puppet guards have been wrecked by Neji. In the end, he says that he had really admired Neji the moment he read his report, to be able to break free from the strings that GERA attached onto him. And he had one last chance, to break from the bounds that held him. By the last law programmed into them, puppets cannot commit suicide, but Jiggy defied his programming and blew away the whole top of the company headquarters along with all the secrets concerning Noma Jean. (which happened to be the head of the Statue of Liberty x.x;;) He died smiling. In the aftermath, Relis will begin a new life as a normal person, continuing the search for her identity and Neji and X drives off into another adventure.