Anime World

The movie begins in Sannomiya Station, and shows the second main character: Seita, dying from starvation there in rags. A janitor comes and digs through his things, and finds a candy tin, containing Setsuko's ashes. He throws it out, and from there springs the spirit of Setsuko, Seita and a group of fireflies. The two spirits provide narrative throughout the story. The film is, in effect, an extended flashback to Japan, at the end of World War II during the Kobe firebombings. Setsuko and Seita, the two siblings, are left to secure the house and their belongings, allowing their mother, suffering from a heart complaint to proceed to a bomb shelter. They are caught off-guard by a batch of bombs dropped in their vicinity, although they survive unscathed. Their mother, however, is caught in the air raid and dies from burn wounds. Having nowhere else to go, Setsuko and Seita go to live with their aunt, and write letters to their father. On the second day that they stay there, Seita goes out to get the left over supplies which he had buried in the ground to preserve before the bombing which killed their mother. He gives all of it to his aunt, but hides a small tin of fruit drops. This tin of fruit drops later proves a recurrent icon in the film. Following cruelty from their aunt, who gives them barely enough food, insults them and sells their mother's kimonos for rice, which she keeps for herself, Seita and Setsuko finally decide to go and live in an old, abandoned bomb shelter. Gradually, they begin to run out of rice, and Seita is forced to steal food from local farmers. When Seita is eventually caught stealing, he is unable to feed Setsuko enough before she begins to starve. In desperation, Seita removes all the money from their mother's bank account, when he learns of his father's death. He buys a large quantity of food, and rushes back to the shelter, where he finds Setsuko hallucinating. She is sucking marbles which she believes are fruit drops and offers him 'rice balls' which are really only rocks. Finally, she dies of starvation. Seita cremates her, using supplies donated to him by a farmer and leaves her ashes in the fruit tin, which he carries with his father's photograph, until his death on September 21, 1945.

At the end of the film, the spirits of Seita and Setsuko are seen—no longer raggedy and etiolated but healthy and well-dressed—sitting side by side as they look down on the modern-day city of Kobe.

Four years have passed since the events of the first series. With Pai
mysteriously missing, Yakumo has trained himself into a competent demon
fighting warrior as he searches for her. When he finally finds her,
living quietly as an average high school student in Tokyo, he's shocked
to find that she has no memory of who or what she is. Almost as shocked
as she is to have a stranger who for all intents and purposes looks
like a wandering lunatic insist his life has been devoted to finding
her! But not as shocked as either will be when the forces of darkness
bear down on them, and leave them with no choice but to seek out a way
to finally end the war that begun hundreds of years earlier, a journey
that will take them into the wilds of Tibet and across the paths of
treasure seekers, both friend and foe.

The Sanjiyan-Unkara, a legendary race of three-eyed immortals, have
been reduced to their final survivor. With his dying breath the
archeologist studying them sends the last one, the childish Pai, to
find Yakumo, the son he had left behind in Japan, who is to help her
become human. Though initially put off by the situation, Yakumo finds
himself dying to protect Pai from harm – and then his story truly
begins. When Pai opens her third eye her Sanjiyan personality takes
over, making her a powerful enough sorcerer to bring Yakumo back to
life as a Wu, an immortal zombie linked to the fate of Pai; when she
becomes human, so will he regain his humanity, but should she die, so
does he. Attacks by demons seeking the Sanjiyan's immortality soon
prove that Yakumo cannot return to his normal life, so he eventually
agrees to help Pai. While seeking a statue necessary for the ritual
that will make her human, Pai and Yakumo get caught up in a scheme to
resurrect Kaiyanwang, the godlike individual responsible for the
destruction of the rest of the Sanjiyan. Yakumo also gradually comes to
realize the he is developing feelings for Pai, feelings which only grow
stronger when she disappears for four years after a climatic fight only
to reappear under a new identity, suffering from amnesia.