2002

Ash continues traveling toward his own dream, but the Pokémon world is full of stories that unfold far beyond his path. Misty returns to the Cerulean Gym, Brock faces new responsibilities at home, Tracey works beside Professor Oak, and familiar members of Team Rocket chase ambitions of their own.Across towns, laboratories, gyms, and wild places, old friends and new faces form bonds with Pokémon, reunite with people they miss, and stumble into adventures that are sometimes dangerous and sometimes wonderfully ordinary. Their separate journeys reveal how large the world truly is even when Ash is nowhere nearby.

After the Johto League, Ash decides to start fresh in the Hoenn region with only Pikachu at his side. His journey soon brings him together with May, a new Trainer more interested in seeing the world than battling, her sharp-eyed younger brother Max, and eventually his old companion Brock.While Ash collects Gym Badges for the Hoenn League, May discovers Pokémon Contests and begins chasing a goal of her own. Their travels put them between the rival ambitions of Team Aqua and Team Magma, introduce new Pokémon and rivals, and eventually carry Ash beyond Hoenn into the Battle Frontier for a new series of challenges.

Mitsuru Hanagata grows up in Britain, where confronting discrimination helps shape his pride and fierce independence. After returning to Japan, he becomes the leader of a delinquent baseball team and meets Hyuuma Hoshi, a pitcher whose determination immediately gives Hanagata the rival he has been searching for.Their competition follows them from youth baseball to Koshien and eventually into the professional leagues, where Hanagata joins the Hanshin Tigers while Hyuuma pitches for the Yomiuri Giants. Facing Hyuuma's evolving 'Major League' pitches forces Hanagata to transform himself again and again, turning rivalry into the driving force of his baseball life.

Shobu Kirifuda has grown up admiring his father, a legendary duelist, and dreams of becoming a Kaijudo master worthy of the same respect. In Duel Masters, cards are more than pieces of a game: skilled duelists can call forth creatures tied to five great civilizations, turning strategy, instinct, and courage into very real power.Shobu's confidence is shaken when he suffers a crushing defeat at the hands of the formidable Knight. Remembering what his father taught him, he chooses not to give up or let victory become the only reason to duel. With stronger opponents waiting ahead, Shobu sets out to sharpen his skills, understand the true spirit of dueling, and find his own path toward the top.

Rakka awakens inside a cocoon with no memory of her former life, then emerges as a girl with small gray wings and a halo above her head. The Haibane living in an old communal home welcome her and give her a name based on the dream of falling she remembers from the cocoon. She quickly learns the rhythms of the quiet town, along with its strange boundaries: Haibane may not leave the walls, and no one truly knows where they came from or where they eventually go.Daily life seems gentle until Rakka begins noticing the unease beneath it, especially the mysterious Day of Flight when some of her companions disappear. Questions about guilt, forgotten memories, and the reason she was brought here slowly change the town from a puzzling refuge into a place that may exist to give its residents one chance to make peace with themselves.

Humanity has spread across countless planets, and the Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs maintains order within the Galactic Union. Hidden inside it is the ES Unit, a group of operatives with extraordinary abilities. Éclair and Lumière may hold a low rank, but Éclair's superhuman strength and Lumière's command of electronic systems make them capable of handling dangerous assignments across the galaxy.At first their work seems straightforward: stop criminals and protect interplanetary stability. Traveling through the Union, however, exposes inequalities that do not fit the official image they have been taught to trust. As secrets accumulate inside GOTT itself, buried memories and questions about their own identities begin to surface. Soon the pair must decide not only who the real enemy is, but what they have been serving all along.

In a future where replacing human bodies with machinery and connecting minds directly to networks has become ordinary, crime evolves as quickly as people do. Public Security Section 9 handles cases conventional police cannot, led by Daisuke Aramaki and Major Motoko Kusanagi.Amid cyberterrorism, corruption, and artificial intelligence, an old name reopens a case that once shook Japan: the Laughing Man, an unknown hacker who invaded minds and screens before disappearing behind a smiling logo. The deeper Section 9 follows his trail, the more it uncovers a network of corporations, politics, and manipulated information that makes the question “Who is the Laughing Man?” increasingly difficult. In a world where memory, appearance, and even the body can be altered, proving reality itself becomes part of the investigation.

Mahoro's quiet life with Suguru Misato continues to grow warmer as she becomes closer to him and his classmates. That fragile happiness changes when Minawa Andou, another android girl, enters their home and quickly becomes attached to Mahoro, adding a shy new member to an already unusual household.Behind the ordinary school days and domestic comedy, time is running out. Mahoro's remaining operational life continues to shrink, while the conflict surrounding her past and the organizations that created beings like her moves closer. The more precious her human life becomes, the harder it is to ignore how little of it may remain.

Ryo Utsugi is haunted by nightmares, violent visions, and a mysterious voice that seems to call directly to him. His search for an explanation draws him toward Dante, an immense ancient demon whose existence is tied to a hidden conflict far older than the world Ryo thought he knew.As demons awaken and religious forces prepare for war, Ryo's own identity becomes inseparable from Dante's terrifying power. The line between human and monster begins to collapse, and the truth behind demons, humanity, and the beings worshipped as divine threatens to overturn everything he has been taught.

Kazuto Tokino is struggling to keep his late grandfather's public bath running when a spacecraft crashes nearby and brings Princess Valkyrie into his life. In order to save him after the accident, Valkyrie gives Kazuto part of her soul, binding the two together in a way neither can simply undo.Losing that portion of her soul causes Valkyrie to spend much of her time in the body and mindset of a small child, only returning to her adult form under special circumstances. Between other space princesses, family troubles, and the bathhouse's customers, Kazuto's home becomes a center for cosmic problems entirely unsuited to his quiet life. Even so, his bond with Valkyrie deepens as they try to create something normal from a relationship that began with a crash from space.

Mikan Tachibana is a fairly ordinary teenager living with a family that is anything but ordinary. Her loud, stubborn mother runs the household according to her own peculiar logic, her quiet father rarely reacts to the chaos around him, and her younger brother Yuzuhiko has his own private world of worries and interests.Meals, shopping, school, neighbors, family arguments, and embarrassing misunderstandings become the source of constant comedy. Beneath all the bickering, however, the Tachibanas remain unmistakably a family, with affection often hiding inside the very habits that drive one another crazy.

Ten-year-old prodigy Chiyo Mihama skips several grades and enters high school surrounded by classmates whose personalities are every bit as unusual as her situation. Tomo has endless energy and almost no restraint, Yomi tries and often fails to be the voice of reason, Sakaki is tall and intimidating but secretly adores animals that rarely return the affection, and Osaka seems to inhabit a slower world built from wonderfully strange thoughts. Their teachers Yukari and Nyamo are not always much more mature than the students. From the first day of school to graduation, the years pass through exams, trips, festivals, and conversations that seem trivial in the moment but slowly become memories none of them could replace.

Takuya, Kouji, Izumi, Junpei, and Tomoki follow mysterious messages onto a train that carries them away from the human world and into the Digital World. There they learn that the land is being torn apart by Cherubimon, one of its three great celestial guardians, who has turned against his former allies.Instead of partnering with Digimon, the children discover ancient Spirits that let them transform into the Legendary Warriors themselves. As they cross the Digital World by Trailmon, they search for more Spirits, confront warriors serving Cherubimon, and uncover the hidden history behind the rebellion threatening to erase the world around them.

Ichigo Momomiya goes on a date with her crush Masaya, then wakes after a strange encounter to find herself displaying unmistakably catlike behavior. When a monster attacks Masaya, Ichigo transforms into a magical girl with cat ears and learns that her DNA has been fused with that of the endangered Iriomote cat.Researchers Ryou and Keiichiro explain that she is part of a project created to fight aliens who use parasites to turn animals into monsters. Ichigo is not the only one. Four other girls carry the DNA of endangered species and possess similar powers. Between working at the group's café and trying to preserve an ordinary school life, Ichigo must find them and form a team before what began as a strange interruption to her love life becomes a battle for the entire planet.