Manga doesn't get much more noir than this. Benkei is just another expatriate Japanese arist living in the Big Apple. Or so it appears. As there "diabolical hard-boiled stories" show, surfaces aren't always what they seem. Flashbacks delve into sordid, secret past lives, and old scored, long festering, emerge without warning, asking to be settled. And Benkei's secret? Maybe it's just that he's the only artist in town who isn't having fantasies of being a hitman-for-hire. He is one.

The story centers on the life of Kawata Yoshio, an eccentric judge. The popularity of the series seems to stem from both the good-natured wisdom of its hero, Judge Kawata, and the glimpse it offers of Japan's judicial system as it deals with current social issues ranging from divorce to substance abuse.

This is a courtroom drama based on the relatively new Japanese jury system, in which a mixed panel of laypersons and professional judges hear criminal cases and determine guilt and sentencing. The young, pretty Yuuki Michiko is moving from Tokyo to a small coastal town to take up the position of an assistant judge. Right away, they begin the selection of a diverse group of people to serve as the lay judges for a murder case! It's Michiko's job to help guide them through the trial, without overly influencing them with her opinions. How will this group of citizens cope with passing judgment on people that they don't even know?

Yamagami is a small hamlet in Kyuushuu, the mountainous region in the south of Japan. Today, this village is inhabited only by old people still living in the rhythm of tradition and communion with nature. The return of one of the village youths, pursued by yakuza, will overturn life in this little world, spared until now from modernization. These sinister gangsters intend to seize this enchanted spot and trash it. Will Yamagami come to experience the harshness of the modern world? (Source: Blackout)

Natsume Shuntaro is a young politician who have the difficult mission to improve the agricultural society.