Kanata kara is a pretty nice series, if the plot is a bit generic. The main character, Noriko, is a high school student who has recurring dreams of this place, this alternate world...and one day while she's going home with her friends, she stops to pick up a ball someone dropped and gets blasted away by a bomb. I think it was terrorists or something, but she watches from a distance as her friends panic since no one can find her body. Meanwhile she gets taken to this other world, where she meets up with this guy, Izaku. To make it shorter....the series is ongoing, but the main plot goes like this: in the world where Noriko has been thrown, there is a legend that someday an "Awakening" will come to the world and the "Ghost of Heaven" or the "darkness" will be awakened. It, then, will bring forth mass destruction (or something to that effect). If anyone could harness the powers of the "ghost of heaven," that person would have a reeeeeeaally powerful weapon on their hands. There're a lot of seer-people in that world, and somehow they all find that, one day, the "awakening" has come to their world. People from all lands set out to look for the awakening and to capture it/him/her so that they can control the "ghost of heaven." Izaku is this guy with superhuman stength...people often called him a monster when he was little, because I think he was destined to become one and even his parents were afraid and horrified by him (even though he looks and acts like any other human being). When he gets hurt, he can heal extraordinarily fast...plus he is really good at fighting and can pretty much fly around in the air...you know like those dudes in wu xia xiao shuo and old chinese movies who bounce off trees...=) Izaku knows that he is destined to become the "ghost of heaven" but he reeeeeeeally doesn't want to. So he sets out to find the "awakening" and kill it/him/her so that the ghost can never be awakened. He meets Noriko where the "awakening" is supposed to come...which means, Noriko is the awakening! Instead of killing her at the start, though, for some reason he just brings her along on his wanderings. Noriko has a lot of trouble at first, trying to figure out the weird language they speak in that world...she doesn't know anything about this "awakening" "ghost of heaven" junk. (One reason I like this manga series: it's semi-realistic in that the girl is flung into a foreign world and therefore cannot speak the language. Unlike fushigi--i don't want to find faults with fushigi, but...yeah. Miaka from Fushigi is from modern-day Japan; she gets flung into ancient China; but everybody understands everybody else, no problem? huh.) Well, incidentally, Noriko and Izaku eventually end up falling in love...which pretty much sucks since then Izaku can't get rid of her and he has to become the "ghost of heaven" eventually. Plus Noriko finds out she's the "awakening" but really can't do anything about it. But they figure if they search, they'll find some way of (tinny music) overcoming their fates. So off they go together...the only obstacles in their way are all these super-powerful weird bad guys who want to harness the power of the "ghost of heaven" for themselves...Izaku has to get rid of them but has a hard time fighting and trying to protect Noriko at the same time. It also seems that Noriko is the only one who can actually control Izaku and his little transitions to a monster and back. Parts of the story get sorta nasty when Izaku, you know, loses a few limbs, gets stabbed a few times, etc....not that I'm saying anything happens to him.... And yeah. That's the basic storyline! Happy? ;)
Castle of the Sky--if you look under the manga series, you'll find a thing about Kanata Kara as well as a few other series....
Manga World--Okay, admittedly this isn't really a "manga world" but it's got kanata kara stuff.
Kanata Kara Main Page--Haven't checked out this site in a long time...tell me if the link is broken. Not sure what's on it anymore ;)
okay back to anime/manga...
Get your own Free Home Page