Editor: Not Credited. Authors: Toh EnJoe, Gakuto Mikumo, Kafka Asagiri, Yoshinobu Akita, Tow Ubukata First Published: 2017 Rating: Good. Neither a utopia nor a dystopia, it’s still a world of nations at strife, as dominated by corporations as ever. Technology hasn’t made humans nearly obsolete, but rather bettered us, if you will, attaching to our bodies and even brains as enhancements—for those who can afford…
By Yasutaka Tsutsui First Published: 1993 Rating: Classic. At Tokyo’s Institute for Psychiatric Research, beautiful, 29-year-old psychiatrist Atsuko Chiba is effecting rapid cures of schizophrenia. Using devices developed by colleague Kosaku Tokita, a grotesquely obese and child-like genius, Atsuko enters patients’ dreams and participates in them, and she and Tokita have been short-listed for the Nobel Prize. But for reasons of professional jealousy, hubris, and…
By Jun Eishima & Yoko Taro First Published: 2020 Based on the stage drama “Project YoRHa,” YoRHA Boys recounts events that occurred before the beginning of the post-apocalyptic action role-playing game NieR:Automata. Written by bestselling novelist Jun Eishima, supervised by NieR:Automata Director Yoko Taro, and featuring artwork by acclaimed Final Fantasy illustrator Toshiyuki Itahana, this is the previously untold tale of the formation of YoRHa…
By Jun Eishima & Yoko Taro First Published: 2017 When alien forces invade with an army of Machines, the remnants of humanity must depend on Androids of their own design—the placid 2B and the excitable 9S—to survive. From: Pod 153, To: Fans of NieR Automata [ref &NieR: Automata: a Short Story Long] Question: What is a fiction collection? Affirmative: It is hypothesized that this book…
By Jun Eishima & Yoko Taro First Published: 2017 When alien forces invade with an army of Machines, the remnants of humanity must depend on Androids of their own design—the placid 2B and the excitable 9S—to survive. From: Pod 042 To: Fans of NieR:Automata Recommendation: The action to finish reading this novel. [ref & NieR:Automata—Short Story Long] Response: A novel is a story that used…
By Junichi Fujisaku First Published: 2006 The year is 2030. Advances in robotics and cyberbrain technology have transformed the world into a miraculous place where almost anything is possible – even the melding of humans and machines. In this not-too-distant future, the crimes of flesh and metal are investigated by Section 9, an elite counterterrorist squad headed by Chief Aramaki and his cyborg sidekick, Major…
By Junichi Fujisaku First Published: 2006 2030 Tokyo: While patrolling Tokyo’s post-World War III refugee zones Togusa, the newest member of Section 9, discovers that one of the most powerful cyber-criminals his squad has ever faced has plans to kill their leader, Section 9 Chief Daisuke Aramaki, in one of three stories in this collection, and it will take all of the members of Section…
By Junichi Fujisaku First Published: 2006 Since being formed as a shadow peacekeeping organization, Section 9 has faced almost countless adversaries both in the real world and in cyberspace, but none like “The Awakened,” a group of terrorists who seem to have the ability to take over the minds and bodies of almost anyone and use them to commit crimes against the state, leaving their…
By Mariko Ohara First Published: 2005 The hulking cyborg counterterrorist Batou doesn’t have a family; his electronic brain never dreams. So why did he dream the other night–and dream that he has a son?At one time, Batou had a human love for his partner, the legendary Major, before he witnessed her transfiguration into something beyond humanity. Now he has only his job, and his beloved…
By Shingo Fujisaki First Published: 2012 It is 2071, and Mars is being slowly terraformed by many nations often cooperating in an uneasy truce that reflects tensions back on Earth. The water of the polar ice cap, the most important resource for all the Mars colonies, is jointly controlled by the US, China, Japan and Russia, and doled out to the second-tier colonizing groups (Europe,…
By Shingo Fujisaki First Published: 1999 It is 2071, and Mars is being slowly terraformed by many nations often cooperating in an uneasy truce that reflects tensions back on Earth. The water of the polar ice cap, the most important resource for all the Mars colonies, is jointly controlled by the US, China, Japan and Russia, and doled out to the second-tier colonizing groups (Europe,…
By Natsuhiko Kyogoku First Published: 2001 In the near future, humans communicate almost exclusively through monitors connected to online networks–face-to-face meetings are rare and the surveillance state nearly all-powerful. Even school children are only allowed to meet in the flesh in designated communication centers. So when a serial killer starts slaughtering junior high students, the crackdown is harsh. And despite all the safeguards, the killer’s…
By Project Itoh First Published: 2008 “IN A PERFECT WORLD, THERE IS NO ESCAPE.” In the future, Utopia has finally been achieved thanks to medical nanotechnology and a powerful ethic of social welfare and mutual consideration. This perfect world isn’t that perfect though, and three young girls stand up to totalitarian kindness and super-medicine by attempting suicide via starvation. The plan fails, but one of…
By Taiyp Fujii First Published: 2018 Until he escaped, he had been called “Sample B #3,” but he had never liked this name. That would surprise them—that he could feel one way or another about it. He was designed to reshape himself based on whatever life forms he ingested; he was not made to think, and certainly not to assume the shape of a repair…
By Taiyp Fujii First Published: 2014 “The global war on terror has a new front—the very edge of outer space.” In the year 2020, Kazumi Kimura, proprietor of shooting star forecast website Meteor News, notices some suspicious orbiting space debris. Rumors spread online that the debris is actually an orbital weapon targeting the International Space Station. Halfway across the world, at NORAD, Staff Sergeant Daryl…
By Taiyp Fujii First Published: 2013 In a future where reality has been augmented and biology itself has been hacked, the world’s food supply is genetically modified, superior, and vulnerable. When gene mapper Hayashida discovers that his custom rice plant has experienced a dysgenic collapse, he suspects sabotage. Hayashida travels Asia to find himself in Ho Chi Minh City with hired-gun hacker Kitamura at his…
By Tow Ubukata First Published: 2003 MOMENT OF TRUTH! Picking up from where book 2 left off, the final plans to finish Shell off in court have been made by Easter, Balot, and Oeufcoque. But in order to execute those plans, they must set foot into Shell’s domain: the BlueEgg Casino in the center of Mardock City, and find the chip where his memories lie.…
By Tow Ubukata First Published: 2003 PLACE YOUR BETS! Picking up where we left off at the end of book one, Rune-Balot is weeping and trying to save both herself and a severely injured Oeufcoque from Shell’s assassin Boiled. Luckily for her, Doctor Easter finally shows up in the Humpty Dumpty – a special militarized vehicle made for protecting those in Welfare cases if their…
By Tow Ubukata First Published: 2003 Rune-Balot is a down-and-out teen prostitute in Mardock City. One day, she’s picked up by an ambitious casino manager named Shell who gives her everything she could want. Renewed by a false innocence, a false past, and now the false life Shell has given her, Balot feels grateful. However, she can’t help but be curious about why he’s done…
By Tow Ubukata First Published: 2003 Why me? It was to be the last thought a young prostitute, Balot, would ever have…as a human anyway. Taken in by a devious gambler named Shell, she became a slave to his cruel desires and would have been killed by his hand if not for a private investigator and his self-aware Universal Tool, Oefcoque. Now a cyborg, Balot…
Hiroshi Yamamoto First Published: 2006 EVEN A MACHINE HAS TALES TO TELL. In a world where humans are a minority and androids have created their own civilization, a wandering storyteller meets the beautiful android Ibis. She tells him seven stories of human/android interaction in order to reveal the secret behind humanity’s fall. The story takes place centuries in the future, where the diminished populations of…
Hiroshi Sakurazaka First Published: 2005 CTRL + ALT + DEL YOUR LIFE! Etsuro Sakagami is a college freshman who simply drifts through life, but when he logs on to the combat MMO Versus Town, he becomes Tetsuo, a karate champ on his way to becoming the most powerful martial artist around. While his relationship with new classmate Fumiko goes nowhere, Etsuro spends his days and…
Hiroshi Sakurazaka First Published: 2004 Rating: Excellent “There’s one thing worse than dying. It’s coming back to do it again and again…” When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die…
By Haruka Takachiho First Published: 2018 Yuri and Kay have cornered the largest and most lethal organized crime syndicate in the galaxy–the infamous Lucifa family! But when the shooting starts and things start to explode (as they usually do) space and time is ripped open. The Dirty Pair are hurled into a strange new world and right into unimaginable adventure. Will they survive? Of course.…
By Haruka Takachiho First Published: 2007 Who should have infiltrated the world of heroic fantasy, but Yuri and Kay! And now they have become kings of one country!? Yuri and Kay have gone undercover at The Barbarian Age, the super-popular theme park that has turned an entire continent into a virtual game world! By way of the latest in simulation and holographic technology, the pair…
By Haruka Takachiho First Published: 2006 Yuri and Kay have gone undercover to investigate The Barbarian Age, a popular theme park that uses the latest in virtual and holographic technology to turn a whole continent to a world of heroic fantasy! Dirty Pair in Sword and Sorcery!? Problem is, there a criminal organization has infilrated the operation and now its up up to Yuri and…
By Haruka Takachiho First Published: 1997 This time around, Yuri and Kei have been dispatched to planet Amuneal. Because the former dictator there ruled by a declaration of terror, he was overthrown in a revolution. Called a cold-hearted emperor, he was executed and a new government has now been established. The Pair’s mission is to remove the last vestiges of continuing defiant resistance from the…
By Haruka Takachiho First Published: 1992 At the galaxy’s premier girl’s school (the St. Elmo Institute), developed by the Rotchester Foundation, a strange disease has appeared! One by one, beautiful young women are succumbing mysteriously to the illness. So, the Foundation requested the WWWA’s assistance… dispatched were criminal trouble consultants with no connection to the epidemic and such, once again the unconnected Dirty Pair’s Yuri…
By Haruka Takachiho First Published: 1987 Receiving a request to search out the killer criminal high-class sex robot “Akumeroid” from the mayor of Canary City on the ocean planet Dolroy, the Dirty Pair’s Yuri and Kei turn up at the scene. The “Crushers”, charged with planetary reconstruction work, are also staying there by invitation of the planet’s second-generation governorship. Meanwhile, an atmosphere of unrest floats…
By Haruka Takachiho First Published: 1985 Yuri and Kei are sent to the mining planet Chakra, the disgrace of the galaxy, because one of the mining engineers was attacked by an unknown animal. Although he was attacked, the wounds healed in three days. On Chakra, which is complicated by the ulterior motives of its three leaders–the mining owner, the mayor, and the preacher– unexpected facts…