Kids vanishing into augmented reality sounds like a premise, until you realize the show is actually about what happens when the virtual world becomes more real than the actual one, and whether that's always a bad thing. The first half meanders through school mysteries and comedy that feels disposable. Then it pivots, suddenly every throwaway detail matters, every character's loneliness has weight, and you understand the show was building something about growing up in a world where the digital and physical have already merged. By the end, it's asking whether connection itself has changed, and whether losing yourself in another layer of reality is tragedy or survival. A show that respects its audience enough to make them wait for the real story to arrive.

Yuuko arrives in Daikoku in 2026, a city where augmented reality glasses let kids interact with a digital layer overlaying the physical world. Her grandmother runs an agency looking into children who seem to have vanished from the real world into the city's virtual space, and rumors of disappearances hang over the town. Cyberpets go missing too, including Yuuko's own dog Densuke, which draws her into Coil, a group of local kids who track down and deal with corruption in the virtual world. Among the city's young hackers is Isako, an abrasive girl who hunts computer viruses called illegals and whose aims may be sinister. The result is a sci-fi mystery with adventure, comedy and drama, built around what is really happening beneath Daikoku's digital surface.