Ikebukuro is a living thing made of gossip, and you're piecing together the city's skeleton from a hundred different angles at once. Every character thinks they're the protagonist of their own story, then realizes they're just a side effect in someone else's. The Black Rider is real, the gangs are real, the urban legends are real, and by episode 8 you stop asking which one matters and start seeing how they all collide.

Mikado has long wanted a busier, more exciting life, so when a childhood friend he has not seen in years invites him to school in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, he makes the move. On his very first day he spots the Black Rider, an urban legend said to have no head beneath her helmet, speeding through town on a black motorcycle that sometimes neighs like a horse. His friend Masaomi warns him about people best avoided, including a brutally strong man in a bartender suit, a sharp information broker and a mysterious gang called the Dollars. As supernatural events spread across the district, ordinary residents like Mikado are drawn into the turmoil alongside the city's more eccentric figures.