The show compresses 43 volumes into 36 episodes and it shows, but what survives the crash landing is pure character archaeology. You watch broken people, a kid with a death curse, a man running from his own puppets, a woman erasing herself from existence, actually heal across the series. The ending pays off every single person you've learned to care about, which is rare enough that it stops mattering how fast you got there.

Masaru Saiga inherits his late father's vast fortune and immediately becomes a target, as relatives who want the money will go as far as murder to get it. The men chasing him turn out to be wooden puppets with superhuman strength. Narumi Katou, a man with a rare illness whose seizures ease only when he sees someone laugh, runs into the fleeing boy while at a part-time job and steps in to help, but he finds himself outmatched by these enemies. Then Shirogane, a white-haired girl who calls herself Masaru's guardian, arrives from France and draws the puppet Arlequin from the boy's suitcase to fight back. From there, the lives of three people from very different backgrounds become entangled as they dig into an old story of love and betrayal and an age-old war between humans and puppets, in an adventure driven by mystery.