A broken guy running from his own failure gets roped into a relay marathon by someone who sees something in him he can't see in himself. What starts as ten strangers in a falling-apart apartment becomes the only family any of them have. By the final race, you're not watching a sports anime anymore, you're watching people choose each other, over and over, across 23 episodes that never waste a single moment on anyone who doesn't matter.

Kakeru, once the star runner at his high school, is fleeing a shoplifting chase when he literally runs into Haiji, a fellow student at his university who offers him a room in a shabby old apartment building. Having gambled away his deposit playing mahjong, Kakeru reluctantly accepts. The building is actually a dorm for the Kansei University Track Club, and Haiji has recruited him for something massive: the Hakone Ekiden, one of Japan's most prominent college relay marathons. The problem is that every other resident is a total beginner at running, and none of them want any part of the plan. With just a few months left, fourth-year Haiji has to talk his housemates into chasing his dream. The show balances sports with character-driven drama, as a pair of athletes kept away from the sport they love find their way back to it while building a team around them.