Sentan Island is not safe, and the moment you realize that is the moment the show stops pretending it is. Akiyuki's transformation into Xam'd is not a power-up fantasy, it's a slow, body-horror rupture that pulls him further from his father with every use. The show understands that the real war is not between governments but between a kid trying to stay human and the thing he's becoming, one crystalline shard at a time.
Akiyuki Takehara lives with his mother Fusa on Sentan Island, a calm place in the Yuden Sea that has stayed out of the war between the Northern Government and the Southern Continent Free Zone. His father Ryuzo, the town doctor, lives apart from them, though father and son remain close. One day Akiyuki rides a bus alongside a mysterious white-haired girl, and when he reaches school he and his friends Haru and Furuichi are caught in an explosion. A strange light from the blast enters his arm and causes him terrible pain, and the white-haired girl then leads him to the power of Xam'd. Transformed, he goes on a rampage until a red-haired girl named Nakiami calms him and brings him aboard her postal vessel. Now he must learn to master his abilities and turn them against the Humanforms, the Northern Government's newest weapons. As he travels the world by boat, Akiyuki makes friends among the passengers and holds on to the hope of going home. The series mixes action with science fiction.
