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Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi
Abenobashi Cover.jpg
North American DVD cover of the first volume of Magical☆Shopping Arcade Abenobashi
アベノ橋魔法☆商店街
(Abenobashi Mahō Shōtengai)
Genre Supernatural, Adventure, Comedy
Manga
Written by Satoru Akahori
Illustrated by Kenji Tsuruta
Published by Kodansha
English publisher
Demographic Seinen
Magazine Afternoon
Original run September 2001August 2002
Volumes 2
Anime television series
Directed by Masayuki Kojima
Produced by Hiroyuki Yamaga
Masafumi Fukui
Taiji Suinou
Toshimichi Ootsuki
Written by Hiroyuki Yamaga
Satoru Akahori
Music by Shirō Sagisu
Studio Gainax
Madhouse
Licensed by
AEsir Holdings (2003-present)
Original network Kids Station, SUN, KBS, tvk, TVS
English network
Original run April 4, 2002June 27, 2002
Episodes 13
Wikipe-tan face.svg

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (アベノ橋魔法☆商店街, Abenobashi Mahō Shōtengai?) is a Japanese anime television series created by Gainax. The supernatural comedy drama is directed by Hiroyuki Yamaga.

The series premiered April 4, 2002 on Kids Station. It was licensed in North America by ADV Films. A manga adaptation, authored by Satoru Akahori, was published in English by Tokyopop; the Tokyopop version of the manga is out of print as of August 31, 2009.

During the Heian Era, Abe no Seimei was a close childhood friend of a noble named Masayuki, and his wife, Mune. While he was away from the palace, Masayuki often asked Seimei to stay by his wife's side, guarding her and keeping her company. However, during the time they spent together, Mune and Seimei fell in love and became increasingly romantically involved. Unbeknownst to them, Masayuki soon learned of the affair, and became overcome with grief and jealousy. One day while Seimei was on a trip to Kyoto, Masayuki snapped, murdered Mune and committed suicide. Guided by a premonition, Seimei rushed back to his hometown only to find that he was too late. Overcome with guilt, he decided to perform a forbidden Onmyō ritual that would allow him to resurrect the dead by transferring himself and the bodies of Masayuki and Mune into a completely different world where they were still alive. In doing so, Seimei soon found himself as "Mr. Abe" in mid-20th-century Osaka, where Mune Imamiya and Masayuki Asahina were pre-existing residents of this alternate world. Now, Masayuki was an ambitious, but largely unsuccessful young man who had enlisted Mr. Abe's permission to build the Abenobashi Shopping Arcade. He was also madly in love with Mune (夢音), a local girl whom he tried to woo (with little success) at every possible occasion. It was not long, however, before Mune fell in love with Abe, constantly pursuing him and offering him a home-made lunch. Abe tried for a time to resist her advances, but eventually he was no longer able to contain his feelings, and made love with Mune in his apartment. Unbeknownst to them, an instantly-jealous Masayuki accidentally discovered the truth. The next night he became staggeringly drunk and invited Abe to meet him at the Abeno Shrine, planning to murder him with a hidden butcher knife when he arrived. At first unsuspecting, Abe arrived on the scene, but once he saw the decrepitly drunk Masa he knew what was afoot. He promptly bid Masayuki farewell, then disappeared, going back to his job in the Heian Era, leaving a pregnant Mune behind him; her child is Sasshi's father.


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