Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi

Synopsis

The time is the present. One day in the summer holidays. Sasshi and Arumi, who live in the Abenobashi shopping arcade, in an old working-class part of Osaka, are childhood friends.

The old-fashioned arcade has the misfortune of being cleared out for redevelopment, and Sasshi’s home, where his family ran a bathhouse, has been torn down too. Sasshi is stunned to hear that Arumi’s family is also thinking of moving to Hokkaido. But there was Grandpa Masa (Arumi’s grandfather), who stubbornly opposed it.

In the middle of all this, the two learn by chance that the four divine beasts that guard the four sides of the arcade are enshrined in each other’s shops. That seems to have some deep connection with the Seimei Shrine at the edge of the arcade…? But Grandpa Masa breaks, in an accident, the “Pelican”, the symbol of Arumi’s shop (in fact Suzaku, one of the four divine beasts).

On the night the eviction is finally settled, strange things began to happen.

The next day, Sasshi and Arumi stray from the Seimei Shrine into a strange world… It was… a magical shopping arcade, completely unlike the arcade they know, where common sense does not apply at all!? Why on earth?? How can they get back to their own world!?