The novel has been turned into a live action feature film, a manga, an anime television series, and a stage musical.

It primarily follows crime fiction writer Tatsumi Sekiguchi and news magazine editor Morihiko Toriguchi as they investigate, with the help of onmyōji Akihiko Chūzenji, a series of unusual crimes that take place in Musashino and Mitaka.

On the night they are to leave, Kanako is hit by the train on which Tokyo police detective Shutarō Kiba is traveling.

Kanako is unaware of her true parentage, but she is the only heir to the fortune of Yōkō Shibata, who appointed Amemiya as her guardian.

Toriguchi obtains a list, labeled "Onbako-sama", of believers in a local cult led by Hyōei Terada, a self-proclaimed onmyōji.

Sekiguchi notices two names on the list: Yoriko's mother, and fiction writer Shunkō Kubo.

Chūzenji recounts the series of events, beginning with Yoriko pushing Kanako onto the train tracks.

Since Mimasaka could keep only Kanako's head alive mechanically, Suzaki could easily stage her kidnapping and demand a ransom from Shibata.

The novel was turned into a 2007 live action movie,[1] directed by Masato Harada and starring Shinichi Tsutsumi, Hiroshi Abe, Kippei Shiina, Hiroyuki Miyasako, and Rena Tanaka.

Mitsuki Tanimura won Best Supporting Actress at the 2008 Osaka Film Festival for her portrayal of Yoriko Kusumoto.

The opening and ending themes of the anime are "Lost in Blue" and "NAKED LOVE" by the Japanese rock group Nightmare.

The original material includes: The anime distributor VAP released the Blu-ray disc of the television series on May 22, 2009 with a 16-minute OVA extra exclusive to the Blu-ray, revealing the investigative notes that Atsuko wrote in episode 6 about the brutal dismembering incidents in the main story.

[2][3] The manga adaptation features art by Aki Shimizu and a script by Natsuhiko Kyogoku himself, and began serialization in 2007.