Set in the fictional city of Lux, the story focuses on Ichise, a stoic prize fighter who loses an arm and a leg after offending an unnamed figure.

Written by Chiaki J. Konaka, with original character design by Yoshitoshi Abe, the series was produced by Yasuyuki Ueda and was broadcast on Fuji Television and its affiliates from April to September 2003.

Through his connection to Doc, Ichise becomes entangled in the strife between the three major factions battling for control of Lux: the Organo, a crime syndicate of "professionals" who are the closest thing to a government in the city of Lux; the Salvation Union, a populist group that foments a revolution against the Organo's rule; and the Raccan, a collection of young itinerants with texhnolyzed limbs who wield them as weapons for personal gain.

Aboveground, Doc and Ichise stumble into an empty movie theater, where they watch a newsreel which explains that, centuries ago, the people of the surface, plagued by terrorism and violence, rounded up the "undesirables" of the society and sent them underground to build and live in the city of Lux.

Doc, driven to despair by the discovery that the "theonormals" of the surface world have no interest in affecting her future, commits suicide in a hotel room.

Ichise beheads Tooyama to spare him the horrific fate of being rooted to the ground to vegetate as a useless trunk devoid of life and reason.

A flashback details how the citizens of Lux fell to the onslaught of the "Shapes", with only a few scattered groups of human survivors still clinging to a forlorn hope of salvation.

While Ichise makes his way through the city, following phantom images of Ran and encountering former colleagues who are now 'rooted' to the ground as "Shapes", the power systems that kept up the artificial light begin to fail, plunging Lux into darkness.

Dying, he accepts the inevitability of his end, as the artificial limbs suddenly come to life and briefly flash a crude drawing of a flower which Ran gave him long time ago.