Informatii

Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna (スパイラル～推理の絆, Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna?) is a mystery manga which was later turned into an anime by TV Tokyo.

Spiral is a shonen manga by Kyou Shirodaira (writer) and Eita Mizuno (art). It was published in Monthly Shonen Gangan, animated into a 25 episode series, and dubbed into English by FUNimation. Both the anime and manga are completed, the manga lasting fifteen volumes. The anime is at best an incomplete work in that it ceased production before any of the mysteries of the story were resolved. The anime has also debuted on American TV in a syndicated FUNimation Channel programming block airing on CoLours TV beginning on Monday, June 19, 2006.

Spiral is a mystery story the focal point of which is the nature of the Blade Children, those who have cat-like eyes and are missing a seventh rib bone.

The Spiral manga was licensed by TokyoPop, but was later dropped. A new manga publisher, Yen Press, has picked up Spiral; the first volume was released in October 2007.

[edit] Background story
Ayumu Narumi's older brother Kiyotaka, a famous detective and pianist, disappears without a trace. The only clue as to his whereabouts is the "Blade Children", the only words Ayumu managed to catch in a final phone call from Kiyotaka. Two years later, a row of murders and incidents begin, all related to the Blade Children. Together with the infamous (and only) school journalist, Hiyono Yuizaki, Ayumu tries to figure out their destiny and the mystery shrouding their past.

[edit] Blade Children
The Blade children are the mystery of the series/manga. They are cursed children that few know about and are being pursued by so-called Hunters. One of their main facial features of the Blade Children is their cat-like glowing eyes. They are also missing a seventh rib bone on the right of the rib cage. All their fathers are unknown.

The story presented in the anime never reaches a point where the nature of the Blade Children is explained. The anime only offers a comparison to Cuckoo birds. The implication being that something not human deposited the Blade Children in human "nests" to be raised, similar to how Cuckoo birds deposit their eggs in the nests of other birds. The anime also suggests that Cuckoos go destructively and violently crazy toward the end of their lives.

The manga explains why the Blade Children are cursed and their origins:

A man called Yaiba Mizushiro was born sixteen years before Narumi's older brother, Kiyotaka. He was born with one rib missing from his right ribcage. Like Kiyotaka, he excelled at everything he chose to put his mind to and was the darling of the world for the first twenty-odd years of his life. When he turned twenty-three, Yaiba started his own secret society, which swiftly grew to gigantic proportions, able to manipulate world events. Citing boredom, Yaiba initiated the "Blade Children Project".
Using in vitro techniques, he seeded his DNA and created a total of eighty children. These children all had a rib removed at birth to signify them being of Yaiba's blood. They were cursed in the same way Yaiba was: they would grow up as geniuses in their own right, but one day their blood would awaken murderously and take over their self-will, becoming avatars of Yaiba.

Yaiba's organization was split into three camps over the Blade Children Project:

Savers. The first group, Savers, were supportive of Yaiba and desired to create more Blade Children. With the failure of the project, they sought protect the fact the future had not been determined yet.
Watchers. The second group, Watchers, were neutral. They wanted to observe the first batch of Children and gather results first.
Hunters. The last camp were called the Hunters. They were against Yaiba, and tried numeroase times to assassinate him. Yaiba had the devil's luck, and everything failed, from bullets to bombs. With Yaiba's eventual death, they continued their work to eliminate the Blade Children because of their potentially dangerous natures.
When Yaiba was thirty-six, one Japanese man came out of nowhere and easily killed him: Kiyotaka Narumi. He was the counterpart to Yaiba: if Yaiba had been a destroyer, Kiyotaka was a creator. Yaiba had intended to remake the world literally in his own image; with his death, the Blade Children project was halted. Kiyotaka had his hands full trying to stop the Hunters from killing all the Children, while trying to check the Savers at the same time.

The counterpart metaphor does not end there. Since Kiyotaka had a brother who was like him but not him (another creator), Yaiba also had a sibling: Hizumi Mizushiro, Ayumu's mirror image, the one who will awaken the blood of the remaining Blade Children.

The prequel, "Spiral - Alive" reveals that the eighty Blade Children are kept under surveillance by the Hunters, Savers, and Watchers. Of those eighty, thirteen have been completely erased from the list of Blade Children held by the three factions. The one responsible for this had been a neutral party and committed suicide after accomplishing this. The only information only the thirteen missing children is contained in the Mikanagi File, named after Professor Isabel Mikanagi, who was responsible for the erasure the thirteen children from the list of eighty Blade Children. With Professor Mikanagi's death, the file was enstrusted to her associates, Amanae Fusai and his wife, who disappeared with their daughter Yukine and one of the Blade Children, Charlotte. When one of the Hunters and another former associate of Mikanagi, Professor Sheffield, caused Charlotte's blood to awaken murderously, the child stabbed Yukine and caused the deaths of her adoptive parents. Yukine survived and currently holds the only record of the Mikanagi File within her memory - no other concrete records of the file exists.
Spiral - Alive
After the completion of Spiral - Suiri no Kizuna, author Kyou Shirodaira and artist Eita Mizuno began Spiral - Alive, a prequel and spin off of the original series. It is currently on-going. Several characters from the original series return, including Kiyotaka, Kousuke, Ryoko, Kanone, and Madoka.

Spiral - Alive is centred around a girl named Imari Sekiguchi, who falls in love with Shirou Sawamura, a boy who wants to become a detective. However, before Imari can confess her love to him, he unexpectedly quits school in order to pursue Kiyotaka Narumi. Things become complicated when she discovers he is currently dating Yukine Amanae, a beautiful girl at school, and both are unaware that Amanae is actually a reluctant murderer. Meanwhile, Toru Saiki, a member of the Police Department's First Investigations Department, investigates the mysterious murders connected with Amanae and is unwilling to bring in Kiyotaka, believing that Tokyo's greatest detective is more demonic than divine. The three become involved in events that are mysteriously connected to the Blade Children.