RD Sennou Chousashitsu

Set in A.D. 2061, a new, more secure information network called the Material Network (or “Metal”) has taken over human society. However, aberrations begin to crop up as individuals chafe against the rigid system, and so-called “cyber divers” are dispatched to investigate these incidents.

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2061 AD. Fifty years have passed since mankind developed the Network society. It was anticipated that this new infrastructure would realize a utopia where people connected with each other at the level of consciousness. However, new social problems such as personal data leaks and proliferation of manipulated information began to surface. Nevertheless, people still relied on the Network to exchange information, and proved unable to opt to abandon it.
In due course, a new Network realm with more effective security measures was developed. This was called Meta Real Network, usually abbreviated as “the Metal.”
The Metal accommodated personal memory data within protected virtual stand-alone organic cyber enclaves called bubble shells and eventually pervaded the everyday lives of people.
However, people gradually learned to release and explode their instincts within the secure environment of the Metal. The unleashed instincts pushed each individual’s consciousness to drown in the sea of information and to be exposed to the pressures of desire. Meanwhile, norms and regulations continued to bind their real world lives. Thus, strange friction between the two worlds began to manifest themselves as aberrations beyond the bounds of the imaginable.
Experts who challenged the deep sea of the Metal to investigate and decipher such aberrations were called cyber divers.
This is a story of a cyber diver, Masamichi Haru, who investigates the incidents that lie between Reality and the Metal.

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Fifty years ago, Haru was diving in the sea as part of a scientific experiment; but something went terribly wrong, and a shockwave both decimated the area, and caused Haru to slip into a coma. In the present, Haru awakens as an old man into a vastly-changed society. People, no longer content with reality, have turned to a metaphysical reality called the Metal to fulfill their desires – and it’s up to “cyber divers” to save these souls when something goes wrong. With the help of the cheerful girl Minamo and the android Holon, Haru strives to become a cyber diver, discover the secrets of the Metal and ultimately discover the reason why his life has slipped away.