Ever since a cosmic phone call led five literal young goddesses — Belldandy, Urd, Skuld, and, like occasional vowels, Peorth and Lind — to live in college student Keiichi's residence, his personal life has been turned upside down, sideways, and sometimes even into strange dimensions! Despite the otherworldly situations he's gotten into, Keiichi's everyday joy is still found as an engineer and mechanic. And as Chihiro's training retreat by the seashore continues, the two of them put that shared passion into practice by building two bikes based on different philosophies, with the help of her old high-school friends, Eri and Tasuga — plus (or maybe minus) the help of Urd and Skuld!

Escaping the port city of Vritannis is no easy task, for even the finest ship is useless if it can't be reached, and a horde of Kushan monsters stalks the city's docks. Led by a powerful necromancer who has mastered both the elements and the monsters of the deep, this hideous brigade may be too much for Guts the Black Swordsman and his companions to handle, even if Guts and Schierke are able to join forces and control the awful wrath of the Berserker armor. And will it even matter, if the Kushan emperor makes Guts an offer he can't refuse?

Gage Wallace's life falls apart when, after breaking up with his girlfriend and having a heart-to-heart with his television set, he finds himself framed for blowing up his apartment building — the latest in a string of deadly bombings in this doomed suburb. Neighboring Fat City fell into the river during an earthquake eight years ago, and ever since, these hapless ex-urbanites have been waiting for their own town to sink. But now their hopes are renewed by a talking rat, whose drunken ramblings are taken as prophecy of a better time ahead. Gage finds himself pursued by well-intentioned friends, bored kids who see Gage's plight as an extension of their video-game fantasies, and the bloodthirsty Bald Suzie, a local firearms enthusiast whose brother was killed in a recent explosion. Meanwhile, Gage's girlfriend uncovers the secret that plunged the once-idealistic teen into his apathetic twenties, involving an anarchist cable-access show and its mutant host — the hero and mentor that Gage betrayed and left to die at the hands of an angry mob.