Kobayashi Yasuko

Set in a world where, no matter what the circumstances, everyone who kills someone is themselves sentenced to death. Those on death row are imprisoned in the "Six Prison Districts," where a strange economic system has emerged. One day, a steam train sends a new batch of prisoners to one such district, as it does every day. A man named Yūshin, who calls himself a chaplain and bears priestly garb, also disembarks, and encounters a man who bears a sword that is called Kunoji.

Shou Sorimachi is a seemingly ordinary young man who lives with his friends in a share house, but he is actually an experimental humanoid organism called an "Amazon" who escaped from the research institute of Nozama Pharmacy two years ago. When their urge, suppressed by the medicine given from the bracelet, awakens, the curtain of tragedy rises.

This story introduces Takeru who is an average Japanese highschool girl raised in a Buddhist convent by nuns. She has been experiencing reoccurring nightmares about the Witchblade calling out to her. This is due to the secret that the temple houses within, the Witchblade sealed inside a box. Furthermore, her lineage keeps an unknown connection with the mystic artifact and the folklore of the Oni, hence explaining Takeru's strong attraction to the gauntlet which is locally called Oni no te (鬼の手, "Hand of Oni"). Ultimately, Takeru's life suffers a drastic change when she becomes the next bearer of the Witchblade due to some circumstances that force her to randomly encounter it.