Her detention saves lives.
In the afterlife, people go to school to purify their soul so that they can be reincarnated. Riyon is one of these deceased, though she has no intention of spending great effort into her purification and plays Go with an old Guru instead. So, as a corrective measure, the principal sends her down as a Spirit Guardian to purify the soul of someone who has been overly corrupted and lost his Guardian.
Limiting her stay by choosing a person who is bound to die soon, she realizes she has picked possibly the most lonely and bullied person in Japan: Prime Minister Souichiro Kasuga.
Hito Hitori Futari is a seinen manga is penned by Tsutomu Takahashi, which was serialized in Weekly Young Jump from 2011 to 2013.
This work contains following tropes:
- Author Tract: Boo, nuclear energy! Grr! Hiss! Although this was just after Fukushima.
- Berserk Button: After a lifetime where their own psychic abilities brought nothing but despair and suffering for Kubo and his sister, seeing Prime Minister Kasuga using them and the influence of a guardian spirit seemingly entirely for his own benefit with no apparent downside makes Kubo furious.
- Because You Were Nice to Me The reason Kubo chooses to throw in with Daiki is that, even after seeing that Kubo can use his powers to kill people, Daiki sees Kubo as an ill person rather than some kind of monster and was sincere in his promise to help Kubo and his sister.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Happens to anyone who's possessed by evil energy, most prominently Kubo and his sister.
- Break Them by Talking: Kubo tries to shake Kasuga's will by waking his son Hajime from his coma and having him speak accusations against him, but as these accusations are clearly from Kubo ramping up Hajime's negative feelings to eleven, Kasuga sees through it, though it still affects him to hear it.
- Brought Down to Normal: Kubo is ultimately exorcised of his evil spirits by Riyon and Kasuga and returns to a normal life. It's unclear how much he remembers of his time while possessed.
- Cast from Lifespan: The white, evil-erasing balls that Riyon can generate come from the life energy of the person she's guarding, so if she uses them, she shortens his lifespan. In the end, fighting and purifying Kubo burns through almost all of them.
- Combined Energy Attack: But not a very nice one. When Kasuga announces his denuclearization platform, Riyon shows him that the collective negative feelings this statement has generated have formed a massive blob of evil spirit energy that would be possessing him right now if she weren't protecting him.
- Curse: By opening a path to the Dark World and into a person through their weak points and sending evil spirits to possess someone Kubo can overwhelm their capacity to house spirits and their guardian spirit and inflict death upon them. He demonstrates this for Daiki by inflicting a sudden fatal case of advanced esophageal cancer on one of his underlings.
- Daddy's Girl: Riyon was one in life and sees Kasuga as something like a replacement. Kubo uses her affection toward her still-living father in an effort to manipulate and weaken her.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Kubo has one. He and his sister's powers only ever scared them and caused them harm, and the inspector who was his only proper father figure and who showed him unconditional trust and affection ends up dying.
- Deal with the Devil: Daiki was always aware that Kubo was dangerous, but his ambition to become Prime Minister was such that he was willing to work with Kubo, even after Kubo warns him that he can't quit halfway. He really should've listened.
- Demonic Possession: Kubo's curse is a form of this, overwhelming a person with evil spirits until their body gives out, usually in the form of a complication of some sort. And Kubo's chock-full of evil spirits himself.
- Despair Event Horizon: Kubo, teetering on the brink, sneaks into the hospital and visits the murderer he'd been helping his inspector friend track down, who had previously killed said inspector and attempted to kill himself. Seeing that he's on life support, Kubo uses his power to rouse the man, looking to see what would happen to him in the future and if he could be redeemed. Seeing nothing, and realizing that the only thing he had never been able to see was his own future, Kubo realizes he's destined to kill this man...and does so. Afterwards, he wearily laments that there's nothing left for him but the Dark World.
- Determinator: Even after his weariness and despair caused him to forget his original goal, Kasuga refused to simply quit as Prime Minister. After Riyon manages to save his life, he remembers: he wanted to make Japan a better place.
- Don't Create a Martyr: After Kasuga drinks the radioactive water, Daiki and Kubo reflect upon the fact that there's literally nothing they can do to beat him. Oh, Kubo could kill him, but people would just think he died of the water and his denuclearization push would get even more heat.
- Elemental Fusion: In the final arc, Kubo is able to fuse the radioactive energy at Fukushima with the malice he manipulates and create a massive storm designed to attack every virtuous person with gaps in their heart within Kantou. It's even powerful enough to start eating away at Riyon.
- First-Episode Twist: Riyon is the guardian of the Prime Minister of Japan.
- Guardian Angel: Everyone (allegedly) has a guardian spirit who "possesses" them and follows them throughout life. Mostly their job is to provide subconscious support and gentle inspiration through the subconscious, purifying a person's soul and keeping it free of corruption and despair, though they also keep a person generally safe and healthy as well. It seems that certain conditions can cause afterlife spirits to bail out on their charges however.
- Hell: Existence is basically layered, and just below the Earth lies The Dark World, where souls corrupted by evil and despair fall to. It appears those spirits subconsciously remember having been above this place and seek to enter through the gaps/weak points in a person's soul opened by things like misery and loneliness. To a Guardian Spirit, these spirits appear as black balls, and part of their duty to to clear them out of a person's head while making sure to keep the gaps closed.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Informed that he will die in less than 500 days, but knowing that he'll be protected by Riyon 'til then, Kasuga goes to the Fukushima nuclear power plant, stands before the rod cooling pool, then divests himself of his mask and protective equipment. Giving a speech about how people forget simple images and put them in the past, he resolves that he'll show Japan's people—with his own body—what would happen to them if there were more accidents like Fukushima...and then the Prime Minister of Japan drinks a glassful of water from the pool.
- Upon learning that by using up his life energy, Riyon will be able to purify Kubo, Kasuga agrees without hesitation.
- Izumi Jyun, after being blinded by Kubo is then possessed by him, with Kubo taking over his body, magnifying his despair and manipulating him into a suicidal position on the edge of the hospital roof. Daiki, who Kubo had been infusing with darkness, catch his father before he falls, but is being pulled over, with Kubo's influence trying to get the old man to kill his own son. With a last admonition to his son to join Kasuga for the sake of the Izumi family's honor, Jyun twists out of Daiki's hand. As Daiki watches in horror, viewers see that the Black Eyes of Evil Daiki had been developing thanks to Kubo's influence have been cleared away.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Riyon has a number of abilities she's unaware of. Turns out attending classes in afterlife school is a good idea, who knew?
- Internal Reveal: Riyon eventually reveals the truth about Kasuga's lifespan (at this point 488 days) to him. Although shocked at first, he realizes that he hasn't been told that he'll die tomorrow, and that knowing for certain when he's kicking the bucket means that he still has 488 days to get things done.
- Like You Were Dying: Souichirou Kasuga starts taking his job as Prime Minister a lot more seriously after he learns his deathday.
- Mind Probe:
- Riyon can enter people and see the state of their mind and guardian spirit.
- Following his stroke and subsequent rescue by Riyon, Kasuga (to his shock) develops the ability to read peoples' minds by touching them.
- Kubo can do this without touching people.
- Mundane Afterlife: You go to school.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Somewhere around the point where his father was blinded and seven Special Police officers were killed as collateral damage in Kubo's attack on Kasuga, Daiki started to realize that working with the guy who could kill people with spirits of despair wasn't a top-flight idea. Unfortunately, Kubo was serious enough about that no-going-back thing that he'd been putting will-sapping black balls of misery into Daiki's body that were really messing him up.
- Parental Substitute:
- Kubo senses that due to being raised by a single father and regretting her early death, Riyon has shifted her dedication as a daughter to Kasuga..
- After his sister accidentally killed their mother by infusing her with darkness, then killed herself, Kubo was taken care of by a detective who was murdered just before formally adopting him.
- Late in the story, Kasuga tells Daiki that his decision to keep going caused his son to be killed by Kubo, and Daiki's deal with Kubo ended up killing Daiki's father, and thus he wants the two of them to regard each other as father and son. Daiki is moved to tears.
- Past-Life Memories: You remember them when you're in the afterworld, but forget them temporarily when you reincarnate.
- Psychic Powers: Kubo and his sister had/have them. Kubo could see peoples' past and future, and put darkness into them. His younger sister was even more powerful, with Kubo describing her as living between Earth and the Dark World.
- Reincarnation: The main goal of "afterlife school" is to ultimately be reincarnated into a new life when judged ready.
- Revenge by Proxy: Kind of. See, while a guardian spirit can protect a person from the negative emotions/energy being leveled at them, the people close to them might suffer due to the sheer amount of malice involved and end up being stricken with misfortune or injury. Note the deliberate ambiguity about whether it's physical or emotional closeness.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Clearly written shortly after the Fukushima disaster, as the platforms the revitalized Kasuga puts forward are things like decentralizing government power from Tokyo in case an earthquake occurs there and removing all nuclear power plants from the country. Kasuga's son also was in the process of adopting some children from Fukushima before Kubo zapped him into a coma. About halfway through the Story, Kasuga even visits the nuclear plant where the disaster went down and does something drastic.
- Taking You with Me: After Kubo manipulates his father into being killed, Daiki plans to kill Kubo and himself at once to atone and requests that Kasuga tell him where Kubo is. Kasuga talks him down, saying that he thinks Daiki represents the future of Japan. At Hajime's funeral, however, Daiki plans to kill Kubo and himself if anything happens to the Prime Minister.
- This Is Your Brain on Evil: Shortly after making a deal with Kubo, we see that Kubo's been secretly sticking "black balls" of negative energy into Daiki's body, which appear to be sapping his will and making him more and more subservient to Kubo. He only manages to break free when his father, also possessed by Kubo, dies to save him.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Riyon saving Kasuga from going comatose following his stroke opens the channels in his mind and gives him actual Psychic Powers.
- Unskilled, but Strong: After Riyon discovers that she can project white balls of energy that erase black energy balls, she gets a call from the vice-principal of her school saying that she was impressed that Riyon could do that, as it's a power reserved for particularly high-level guardian spirits.
- You Can See Me?: Following his rescue by Riyon, Kasuga becomes able to see her, to their surprise.
- Your Days Are Numbered: After being given the lame (in her eyes) job of being a guardian spirit to someone who lost theirs, Riyon decides to make it quick by picking someone with only 513 days left to live. She's just barely gotten over her shock that her new subject is the Prime Minister when he collapses during the meeting that would have driven him out of office. After that, time's-a-tickin'...
- 0% Approval Rating: Kasuga's support has sunk as low as 2%. And he is not even a villain.
