Crater, The (Shonen Champion)

Nancy is a daughter of an unlicensed doctor who often day dreams that a “prince charming” will whisk her away from her dreary existence in the Chicago slums to a faraway land.  Her friend Jim, a local street tough and petty thief, promises her that one day the two of them will leave together.  However, after getting hit by a truck, Jim has a strange out-of-body experience living as Ryuichi, a Japanese student from a well-to-do family who is going to America to attend a prestigious university.  Although he eventually returns to his own body, the switches continue.  Eventually Jim, as Ryuichi, crosses paths with Nancy and, now that he’s wealthy, encourages her to run away with him.  As the pair leave, who should happen by but Jim!  Insistent that each one is only a figment of the other’s imagination, the tension quickly escalates to the point where Ryuichi and Jim begin to fight… with Nancy caught in the middle.

Kuma Ryuichi cannot decide whether he should go to college or become a cartoonist. One day, an old woman appears and advises him to decide by flipping a coin. She says that if the occupation he has chosen does not please him, he can start all over only once with another profession by visiting the octagonal mansion. Ryuichi chooses first to become a cartoonist. He is successful without a hitch for a while, but then comes up against a brick wall in his creative ability. Thus he visits the octagonal house, and starts a new life as a boxer this time. He gets bogged down again, however, and tries to go back to being a cartoonist, but then…

Sato Eisaku is a university researcher working under contract on a top secret chemical solvent project for the U.S. military.   Late one night, on his way home from his lab, he spots a light coming from one of the basement lecture theatres.  Stopping to investigate, he discovers a lone student named Shiro Okada frantically studying.  The pair share a friendly chat and Sato wish Shiro luck and leaves.  The next day, Sato has lunch with his friend, who warns him of the dangers of having his work corrupted for military purposes.   That night, working late once again, Sato once again runs into Shiro who is still hitting the books.  However, Sato begins to notice things seems strangely out of place – from the out of date maps on the wall, to Shiro’s reference to the pre-war “Imperial police”.  The next day, Sato investigates and discovers that Shiro Okada was a student during the war who had his work on a universal solvent co-opted by the Japanese military, resulting in his death and the donation of his skeletal remains to the university’s science department…

The protagonist of this episode, narrating the story in the first person, and Sakai Kazuo are both car racers sharing a room. The protagonist has a human-sized doll named Yukari as his mascot. He drives with the doll beside him even in races because he is in love with her. But Sakai does not like this habit of his friend. One day, after a race in Fuji City, the two of them decide to have a talk about it by an air hole of Mt. Fuji. While they are quarreling, Yukari falls into the depths of the air hole. After they wander about for a while in the air hole without seeing the exit of the cave, Sakai finally finds it, and they escape to safety. The protagonist feels grateful for having a reliable friend, but he realizes at the next moment that it is not Sakai but someone else who has been with him all the time…

The story is set in an imaginary country in future. Hit by bullets fired from an enemy plane during his attack on the enemy’s base, Okuno Ryuichi, a third-class air force sergeant, makes an emergency landing on an uninhabited island and hides there. In his country, however, in order to raise the morale of the soldiers, the military authorities announce that Okuno has met a heroic death in a deliberate crash onto the enemy’s base. The story about his brave action is gradually exaggerated to the extent that he is revered as a great model of the air force, and eventually as the god of war. His name appears in school textbooks, and even a monument to him has been built. Then, all of a sudden, Okuno comes back. Having been forced into a very awkward position, the military headquarters orders Okuno to go and die for real. What will he do?

Cicero, ostensibly a pharmacist in Chicago, is actually the boss of a gang called “Two-headed Snake.” The gang hates and fears blacks, and have just killed Guillet brutally, a black man who headed the construction workers’ union. Cicero has a small son who does not know the other face of his father. One day, the son of Guillet tells Cicero’s son that his father is in truth a villain feared by people of the town. Hearing this, he runs away from home. Cicero is worried and asks Banky, a black police inspector, to find his son. As a result of this, the gang members regard Cicero as a traitor and put him to death.

A group of ferocious beings from outer space come down into a group of villas to spy on the Earth. Tezuka Osamu happens to be working on Manga in his cottage built, where he is trying hard to meet his deadline. Transforming themselves into earthlings disguised as escaped convicts, the aliens invade the cottage next to Tezuka’s, and take the family as hostages. The aliens observe Tezuka from the house next door. Seeing him drawing up a plan all day long, they infer mistakenly that Tezuka is a great scholar. Thus they assault him to suck up his brain and obtain his knowledge. As soon as they have done this, however, they become tormented by something called “deadlines.”

Three guests are staying at an inn located in a hot-spring resort. But whenever each of them goes to enjoy the outdoor hot spring, they hear the strange tinkling of a bell. Since each of them has a guilty memory related to the sound of a bell, they cannot bear this. Having checked to make sure that there is no bell at the outdoor hot spring, the landlord of the inn assures his three guests.
The landlord has a large python as a pet to which he gives live animals as food. One day, he gets angry at his wife’s cat, and lets his python eat it. After the incident, however, he starts hearing the tinkling of a bell from the stomach of his python, the bell that the cat was wearing around its neck. The sound keeps haunting his conscience, and he finally finds out what it really is.

Okuno and Sasaki are rivals in skiing, competing for first place in a ski championship. They stay at a lodge every winter to practice together and evaluate each other’s progress. One winter, they go a little way further into the mountain to ski where a truck suddenly appears and nearly hits them. Since it is strange for a truck to be there because there is no road, they presume that this might be the mysterious phenomenon the local people call “the snowman.” Confronted by the hostile truck again, they finally find what “the snowman” actually is.

Okuchin is a junior high school student who is good at fighting. In order to save 300,000 yen, he becomes a jack-of-all-trades to meet all kinds of requests. He has no problem with fighting on behalf of somebody, but one day, a man named Jordan asks him on the street to take care of a girl for a while. She is Kitada Yuko, who is already dead and is now only a spirit. She wants to borrow Okuchin’s body until Heaven is ready to accept her. The situation confuses Okuchin completely because two minds now coexist in his body. Jordan promises to pay 300,000 yen for the service. But why does Okuchin need so much money anyway?

Once upon a time, there lived twin sisters, Princess Tomoe and Princess Fushimi. Princess Tomoe was plain but sweet at heart, while Princess Fushimi had a beautiful face but was cruel by nature. Both of them loved Honjo Tadamichi, the head of a powerful clan, but Tadamichi chose Princess Tomoe for his wife. With a bitter grudge against her sister, Princess Fushimi tricks Tadamichi into killing Princess Tomoe. As a result, however, Princess Fushimi takes on Princess Tomoe’s face, and she goes insane and dies. There remains only the mask of Princess Tomoe…Tezuka Osamu is requested to design a toy using the mask of Princess Tomoe from the above legend, and although he is reluctant, he agrees to do it. But an ominous incident occurs as Tezuka expected, and the mask of Tomoe..

Okuchin is having a remarkable run of luck. He gets full marks on his test, finds a wallet on the street, and even gets Kumi-chan as his girlfriend, who is worshipped by all the boys. Suspecting something going on behind Okuchin’s luck, the leader of a group of bad boys follows him, and finds out his secret in an earthen pipe left in a vacant lot. The pipe actually works as a “pipe of time” through which a river runs back in time to the past. Okuchin has been using the pipe to start all over with past failures. The leader and Okuchin compete to go back further and further in the past to get Kumi-chan’s heart, but…

The athletics club of P Junior High School has mid-winter camp training in the windswept fields of Gotenba, in which they run round Mt. Fuji. The only pleasure for the club members in their free time when they can see Midori, a cute girl working at the coffee shop Brunnen located half way up a hill. One day, Okuchin becomes feverish, and is being nursed at Brunnen. While talking with the young owner of the shop, Okuchin is told that Midori is actually a fairy who was living in a spring, and that the owner has brought her to the human world. Meanwhile, Midori goes to the spring to get some medicine for Okuchin, but her father finds her there and finally comes to Brunnen to get his daughter back.

Kantaro is a mentally retarded boy living in a village in the depth of the mountains where there isn’t even electricity. Since there is no other entertainment, Takashi, Kantaro’s brother, often tells the story of Momotaro to him. One night, when Kantaro is late to come home, Takashi goes to look for him in the mountain and finds purple aliens getting information from Kantaro about the Earth using a strange device. Surprisingly, the information Kantaro is giving to the aliens is the story of Momotaro he has heard from his brother. The next day, using his wit, Takashi makes up a story to tell Kantaro that the demons of Onigashima were purple aliens who were all wiped out in a nuclear explosion. How do the aliens react to the story when they hear it from Kantaro?

Okuchin is feeling desperate because his father has lost his job and he himself is a failed student without any prospects for the future. Then a man appears before him, declaring himself as a great thief who steals the futures of others. When Okuchin wears spectacles that the man gives him, he sees that everyone has a bag hanging on his hip. The man says that if he steals the bag, he can obtain the future contained in it. Okuchin and the “future robber” decide to go out to steal the future of the luckiest man in the world, but…

The episode originates in the empire of Maya 2000 of years ago. Just about to be offered as a sacrifice, a girl prays to God that she may live ten years longer to have a happy family of her own. Her wish is granted, and she drifts to the shore of Japan of the present time where she falls in love with a Japanese young man and marries him. The couple encourages each other to overcome hardships, and now they have children. She finally thinks that she has a happy family of her own. And it happens to be the tenth year from that day…

When William Frost is examining Volcano Alfonsus on the moon, which is said to blow steam, he suddenly gets hung in the air from a precipitous cliff, becoming unable to move at all. Apollo, the spacecraft that sent him to the moon, has gone back to the earth. The oxygen in his space suit has run out. Although William is supposed to be dead, he returns to life for a while when exposed to gas emitted from Alfonsus periodically. He moves between life and death this way for many years. One day, when he happens to be alive, finally seeing a rocket from the Earth, William calls out for help, but…