Dead End by Shohei Manabe

Shirou is a loner, but still has friends. Then, he meets a beautiful girl who seems to know him, and all hell breaks loose. But not immediately. First he finds the girl unconscious in the road, so he takes her home and feeds her, then buys her clothing. He takes her to the Park, and she tells him her name is Lucy. He takes her to work, and when they get home, he introduces her to the yakuza boys who live in the building and she saves the life of one of them when he chokes on some mochi (sticky rice).

But a strange men is watching Shirou and his building, seemingly drawn to him by the presence of Lucy. The next night, Shirou and one of his "buddies" are returning home when Shirou needs to stop to buy cigarettes. When he finally gets home, everyone in the building is dead, and the strange men is there, telling him there is no time, and they must flee. Shirou cuts one of the man's arms off with a knife he got from his yakuza buddies, but the man seems unfazed, dragging him up to the roof and telling him again that there is no time.

A bright light impacts the roof, and the man jumps off with Shirou in his arms, and yet lands safely without either of them dying. The man's back is badly injured, skinned, and yet he still seems unfazed. He tells Shirou to go into the sewers, that someone is waiting for him there.

In the sewers, he meets another strange man who rescues him from the water but won't tell him what is happening or why, that Shirou won't believe him and must figure it out on his own. Shirou manages to forget, but a television newscast reminds him of the explosion at his apartment building. He returns to it, only to find no sign of the slaughter and all new people living there like it never really happened.

Only one of the people he knew still lives there, and he's in the hospital. So Shirou goes to visit him, but the man seems to have lost all his memory. The nurse looking after the man tells Shirou he said something which frightened her. She won't tell him in the hospital, but tells him to meet her after work in a bar.

They meet, but she attempts to poison him. He outwits her by switching the drinks, and the entire bar starts to attack him, but he manifests the power to pull weapons out of nowhere and kills everyone trying to kill him. Once again, the man from the sewer shows up to save him, and it turns out that the nurse wanted to know where this man was. They were once friends, but his memory was erased, by his own request. He was once friends with this man and five other people, and he must remember and assemble them togethe to live past what will happen after the next three days.

Shirou meets the first of them, a bandaged man who used to call himself Chappa, but asks for Shirou to rename him, and settles on the new name of Gips. He tells Shirou about himself, and then Shirou feeds him breakfast and they go to meet another friend, a fist-fighter named Parrot. Shirou fights him, and Parrot wins, but Shirou lasts long enough to intrigue the other man and to befriend him.

But there is another man, with a scar across his forehead who seems to be the one behind the killings and strange occurrences around them, and this man scares everyone, even hardened Yakuza. What does he want with Shirou and his friends, and what are their powers?

I didn't like this story at all. I thought the art was ugly, and the story didn't draw me in at all, being mostly about guns and yakuza and killing and strange stuff. I usually enjoy manga, but this one was a struggle for me. I suspect it hangs out more in Seinen rather than Shonen territory (adult male stories rather than teenage boy stories). I found nothing about it appealing, and it was nothing I really enjoyed reading about. I can't say it completely sucked for I have the feeling I was not the intended audience. But I won't be reading any more of this series, nor seeking it out to buy, since it was a struggle just getting through the first volume.