kazura iha; aoi miyoshi; history
This is a collaborative history of the series Senkou No Night Raid, created by Cho and aaron for use in sirenspull. It covers both Aoi and Kazura's involvement in the series, and their actions, as they both participated in most of the same events.
March 1931, on a boat to Shanghai traveling from Kobe Harbour, Senkou No Night Raid begins. Four specially chosen agents are asked by the same mysterious government official to investigate a series of disappearances occurring aboard vessels from Japan to Shanghai. The suspect is President Kakinuma of the Kouyou Cinema film company, who is filming one of the first Japanese-language voiced films while aboard. Kakinuma is suspected of recruiting young women interested in becoming actresses and selling them as slaves to brothels in China, and thought to be assisted by Sai Seirin, representative of a human trading company.
The four agents are Aoi Miyoshi, posing as a cameraman for Kouyou Cinema, Kazura Iha, posing as a gohper and assistant to the makeup/stylist, and Yukina Sonogi and Natsume Kagiya who are posing as passenger and servant. Sakurai is the name of the leader of this small group, the first of which is for Kazura to poison the lead actress and render her ill, allowing Yukina to be recruited in her place. From there the four play their parts until a forged script and investigation expose Kakinuma and Sai Seirin's sordid dealings.
Abandoning her business partner, Seirin attempts to escape by boat with an unconscious Yukina and Kakinuma's money. Kazura jumps onto the boat and takes out mulitple bodyguards with his aikido skills, and Aoi protects him from Seirin's poisoned flying daggers with his telekinesis. After Kazura subdues Seirin physically, putting her through a heavy metal wardrobe trunk, the four agents officially meet for the first time. They are told by Sakurai they will be working beneath him in China as spies, their foremost task to locate a squadron of the Kwantung Army (the Japanese Army stationed in China) that went missing.
The next mission engaged by Sakurai Kikkan, as the group is referred to throughout the rest of the series, is a rescue mission. The target is a Japanese munitions conglomerate president, who has been taken hostage by a Chinese resistance faction. The four of them use their abilities to scout the location, and Kazura and Aoi are parachuted in to infiltrate the camp the president is being held at. Disgused as members of the resistance, they find the hostage scenario was a sham and that the President was secretly making a deal to sell weapons to the faction. Regardless they take the President into their custody and narrowly escape the compound through use of Kazura's teleportation ability. This is the first time that Kazura has used his ability while working with his companions, as he dislikes using it when possible. Aoi on the other hand, finds it incredibly amusing and convenient.
The next mission is that of investigating a Jewish violinist who is suspected of passing spy information to an unknown benefactor through the use of his music. The group investigates, and there are several flashbacks to both Kazura and Aoi's histories throughout the episode. Aoi and Yukina take disguises and manage to get close to the violinist by faking a desire for violin lessons, so Yukina can use her ability to read his mind to an extent. Through this, they discover that the violinist will be passing his information at a concert he has coming up shortly. After being waylaid by a decoy, they manage to share their abilities (Natsume looks into the building with his heightened vision, Yukina transmits the image to Aoi, and Aoi uses his telekinesis to flip a switch) while Kazura stands guard inside - between the group, they shut off the power, stopping the concert and preventing the information from being transmitted. After playing his concert for himself as a musician instead of as a spy, the violinist kills himself when confronted by Sakurai Kikkan, something that leaves all of them rather unsettled.
The next incident involving Sakurai Kikkan is the case of the four major department stores in Shanghai. While Yukina is visiting one of these department stores, the unfinished fourth is attacked with a bomb, and the perpetrator passes by, giving her a vision of where the bombs are placed in the other three stores. The Sakurai Kikkan then proceed to enter the buildings, being attacked by the perpetrator all the while, and manage to defuse or remove the bombs in various ways. After this, they face off with the man who set the bombs - who turns out to be both a teleporter and telepathic, as well as an agent of Isao Takachiho, Yukina's brother and the leader of the missing unit of the Kwantung Army. They fool him by passing false information between their minds, and he escapes back to Isao.
The next episode is a sort of filler episode involving Aoi and Kazura, whose cover is that of two men running a photography studio together, taking photos of the food of a young Chinese girl they'd befriended, Fuuran. After they take the photos, while they are having lunch at an outdoors restaurant, Aoi starts speaking against the Japanese army showing its face in China, and stating that they have no right to make decisions for China, a sentiment that upsets Kazura, and could be seen as treason in Imperial Japan. After this conversation, there is a short chase involving a cat that stole some film by accident while trying to take the steamed buns the men were given in payment for their photos.
While developing some photos some time later, Kazura discovers a familiar face in one of the photos - a childhood friend of his named Nishio, who once helped him when he cut his foot seriously on a piece of cut bamboo that left a nasty scar. Curious about how his friend was doing, Kazura investigated the place the photo was taken and started tracking down Nishio. On the way home from the initial investigation, he is followed by a girl who'd been a servant at the house he'd been asking after Nishio in. When she is attacked, she coerces Kazura into trying to help her, and he is captured by the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, who torture him for information on Nishio, revealing that Nishio is involved with the Communist Party. After having his release negotiated by Sakurai, Kazura speaks to the girl from the alley, discovering that she is Nishio's lover and, through other investigation, that Nishio is in the middle of a double-deal between the KMT and the Communists - while negotiating a smuggling of weapons, he took the money and ran with it. Intercepting Nishio at the meeting point for this deal, Kazura tries to talk to him and is told that Nishio is done with his lover, and it is implied that he is done with Kazura. A few days later, unknown to Kazura, his childhood friend is assassinated in a bath house.
The next incident involves Isao's direct involvement in the Sakurai Kikkan's affairs. While Aoi is investigating a meeting of delegates from various countries, he discovers that it will be held at a tea house and passes this information to the rest of the Sakurai Kikkan. Immediately after this meeting, he is kidnapped by Isao, and brought to the tea house location to see the meeting, where the delegates discuss Pan-Asianism (a philosophy of uniting Asian countries in a front against Western countries for Asian self-protection), and encourages Aoi to join him. Meanwhile, the rest of Sakurai Kikkan are attempting to find Aoi and the meeting itself, with no information other than that it is being held at a tea house. While Kazura decides to take on the gruelling task of searching every tea house in Shanghai, an associate of Isao's leaves a message for Yukina with the location of the tea house. The three other agents all go to the location and face off with the teleporter/telepath who they had previously confronted, which buys time for the meeting to finish. They enter the tea house and find Aoi left inside the building after refusing to join Isao.
The Mukden Incident, wherein Japan blew up a railroad and attempted to blame it on Chinese insurgents in order to have an excuse to invade and take Manchuria, brings the Sakurai Kikkan's attention to this area of China. While Isao shows several important politicians from the League of Nations (who were in China to investigate the new country of Manchukuo that was established after the Mukden Incident, and denied it recognition as a nation) an image of the damage that would be wrought by an atomic bomb, Sakurai sends the group to investigate a rumoured "Prophet," who is a person with a foretelling ability who advises political figures. Kazura is sent undercover as an Imperial soldier, and Aoi, in the area with Yukina and Natsume, sees a glimpse of the lover he had thought was dead, Shizune. Yukina and Natsume give Aoi their blessing to chase after her, and Aoi splits from the group, abandoning his mission in order to chase after the girl he was going to marry, who he believed had died.
After finding the location Shizune is staying at, following her carefully, Aoi manages to infiltrate the building, where he ends up confronting Kazura, there as an Imperial soldier guarding the Prophet. They have an argument on a rooftop, Kazura insists that he will have to stop Aoi from abandoning their mission and endangering the delicate political situation of several countries to find one woman, even drawing a gun on him. Aoi knocks Kazura to the side, though, and Kazura allows him to escape. Aoi finds Shizune, and takes her out of the compound, bringing her to an abandoned house where she tells him that she faked her death in order to serve as the Prophet, following a sense of duty instilled in her by a line of Prophets that came before. She tells him she can't abandon her mission to stay with him, and when he goes to try to find a horse that they can escape on, she leaves him. Meanwhile, Sakurai has come to pick up Kazura, halting the mission due to Aoi's "stupidity," and lectures Kazura for letting him go, telling him that his softness will be the death of him.
In the hotel that Yukina was staying in with Natsume, Isao contacts his sister and shares with her a vision of Japan being hit with an atomic bomb through their shared telepathy. The vision causes Yukina to fall unconscious, and she describes it as hell, something that must be avoided at all costs.
Meanwhile, Aoi returns to an empty house after trying to find a horse, with Shizune gone, and then makes his way back to Sakurai Kikkan, bitter and "pouting" for a while. He is informed of a new mission, investigating the possible smuggling of weapons from Germany to the KMT through a city called Dalian. He goes there, and meets up with Yukina, who has been resting with Natsume in Dalian after the traumatic vision she saw from her brother, and Kazura, who's being sent to Dalian as well, to participate in the mission. The four have a bit of time to relax, rest, and reconnect with each other after the difficult times they've faced, and Yukina works up the courage to show the image of the A-bomb that Isao shared with her to the three boys. After this, they embark on their assigned mission.
While Kazura is helping with surveillance of the ships suspected of smuggling weapons, he is accosted by Intelligence (either British or American) under suspicion of being one of Isao's men. The Intelligence officers accost him, causing him to lose the book that belonged to his grandfather and contained a photo of his grandmother with him at graduation. At this point Isao intervenes, and informs Yukina telepathically that he is going to "borrow" Kazura for 12 hours, arranging a meeting point that he will drop Kazura off at when his time is up.
While Kazura is with Isao, he is shown the bomb that Isao shared photos of, and introduced to Ichinose, the scientist working on this weapon. Isao shares his plan with Kazura - a plan that was inspired in part by a man Kazura had attended a lecture by in military school, Ishihara Kanji, the mastermind behind the Mukden incident. Isao reveals that there will be a second world war, which shocks and upsets Kazura, and then intimates that his intention is to develop a weapon so powerful that no one can oppose it, thereby ending war - his war, he says, will be the last war. Kazura is given time to think about this before he is dropped back off to Sakurai Kikkan, who have set up a trap to capture Isao. While Isao stands within a ring of fire, Aoi calls to Kazura, asking him to move so he can apprehend Isao, and Kazura instead chooses to teleport inside the fire, catch hold of Isao, and teleport away - effectively betraying the Sakurai Kikkan, because he believes Isao's plan to be valid.
When Aoi and the rest of the Sakurai Kikkan return to Sakurai to discuss what happened, Sakurai seems unconcerned about Kazura's betrayal and tells Aoi that his running off with Shizune earlier had changed the course of history, since Manchukuo's Emperor had been unable to meet with the Prophet as he demanded. Meanwhile, Kazura is told by Isao that the second world war is inevitable, that his plan is the only thing that can help Japan to thrive despite this war - he knows this because his fiancee had been the previous Prophet, Shizune's predecessor, and she had shared with him a prophecy that he should never have seen.
Aoi and Natsume, determined to get Kazura back, to sway him back to their side, again infiltrate Isao's base, where Kazura is, and find that everyone is preparing to leave, setting up bombs to destroy evidence that they were there. The two find Kazura in the midst of escaping with Isao and Shizune, and Aoi is shocked to find her there. Despite his surprise, he still tries to get Kazura to come back, appealing to him to no avail. Natsume returns the book he'd found at the site of Kazura's earlier ambush by Western Intelligence, and this shakes Kazura up to some extent. Kazura allows Aoi and Natsume to escape, and leaves with Isao and Shizune. When they arrive at their destination, he discovers that Sakurai is there.
Three months pass, and Aoi, Natsume, and Yukina realize that they've been utterly abandoned by Sakurai, who hasn't called them at all. Still, they retain their cohesive bond as a group, and spend the time recovering and continuing to investigate Isao, still determined to get Kazura back. While in the area, they run into Fuuran, and have a good afternoon with her, taking a group photo in which Fuuran requests Aoi add Kazura after the fact, since he couldn't be there. He agrees to do this, and send her the photo.
Meanwhile, back in Isao's new base, the atomic bomb has been made ready, and the inauguration ceremony of the Emperor of the new Manchukuo is drawing near. The night of the ceremony, Aoi, Natsume, and Yukina attend in disguise, sure that Isao will be doing something, and they are correct. During the ceremony, the lights go out, power shuts down, and Isao's voice over the loudspeaker announces that if the world leaders present do not release their colonies held in Asia, he will drop the A-bomb on Shanghai. This prompts the three to try to infiltrate Isao's new base, which ends up separating them.
Kazura, upon discovery of the real plan behind Isao's actions - to drop an atomic bomb on Shanghai, the effects of which Kazura had seen through Yukina's ability, he becomes extremely troubled and tries to talk Isao out of it, suggesting that he drop the bomb on an uninhabited island or somewhere else. Isao insists that it needs to be dropped on Shanghai, where there are people of many nationalities, because tragedy doesn't hit home for people unless it's personal. Kazura remains discontent with the plan but continues to assist Isao, while Aoi, Natsume, and Yukina try to find a way to stop Isao.
While Aoi is searching through the base, he finds Kazura, and appeals to him again. Kazura reveals Isao's plan, confirming what the announcement had said, and Kazura, still torn, follows him as he makes his way to the inner chamber where Isao is preparing Shizune to make a prophecy about his plan, to see if he is successful. As all four agents are on their way to the inner chamber, Kazura and Aoi witness Natsume being shot by a soldier guarding the courtyard. The two go over to Natsume, and Natsume requests that they hide his death from Yukina until after everything is over. As he is dying, he communicates with Yukina mentally, telling her how to get to where they are, and that he will be with her in spirit. Natsume's death cements Kazura's discomfort with Isao and his plan, and he commits to rejoining Aoi and Yukina as they try to stop Isao.
The group finds their way to the chamber where Shizune is returning from her prophecy inside a small booth, and she tells Isao he must stop, that she saw something horrible. They discuss Isao's deceased fiancee, and then are interrupted when someone shoots from the shadows at Yukina. Isao moves to protect her, taking the bullet and falling to the ground with his sister. Sakurai, the shooter, steps from the shadows and reveals that the entire Sakurai Kikkan was intended to find Isao so that Sakurai and his superiors could use the atomic bomb he was creating to change world events. Sakurai is stopped when his assistant, a quiet man who had been by his side the whole time and had the ability to erase memories, used this ability on Sakurai.
Kazura and Aoi then proceed to go and find the plane carrying the atomic bomb intended to drop on Shanghai, hijacking it and accidentally killing the scientist who created it. As the plane flies over the area, it is shot at by weapons on the ground for being an unidentified aircraft, severely damaging the plane and causing the fuel gauge to malfunction. Kazura and Aoi are trying to fly the bomb to the ocean, to dispose of it permanently, but realize that this will be impossible with the lack of fuel. Instead, Aoi thinks of a plan that involves bringing the atom bomb so high that it will fly off into space - through a combination of Kazura's teleportation and Aoi's telekinesis, they manage to throw the bomb high into the air. Kazura escapes the plane with the soldier who had been on board, while Aoi goes down with the plane, intending to protect himself with the last of his telekinesis. The scene ends with Kazura searching frantically through the rubble for any sign of Aoi.
This is the point at which we will be taking our characters - Aoi from inside the plane, and Kazura from searching for him.
The series does continue for a very short while after this - Yukina uses her ability to show her vision of the atomic bomb to the gathered dignitaries, with the help of Shizune. There is a short "two years later" segment in which it's revealed that Fuuran received her photo with Kazura inserted, which proves that Aoi lived through the crash. The series ends with scenes of Japanese soldiers marching through China, implying that the Second World War will happen despite Isao's interventions.