Charts the troubled teenage years of students Yūichi Hasumi and Shūsuke Hoshino, exploring the shifting and complex power dynamics of their relationship against the backdrop of Yūichi's love for the dreamy and abstract music of fictional pop star Lily Chou-Chou.

In the year 199X, on the dark, shady streets of New Kabuki Town, the free-for-all between gangs of young delinquents and a corrupt police force is further complicated by the appearance of a mysterious girl named Asuka.

It is 1980. Sadatomo is at a secondary school in a small town. His parents barely take any notice of him. The strict teacher Kobayashi has hung up a 'humanity index' in the classroom, divided into the categories 'delinquents', 'scum' and 'people'. In each category he has hung name-cards of pupils. One day Kobayashi finds out that Sadatomo and his friends have stolen some things from a shop for fun. Their fathers are informed and as punishment, the children have to write a 'self-critical' essay of no less than thirty pages. For the first time, Sadatomo is beaten by his father. Shocked, he writes a piece entitled 'I am an onion', in which the teacher thinks he can detect a first sign of humanity. That is the start of a confusing situation in which it gets hard to distinguish lies, truth, justified self-criticism and opportunist wheeler dealing, even for the boys.