It is the year 202x in the mysterious city of Daikoku. Kokonogi Yasako is a 6th grader in elementary school. The Kokonogi family, which includes Yasako, her little sister, and their parents, are a typical family. They move to Daikoku where Yasako`s grandmother lives. It is a historic city with many shrines and temples. Daikoku is also a special political district that has the latest computer facilities.
The children access the virtual world through Internet-connected visors called Dennou Eyeglasses. This allows them to see virtual reality overlayed on objective reality. To visually confirm something as virtual as opposed to real, the children often lift their visors from their eyes. The visors also work in conjunction with futuristic ear monitors placed behind the ear, which allows them to hear sounds from the virtual environment.
Interaction with the virtual world is handled in a similar fashion to contemporary video games. Software tools are visually represented as tactile tools (e.g. a fishing rod) which occupy 3D virtual space and must be manipulated by hand. Metatags, which can be used to label or enhance virtual objects with certain properties, are visually represented as actual sticky-note paper tags. Virtual objects such as pets cannot be recalled or reset. When a pet runs away, it must be chased and caught in 3D space.
Therefore it is implied that virtual objects and pets are susceptible to a form of “death” by data corruption or deletion. Also similar to contemporary video games is Fumie Hashimoto’s personal inventory system, which is represented in the form of a fanny pack. Despite its small size, a seemingly limitless number of tools and pets of varying virtual mass can be placed inside. Lastly, for a virtual object or pet to be deleted from cyberspace, it can be attacked by a virtual weapon, such as Searchmaton’s beam weapons.
Main Characters
Yuuko Amasawa, nicknamed Isako, is a powerful type of hacker known as an “encoder” who breaks into the code and infrastructure of the virtual world itself for power and metabugs. Rumored to have familial ties to an AR technology company, Isako uses a Brain-Computer Interface to interact with the virtual world — a function supposedly hidden deep inside the hardware of AR visors and eyeglasses.
Kenichi Harakawa is the president of the Biology Club and the 5th member of the Coil Denno Investigation Agency. He is very shy and reserved unlike Fumie. Haraken researches internet viruses and illegals on behalf of Kanna, his childhood friend, who had died by traffic accident under mysterious circumstances in the previous year.
Fumie Hashimoto is the 7th member of the Coil Denno Investigation Agency. She is Yasako’s best friend. She is an experienced hacker and an adept user of metatags, Oyaji is her servant helping in the investigations. She is Daichi’s rival even trough she seems having feelings for him.
Yuuko Okonogi, or Yasako, together with her parents and little sister move to the city of Daikoku to live with the grandmother, Megabaa. Yasako is a sweet and passive girl who follows the lead of Fumie, who eventually initiates her into Megabaa’s Coil Dennou Investigation Agency as its eighth member.
(電脳コイル)
