Princess Patema lives in an underground world, but one day tumbles headlong into a void and out into the wide open world above the surface. Age is a student on this surface world when he spies Patema hanging upside-down from a tree. He pulls her down to safety, struggling to keep her earthbound. Together they master the art of navigating competing gravitational forces and set out to discover the secret that keeps their worlds apart.

Sixty-one years ago, the United States and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, hundreds of letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them. Leading the defense is Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi's unprecedented tactics...

The story takes place on Christmas Eve in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Middle-aged has-been Gin, aging transvestite Hana, and teenage runaway Miyuki are homeless friends who have formed a makeshift family structure bond. That bond is tested when they find an abandoned baby while searching for food in a trash dumpster. They try to care for the infant themselves, and travel throughout the city in search of the baby's parents.