Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku

While walking home from a somewhat bad, but regular day of school, Matsutani Shuuzou (short "Shuu"), the main protagonist, spots a girl on top of a smoke stack in an industrial park where he used to hang out as a young child.

Shuu tries numerous attempts to communicate with the young girl but she acts rather emotionless and quiet, and hardly acknowledges his presence.

After decoding her name from her lips (Lala-Ru) the only other piece of information he finds out about her is her love of watching sunsets.

There is a sudden explosion and time stops; Shuu finds himself defending Lala-Ru from abductors in mechanized snakes.

After attempting to defend the girl, he is caught in a transportation to the world from which the strangers hail, a wasteland devoid of water and dominated by a red giant star.

Lala-Ru possesses a pendant containing a vast reservoir of water, and has the ability to control that water.

Shuu is trapped in this new, harsh reality, and he is beaten and interrogated repeatedly inside the warship commanded by the ruthless, manic dictator, Hamdo. While locked in a cell he meets an abducted girl who introduces herself as Sara Ringwalt of America.

Sara's reason for her capture was being mistaken for Lala-Ru by Hamdo's minions.

Sara goes through extremely horrific experiences and eventually becomes emotionally scarred.

After an assault by an unknown enemy landship, Shuu is forced to join an army of child soldiers; children trained to for the looting of villages, in which they kidnap female villagers for breeding, and conscript orphaned male children into the ever dwindling ranks of Hamdo's army.