is a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 series written and illustrated by manga author

Mangaka

is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...

 Shinji Ohara. The manga was serialized in the seinen

Seinen

is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at a 20–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be older with some manga aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. In Japanese, the word Seinen means "young man" or "young men" and is not suggestive of sexual matters...

 manga magazine Comic Flapper between 2002 and 2007, but continued serialization in the same magazine with the title Nijū Mensō no Musume Utsushiyo no Yoru since October 5, 2007. An anime adaptation aired in Japan from April 12, 2008 to September 27, 2008 and was co-produced by Bones

Bones (studio)

is a Japanese anime studio. It has produced numerous series, including RahXephon, Wolf's Rain, Scrapped Princess, Eureka Seven, Angelic Layer, Darker than Black, Soul Eater, Ouran High School Host Club and two adaptions of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga along with Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto and...

 and Telecom Animation Film.

The characters in this series have been used with permission from surviving members of the family of Edogawa Rampo

Edogawa Rampo

, better known by the pseudonym , was a Japanese author and critic who played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery fiction. Many of his novels involve the detective hero Kogorō Akechi, who in later books was the leader of a group of boy detectives known as the .Rampo was an admirer...

, the renowned Japanese detective fiction

Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...

 author who had originally created the fictional characters of Nijū-Mensō and Kogoro Akechi

Kogoro Akechi

Kogoro Akechi is a fictional character and the creation of Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo.He first appeared in the story "The D Slope Murder case" in 1925 and continued to appear in stories for a quarter of a century...

.

The series is set in the Shōwa period

Showa period

The , or Shōwa era, is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926 through January 7, 1989.The Shōwa period was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor...

, starting around 1953 in the anime.

Story

Chizuko Mikamo is a young girl living with her aunt and uncle after her parents died. She behaves coldly toward them, despite their efforts to make her happy, because she knows that they are trying to slowly poison her so that they can take her inheritance for themselves. Because of her intelligence and knowledge gained from reading detective novels, she works to avoid eating the food her aunt prepares, but it is impossible to avoid all together and she still takes in enough to cause her to collapse. Her butler is revealed to actually be the world-famous thief Twenty Faces, who was there to steal Chizuko's rightful inheritance, a family heirloom gem known as the Anastasia Ruby. When he realizes just what Chizuko's been going through, however, he asks her if she wants to come with him and his band on their travels around the world. She agrees and Twenty Faces takes her back with him to join his gang, who affectionately shorten her name to Chiko. Two years pass and Chiko is now a strong thief, having learned the tricks of the trade from Twenty Faces and the members of his band. Now, with Twenty Faces and the rest of the band as her family, she has found a home at last.

After living with the band for two years, Chiko becomes a skilled thief and thinks of Twenty Faces as her father. But a sudden train accident caused by Tiger, Twenty Faces' strongest enemy, kills most of the band and seems to have killed Twenty Faces himself. By chance a detective who works for her aunt finds her and, after being "rescued" two years after Twenty Faces "kidnapped" her, Chiko is forced to return to her aunt's house, where she becomes depressed and refuses to talk because of the shock of Twenty Faces' death. But when a mysterious detective appears and she learns that there is a possibility that he may still be alive somewhere, Chiko becomes more lively and works, with the help of a few new friends, to find him by following the clues that he seems to have left behind, beginning with something that is rightfully hers and had been left in his care: the Anastasia Ruby. Now, Chiko must dodge her aunt's attempts to murder her and unravel the mysteries Twenty Faces left for her to solve, or so it seems. There are many steps in her long journey, some of which awaken painful memories and others that lead her to discover more about the past of the man behind Twenty Faces and herself.

Characters

Nijū Mensō no Musume focuses on Chizuko Mikamo and how her life changes after she is saved from her greedy relatives by Nijū Mensō, a famed thief. Chiko, as Chizuko comes to be known, finds an unusual but happy family amongst the thieves that form Nijū Mensō's group, in particular a knife-thrower named Ken.

During the second arc of the series, Chiko finds a close friend in Shunka Koito, the granddaughter of the headmaster of Chiko's school, and Tome, a maid in her aunt's household. As Chiko searches for Nijū Mensō, she encounters a wide range of allies and dangerous enemies, all who seek her out in hopes of either finding Nijū Mensō or his supposed legacy.

Episodes

Nijū Mensō no Musume contains 22 episodes. The episodes are directed by Nobuo Tomizawa and composed by Rikei Tsuchiya.

Theme songs

Opening theme:

1. • Performance: 369 miroku
   • Lyrics: 369, Ryoji
   • Composition: 369, tasuku
   • Arrangement: tasuku

Ending theme:

1. "Unnamed World
   Unnamed World
   "Unnamed World" is a CD single by Japanese singer and voice actress Aya Hirano. It was released on April 23, 2008 and was produced by Lantis. The song "Unnamed World" is the ending theme song for the anime Nijū Mensō no Musume.-Track listing:...
   
   "
   • Performance: Aya Hirano
     Aya Hirano
     from Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, is a Japanese voice actress and J-pop singer who has had roles in several anime, visual novels, and TV commercials in Japan. She was contracted to Space Craft Produce, a branch of the Space Craft Group, for her voice acting career, and for her singing career,...
     
     
   • Lyrics: Aki Hata
     Aki Hata
     is a Japanese musician and lyricist. She is noted for having penned and composed songs for various anime and games, including popular titles like Zettai Shōnen, Azumanga Daioh, Haibane Renmei, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yūutsu, and Lucky Star, and for singers and seiyū. She has even composed game...
     
     
   • composition: Katsuhiko Kurosu
   • Arrangement: nishi-ken

External links

• Anime official website
• CHIKO, Heiress of the Phantom Thief at Fuji Creative Corporation
• Telecom Animation Film site