he "big one" finally struck Japan. A devastating seismic event known as the "Devil Quake" has left the Tokyo ward of Shinjuku suspended halfway between this world and the netherworld. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer terms, it's now perched atop the "Hell Mouth," and the devil will make you a deal any day of the week.

Dimensionally wrenched further apart on a daily basis, someday Shinjuku is destined to lose this tug of war. But for the time being, its human inhabitants deal with the weirdness the best they can. As the Eagles would put it, "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Hideyuki Kikuchi created this fantasy/horror universe in his debut novel, Demon City Shinjuku. It was made into an anime feature film released in the U.S. by Central Park Media (U.S. Manga Corps), and a manga series released by ADV.

Demon City is the setting for a dozen light novel series collectively titled Demon City Blues. The novels follow the adventures and exploits of P.I. Setsura Aki and "Demon City Doctor" Mephisto. Yashakiden is sequentially the third (and longest) in the Demon City Blues saga.

Kikuchi not only considers Yashakiden the best installment in the Demon City Blues series, but the best he's written, calling it "My vampire masterpiece [that even] transcends Vampire Hunter D."

It is in many ways comparable to Angel, Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff. Like Angel, Setsura Aki is a big-city P.I. with a supernatural alter-ego who longs for "normality," but chooses to live in this twilight world and partners with humans and demons alike to defeat his enemies.