Manga / Bloody Monday

A deadly viral outbreak in Russia somehow comes to the attention of "Third-I", a top secret Japanese investigative group under the Public Security Intelligence Agency, and their top hacker, student Fujimaru "Falcon" Takagi. Through a complex and disturbing web of deceit, lies and covert-ops, Takagi and his friends must help Third-I prevent a dangerous cult from initiating their "Bloody Monday".

Bloody Monday is a manga trilogy written by Tadashi Agi and illustrated by Megumi Kouji. The first season of the manga published from 2007 to 2009 with 11 volumes. It was later adapted into a live-action adaptation with 11 episodes. The second season of the manga was published from 2009 to 2011 with 8 volumes. The sequel of the live-action adaptation was out on 2010 with 9 episodes. However, its plot is very different from the manga's second season. The third and final season of the manga was out from 2011 to May 2012 with 4 volumes.

Not to be confused with Bloody Monday which is either a 1855 riot in Louisville, Kentucky, the Claudy bombings in 1972 or the Częstochowa massacre in 1939

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Bloody Monday contains examples of:

Season One

• Action Girl: Aoi, the second-placed Karate champion in Japan.
  • There's also Minami, who is a fully-trained Third-I officer.

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mako and Sayuri. This can also goes to Otoya's grandfather which is revealed in the second sequel.
• Bittersweet Ending: Japan is saved from the terrorist attack. But Fujimaru lost two of his best friends. Maya goes into hiding but realizes that she's broke.
• Blood from the Mouth / Eye Scream: the plague-like symptoms of BloodyX
  • As it turns out, most of the deaths from Russia were due to radiation poisoning; BloodyX was designed to have similar symptoms in order to cover this up.
• Bodyguard Betrayal: Sayuri Hosho, the Third-I agent who is assigned to watch over Fujimaru and Haruka while their dad is on the run.
• Cain and Abel: subverted with the actual Cain and Abel sisters who love each other dearly, played straight with J and his older half-brother, Otoya.
• A Child Shall Lead Them:
  • J and K are both children.
  • And our beloved Falcon ends up commanding a squad of Third-I when things get really nasty.

• Cop Killer: Several police officers are killed via virus infection or from shootouts by the bad guys.
• Damsel in Distress: In the first season, Haruka is kidnapped three times and exposed to Bloody-X once. She gets less kidnap prone in the second season, though.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: You would never expect that Anko, Fujimaru's naive friend, would be the head of a terrorist cult.
• Enhance Button: Fujimaru uses a "denoise" button in order to have a clearer view of a person's face that's barely in view. ^note Such a thing exists for the purpose of image enhancement but it only guesses what the missing data is; the real thing cannot help you get a clear image of a blurry face as it was done here.
• Extreme Graphical Representation: Done with images of a falcon flying through corridors of data.
• Fangirl: Anko really does admire Falcon's work... maybe a bit too much. And she's the head of a crazy cult. Great...
• Gambit Roulette: How the hell did they know she was going to be handcuffed to that exact pipe?!
  • The Third-I chick was just one of the moles within the group and they had worked it out before hand. Though that
• Genki Girl: Anko. Which goes out the window whenever she's doing something as "K".
• Gorn: You know what this manga needs? More people vomiting blood.
• Guile Hero: Falcon often figures out what his opponents are trying to do, and regularly comes up with counter-plans to manipulate them to his advantage. The success rate, on the other hand, is iffy at best because his opponents are Magnificent Bastards in their own right.
• Hacked by a Pirate: The lead character Fujimaru, known as 'Falcon', always leaves his personal symbol of a diving falcon at the screen of every computer he visits as a calling card.
• Hellish Pupils: Falcon and his dad get freaky cat's eyes when they tap into their Badass Normal powers.
  • And look at the eyes of anyone who's in full-on cultist mode. Scary!

• I Know Mortal Kombat: Turns out all those helicopter sims Fujimaru used to play were close enough to the real thing.
• I Know You Know I Know: Pretty much applied liberally between Falcon and J.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Sasha, one of the Russian agents employed to help Third-I, uses this to force Anko's "mom" to talk.

• Long Lost Sibling: J aka Jun Kanzaki is actually Otoya's half-brother
• Manipulative Bastard: J. The things he manages to pull off get pretty ridiculous.
• Meaningful Name: The cult has loads of these, with the prominent members getting names based on figures from the bible. Most of the names are significant of their character, but the biggest example would have to be Judas. In retrospect, having a guy with that name around as a trusted disciple was a pretty terrible idea - but not for the guy who originally gave him that name.
  • The organization Third-I is actually a word play on the concept of Third Eye. [1]

• The Mole: two within Third-I and one of Falcon's best friends.
• Oblivious Younger Sibling: Subverted for Haruka. Though Fujimaru and Ryuunosuke tried their best to keep Haruka from getting involved in the trouble that they've gone through, she is still aware that they're up to something. In the last season, she is aware that Fujimaru is involved with the hostage situation.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: tries to take over the unit handling the BloodyX case while the unit runs The Plan behind his back.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Jack Daemon, a former SWAT team member.

• Parental Substitute: Sayuri acted as Fujimaru and Haruka's guardian when their dad is on a run from the authorities, though that ended when she turns out to be The Mole. Her replacement, Minami, continues her job onward together with Kanou.

• Rapid-Fire Typing: Done by all the hackers during the tense moments. Averted in some cases where the hacking is done by software loaded in a USB key.
• The Rival: Hornet, who doesn't show up until Chapter 84.
• Rule of Cool: While Falcon is described as a "wizard" class hacker in-universe, many of his feats are impossible in reality given the time it takes to accomplish it, or the computing power required to accomplish such feat in that time frame. Or simply impossible with the lack of equipment.
• Sarcastic Confession: When Fujimaru confronted Sayuri for being The Mole, Maya responded by urging her to admit to Fujimaru's accusation. This actually made Fujimaru doubt his own deduction.

• Suspiciously Prescient Planning:
  • Defied in one case. Fujimaru Takagi hacks an encrypted memory chip that belongs to his father, a high-ranking agent of the Third-I section of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, and discovers it contains video of what appears to be a gruesome viral outbreak in Russia known as the Christmas Massacre. After reviewing the footage, Fujimaru begins to (correctly) suspect that a woman (seemingly the perpetrator) who briefly appeared in the video is currently posing as the new teacher at his high school, Maya Orihara. Due to the Russian Orthodox Church using the Julian calendar, though, Christmas in Russia is actually celebrated on January 7th on the internationally accepted Gregorian calendar. Maya knows it will appear suspicious if she immediately gives a prepared alibi for what should be an unremarkable date that passed several months ago, so when asked what she was doing that day, she instead pretends she's forgotten and fakes looking through her agenda to refresh her memory.
  • Fujimaru eventually deduces that the rumored Mole within Third-I is Sayuri Hosho, who had earlier been shot in the chest at contact range but "miraculously" survived due to having a bulletproof vest on and instead only got knocked out for a bit. As Fujimaru explains, Sayuri was shot by Jack Daemon, a Psycho for Hire who openly enjoyed killing people, with his file even stating he's a former SWAT member who was dismissed due to needlessly increasing the body count on missions. But while all of his other kills had been shot in the head, he only shot Sayuri in the chest, even though a Professional Killer like him would've expected a Third-I agent to be wearing a bulletproof vest. Not only that, but he didn't even check to make sure his supposed enemy really was dead despite having ample time to do so. The only explanation is that he and Sayuri were working together and planned on having the latter be shot in a non-lethal manner to hide that the two are allies.
  • Third-I finds itself in a race against time looking for a neutron bomb in Tokyo that a terrorist cult intends to detonate to initiate their "Bloody Monday" plot, which Third-I figures will occur in a few days at midnight on Sunday. Russia, who had the bomb stolen from them by the terrorists and had already fallen victim to a similar attack from the cult, sends Agent Sasha Kabalevsky to help with the search, and she quickly figures out the bomb's coordinates from Third-I's evidence. However, Russia does not trust the Japanese government and tells Third-I that if the bomb is not recovered by 11pm on Thursday, Russia will take matters into their own hands using methods Third-I will likely disapprove of (namely, by blowing up the entire building that the bomb's located in to prevent detonation). Once Thursday rolls around, one of Third-I's allies notes how strange it is that Russia won't wait any later than 11pm that night to stop an attack that supposedly won't take place for another three days, especially since a tip-off from a mercenary hired by the cult also said to get out of the city Thursday morning. Then it turns out that "Bloody Monday" actually falls on the equivalent of a Monday on the ancient Babylonian calendar used by the cult; on the Gregorian calendar, however, it instead coincides with Friday, meaning there's only hours left until the neutron bomb detonates at midnight.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Played straight and subverted in equal amounts throughout the story.
• Time Bomb: When infected with "Bloody-X," a person has two to three hours before they die.
  • Subverted with Anzai Mako, as she's K, and thus the countdown was useless. Still dramatic, though, considering that you didn't find out she was K until after she was cured.
  • Also, there's, ya know, the actual time bomb...

• Voice with an Internet Connection: Fujimaru, those who are in the Third-I HQ and the enemy hackers.
• Walking the Earth: J and his loyal supporters. But they came back at the end of the second season and played a big role in the last season.

Season Two

• Action Girl: We have a new one in the form of Hibiki, who is a foreign agent trained since birth to be an efficient spy and assassin.
  • From the Shooter of the Magic Bullet, Snow White.
  • Another Dark Action Girl is Alissa, the only other surviving member of Nikolai's "Dream Team" until she was killed along with Pres. Curtis.
• Air-Vent Passageway: Used to break into a nuclear reactor chamber. It's a tight fit but an injured Hibiki manages.
• Artistic License – Military: Pandora's Box, the nuclear launch control system carried with the President of the United States. The equivalent object in reality is referred to as a nuclear football, and cannot be used to launch nuclear missiles, only to authorize their launch. Peter Pan's plan to hold the world hostage would never work in reality because the Pentagon knows the Box is his goal and any authorization coming from it would be disregarded.
• Badass Normal, possibly Colonel Badass: "Arthur" the terrorist leader is an ex-astronaut.
• Bittersweet Ending: Borderline to Downer Ending. Despite that Japan is saved again and that Peter Pan and his supporters got what they deserved, the real Hibiki is still missing and the Prime Minister is revealed to be the leader of the terrorists and the man responsible for Ryuunosuke's death.
• Call-Back: The monstrously perverted teacher from Season 1 helps release a member of the terrorists' memories, after attempting to sexually assault his former "sex-slave".
  • Maya arrives to deal information, The Mole's Brainwashed and Crazy-Eyes remind Fujimaru uncomfortably of S.1's cult leader, and J. also gets a mention when Fujimaru fears The Mole was sent by him.
  • The deadline for the threat is again on a Monday, which is lampshaded by Fujimaru.
  • Remember the Bloody-X virus? It's BAAAAAACK!
• Child Soldier: While we don't know how old Hibiki is, it's clear that she's been a well-trained soldier for most of her life. Three generations prior to conception, in fact.

• Defecting for Love: Hibiki, who is a foreign agent trained to be emotionless and efficient, defrosts when she sees the Takagi family dynamics, and completes her Heel–Face Turn when she falls in love with Fujimaru.
• Demoted to Extra: Aoi was one of the central characters in the first season, but barely has a role in the subsequent ones.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Arthur is killed after the attack on the power plant and Peter Pan takes over as the Big Bad.
• Defrosting Ice Queen / What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Hibiki is shaken by Fujimaru's dying father's decision to give his kidneys to his ailing daughter and it appears that she's thinking about the families of the victims for the first time; most significantly she's stopped threatening to kill herself.
  Fujimaru: I can't believe you're getting jealous over me caring about my own sister!
  Hibiki: Jealous...? I see, this is jealousy! Hee hee, this is the first time I've been jealous!
• Emotionless Girl: Hibiki, after it's revealed that she's The Mole. Defrosts soon enough, though.
• Fake Defector: Ryuunosuke Takagi. He pretend that he betrayed Third-I and defected to Shooter of the Magic Bullet so he can be close to Alexei and to whatever he's planning. However, Alexei eventually learns about this and fatally shoots him.
• Government Conspiracy: It's revealed in the end that Prime Minister Kujo is pulling the strings behind the terrorist attacks which results to the deaths of several Third-I agents, including Ryuunosuke Takagi.

• Hostage Situation: Averted a bit. The "fake" Hibiki held a clinic doctor hostage to make Fujimaru gain access to Pandora's Box. Too bad the doctor was killed before Third-I agents gunned her down.
• In Love with the Mark: Hibiki. She was sent to watch over Fujimaru until Pandora's Box is safe. However, her time spent with Fujimaru for the past months made reciprocate her feelings with him. Of course, her superiors were not pleased.
• Info Dump: Fujimaru's workmate-turned-mole Hibiki reveals a lot of information about "The Last Emperor" — so much so that Fujimaru tells her to stop and another person calls her Wikipedia-chan.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: "Snow White". Arthur has done this to her several times.
• The Load: President Adams. After he tries to make a deal with Psycho for Hire Alissa, even telling her that some info they just got was fake, she straight-up tells him the only thing they need from him are his eyes and KO's him.
• Manipulative Bastard: This season gives us Hino Alexei. From the same terrorist group, Peter Pan, which is more evident when he betrays Alexei, who is only the guy who raised him.
• Meaningful Name / Theme Naming: The terrorists' code-names are from fairy tales: Arthur is the leader; a youthful hacker is Peter Pan; a Bishōnen(?) is Hansel and his counterpart is Gretel actually Gretel is a guy, a young woman is Snow White, and their chief is called Story Teller.
  • Hibiki and her clone sisters apparently go by Greek letter: the just-arrived Alpha and Beta, with Hibiki as Zeta.
• The Mole:
  • Fujimaru's workmate Hibiki is also a mole. Although she's the "fake" one.
  • The seemingly incompetent third-I dude is "Gretel" to a bishonen's "Hansel".
  • Otoya's grandpa — the prime minister of Japan — is Storyteller, the head of the terrorists.
• Naked People Are Funny: Hibiki has no shame about stripping down in front of an entire platoon of Third-I troops.
• Our Presidents Are Different: President Adams sure looks like George W. Bush and is a bit overconfident, but he also seems to be fairly level-headed. He's a combination of President Jerkass and President Target.
  • The current Japanese Prime Minister, Kujo, is Prime Minister Personable, at first. But later, he's actually Prime Minister Evil.
• Put on a Bus: We only get to see Aoi on the first few chapters but then, we never know what happened to her.
• Psycho for Hire: "Peter Pan", Nikolai, and the dozens of guys he hired then put through an impromptu Deadly Game to get the best of the best for his "Dream Team".

• Retired Badass: Fujimaru hasn't even touched a keyboard since "Bloody Monday" but this is just a ploy to avoid involving his friends again.
• The Rival: Peter Pan, who is said to be what Falcon could become given a few years (which should already give some indication how powerful he is), and who had a hand in making Falcon the master hacker he is in the first place.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Minami. Her Third-I teammates were surprised about this, at first. Later, she does it again in the last season.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Hibiki and Fujimaru, after the former's Heel–Face Turn.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill / Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The "Third Emperor" is actually the only remaining Tsar Bomba nuke, the most ridiculously destructive bomb ever created.
  • No kaboom, but Peter Pan's plan is to use the Third Emperor demand enough money to throw an entire country's economy into chaos.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Minister of Justice ("They've all been bad"), who think Third-I is wasting time and money trying to attack Arthur & Co. and they should just get rid of the bureau anyway.
  • The American head of security, who's so overconfident he doesn't realize that Peter Pan has already taken over a powerful spy satellite.
  • President Adams, you can make a deal a terrorist who previously said she could have killed any one of the dignitaries by moving into the penthouse next door and apparently forgot a retina scan doesn't require your eyes to be attached to your head.
• We Have Reserves: Hibiki won't hesitate to kill herself if the situation goes south since whoever she works for will just send someone else (in fact, they'll likely send seven identical people). The Third-I crew decides to keep her alive just in case whoever they send is worse.

Season Three

• Beauty Equals Goodness / Evil Makes You Ugly: When Mamiya is revealed as a mole his appearance changes from dashing adventurer to sniveling coward.
• Billy Needs an Organ: After defeating her clones, Hibiki was stabbed in the heart by one of them near the end. J suggested to have her a heart transplant from the clones' fresh corpses.
• Brainwashed and Crazy / Cloudcuckoolander: Kaname — daughter of Storyteller, "wife" of season 1's cult leader, and mother of Otoya and J/Jun — has undergone some sort of mind-meld with her father so she knows exactly how he thinks in case she needs to replace him; in the meantime she acts so loopy even Maya doesn't know how to handle her.
• Broken Pedestal: Though Otoya did find out that his grandfather is behind the attacks, it's only in his confrontation with him where he calls him out for his actions which results not only to the death of his best friend and his girlfriend's father but to the deaths of many people who served Japan.
• The Bus Came Back: Aoi appears near the end of the manga where she attends Fujumaru's and Otoya's double wedding.
• Calling the Old Man Out: After attempting to kill Otoya for his refusal to join, Kaname shoots Masamune and calls him out for taking away her sons from her.
• Darker and Edgier: More serious than Season 2. Not to mention, there's the lack of comedy in it unlike the first two.
• Despair Event Horizon: Storyteller's is from his parents dying in the Hiroshima bombing; unusually it's triggered in middle age.
• Driven to Suicide / Redemption Equals Death: Kaname jumps off the building and drags her father along after realizing how their plan caused a lot of people to suffer including her two sons.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Fujimaru and his friends finally got to live in peace.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: CraUNs, an elite JGSDF unit with some of its agents fighting alongside Third-I operators in the Neo Tokyo Tower.
• Engineered Public Confession: Thanks to Fujimaru, the Prime Minister's conversation with Otoya about his reasons for instigating the terrorist attacks are now known to the public.
  • It was actually a bluff; in exchange for the PM and his daughter being remembered as a heroes, the world doesn't turn Japan into North Korea II and Otoya and Haruka can live peacefully.
• Enemy Mine: Fujimaru and Hibiki are now working with J. as (counter-)terrorists. J and his allies are against the Storyteller as well.
• The Ghost: Otoya and J's mother, Kaname, who is mentioned several times. It turns out that she's actually alive and working with her dad.
• Gone Horribly Right: Storyteller's "mind-meld" with Kaname:
  Kaname: After all the practice I went through, I understand your hatred more than anything. But even if my heart is running on hatred, I also understand really well it won't restore anything. That's why it hurts. That's why I will end this now, father.
• Heroic Sacrifice: J's terrorist friend (who was a member of the group that attacked Otoya as a kid) takes a bullet to save Otoya and Haruka; Hibiki takes a knife to the chest for Fujimaru but, fortunately, she survives, thanks to the heart transplant from one of her clones.
• Karma Houdini:
  • As far as the public is concern, PM Kujou and Kaname are the only "victims" of the terrorist attack and their funeral is attended by 1000 heads of state.
  • Once again, Maya Orihara, who is still on the run.
• The Load: Haruka thinks she's this and wants to help her brother and his friends for once.
• Mama Bear: Despite that her own son refuses to join her in his grandfather's cause, Kaname is still protective to him that she even shoots her own father just to save him from getting killed by Maya.
• The Man Behind the Man: Masamune Kujou.
• The Mole: Mamiya.
  • The surviving Bloody Monday terrorists who are still alive and are hiding in the JSDF.
  • Mole in Charge: Prime Minister Masamune Kujo aka The Storyteller
• Now What?: Since the Storyteller problem has already been dealt with, J and companions don't know what to do.
• Official Couples: To the point where they have a double wedding ceremony in the end!
  • Otoya and Haruka. In fact, when they both confront Prime Minister near the end, Otoya admits that Haruka is his girlfriend.
  • Fujimaru and Hibiki. Apparently, Hibiki mentions that once the mission is over, she wants to get married to Fujimaru.
• Our Presidents Are Different: The new one, Curtis, is President Personable and Target as shown how calm he is during the hostage taking.
• Patrick Stewart Speech: Otoya, after refusing to join his grandfather and mother to join their cause, gives this to them that people, like Hibiki and, possibly, J, can change despite the countless wars that humanity experienced.
• Power Tattoo: Not magical but all the terrorists have big omega symbols on their faces that can only be seen with the masks.
• Red Right Hand: Maya's mole, the only part of her appearance she refuses to change or cover up even when crashing the Kujou and Fujimaru double-weddings.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Storyteller's "prologue" involves shooting a half-dozen hostages on live TV — including children — in order to get the other countries to sell their US dollars and make the Yen powerful. His lackey "Seagull" seems hesitant, so someone else does it. Fortunately the order was given by Fujimaru with a voice synthesizer and "someone else" was Hibiki with a taser.
• Spy Catsuit: Hibiki dons one after infiltrating a diplomatic party.
• Taking You with Me: Kaname commits suicide by jumping off the building and drags Masamune along.
• Theme Naming: Storyteller's group uses birds for code-names like shrike and kingfisher.

• Title Drop: "We are Bloody Monday!"
• Took a Level in Badass: Haruka: she allows herself to be taken hostage so Otoya can escape, plants an extra explosive for Fujimaru when the terrorists unwittingly move them around, holds Otoya's arm up so he/they can shoot the last Hibiki clone who's aiming at Fujimaru, and literally helps Otoya stand up to his grandfather.
• Tragic Keepsake: Otoya gives J their mother's watch; J surprises his hacker pal Michael by not tossing it.
• True Companions / Band of Brothers: Throughout the series, Fujimaru sees Third-I as this. He owns them for protecting him and his loved ones since the first season when his dad went on a run.
• Unwitting Pawn: Third-I have no idea that they're being used by Prime Minister Kujo. But as the story progresses, they know eventually that he's in charge of the terrorists.
• Violence Really Is the Answer:
  Storyteller: The idea that violence cannot change things... is a lie. Every time the world has been changed it was by unilateral violence. [...] We are sacrificing ourselves as terrorists to make this nation ( —Japan—) a truly independent nation that has pride!!
• We Can Rule Together: Masamune Kujou and his daughter, Kaname, tried to convince Otoya to join and understand their cause. Otoya refuses and gives a Patrick Stewart Speech.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Japanese Prime Minister, Masamune Kujou (and Mamiya, the only terrorist whose POV we get to see). His reasons that ever since World War II, he feels that US influence caused so much chaos around the world. The only option, after the cult and Shooter of the Magic Bullet failed, was is to make Japan into a true independent nation.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Hibiki after gunning down what appeared to be hostages. They're actually bad guys.
  • Hibiki again: she kills a bunch of bad guys, but only to prevent Otoya from becoming "sullied".
  • J has to keep reminding Fujimaru that Everyone Lives isn't an really option but Fujimaru does his best anyway.
• White Mask of Doom: Storyteller's terrorists wear them, as do the disguised counter-terrorists Too bad the good guys don't seem to know about the invisible face paint....
• A World Half Full: At the end, this is pretty much the surviving characters' perspective. They know that they cannot expose Masamune's actions to the public as it would create more chaos. But as Kirishima stated, they still have to hunt down the surviving terrorists who are still using their cover positions in the JSDF. And Otoya, as what he said in his Patrick Stewart Speech, decided to become a politician as he wants to make a difference.

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