Living for the Day After Tomorrow

"There are things you won't reach even with outstretched hands... There are things that will fade into the distance once you let go. People are always seeking those, and before they know it, they become lost. This is a story of such a summer for us..."

The Other Wiki tells us that "Living for the Day After Tomorrow (あさっての方向., Asatte no Hōkō) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by J-ta Yamada. The manga was serialized in Mag Garden's magazine Comic Blade Masamune between March 3, 2005 and June 15, 2007"

Iokawa Karada is a little girl who lives with her older sort-of brother, Hiro. Nogami Shouko is Hiro's ex-girlfriend, whom he unexpectedly left behind. When Shouko is unexpectedly reunited with Hiro, the girls come into conflict, leading to hurt feelings all around. Still upset, they both find themselves together at a small shrine housing a stone that, according to local legend, will grant wishes.

They didn't expect it to actually work. Karada is suddenly now an adult, and Shouko is a child. Suddenly nobody recognizes them, they don't have any clothes that fit (Shouko even needs new glasses), and Karada has to deal with being an adult, all while Hiro and friends are in a panic about Karada's sudden "disappearance."


 * The Atoner:.
 * Bait and Switch Credits: Mild: the opening and ending credits focus almost entirely on child Karada, who appears almost exclusively in flashbacks after the first episode.
 * Beach Episode: And it's the first episode!
 * Be Careful What You Wish For
 * Cassandra Truth
 * Creepy Twins: Sae and Yumi in the manga.
 * Discretion Shot: See Squick.
 * Disneyfication
 * Festival Episode
 * Fish Out of Water: Karada as an adult.
 * Fountain of Youth
 * Freaky Friday Flip: With a twist: the characters switch ages to learn more about themselves, not to learn more about each other.
 * Hair Colors
 * Immortality: In the manga, Kikuko intends to use the wishing stones to live forever.
 * Incest Is Relative: In the manga,.
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:.
 * Magic Pants: Averted; after having their ages switched Karada and Shoukou are wearing clothes way too small/big for them respectively.
 * Magic Realism: It's a perfectly normal world, except for the wishing stone.
 * Meet Cute
 * Mineral MacGuffin: The wishing stones.
 * Meganekko
 * My God, What Have I Done?:.
 * Not Blood Siblings: In the manga,.
 * Out of Focus: Shouko.
 * Overnight Age-Up
 * Parental Abandonment: Death, actually.
 * Pragmatic Adaptation
 * Promotion to Parent: All the way up from, in the anime, and in the manga.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Shouko; inverted with Karada.
 * Stalker with a Crush: Testu in the manga.
 * Swapped Roles
 * Thunderbolt Iron: The wishing stones.
 * Three Wishes: Subverted, in the manga a sign at the shrine says the stone grants three wishes, it actually only grants one wish.
 * Twin Switch: Sae and Yumi.
 * Uncanny Family Resemblance: Faked--Shouko pretends to be her own little sister, played straight in the manga with Karada and her mother.
 * Un Confession: Tetsu to Karada early in the manga.
 * Undead Tax Exemption: Attempted to avoid it, but Karada's fake identity works strangely well.
 * Victim Falls For Rapist: In the manga and clearly believes that he's doing it out of love, later on he realizes he was very very wrong and spends the rest of the manga  in hopes that he'll get to see her smile again.