Heroes Assemble

All Raul wanted was to get through college with his girlfriend, his cousins, and his friends at his side. Then a blast ripped through all five faculties of his university at once, and when he woke up, the world had turned upside down: he could lift boulders with his mind, throw fire, command water, air, light, and darkness, and the face staring back from the window belonged to a first-grader. That night the television read out the list of the dead. His name was on it.

Officially, Raul died in the explosion. Unofficially, the one adult he can trust, Professor Akari Shirayama, family friend, scientific genius, and owner of a fortune big enough to hide a miracle, gives a dead boy a new name, a new age, a new legal life, and a mansion in a new country, complete with enrollment in the first grade, a bedtime, a curfew, and a diaper bag packed alongside the lab equipment. There is only one problem with this perfect hiding place: a kid genius with superpowers gets bored fast. And Raul's answer to boredom is to become a superhero.

His door to adventure is PriPara, the magical idol world where ordinary kids become singing stars. Armed with homemade hero gear of his own design, Raul debuts twice in a single day: first as an idol stunning the crowd with the legendary Gold Airy, then as Angely Teddy, teddy-bear guardian of hope. One by one his friends are chosen, Aqua Dragon, Terra Doggy, Moon Bunny, Shadow Pony, until the Heroes Unit stands five strong, with talking Digimon partners at their sides and a secret too big to keep forever.

Because the world has a dark side. The Society of Light, an older team of heroes, warns them about the Dark Star: the seven most powerful villains alive, and the Dusk monsters that hunt at their command, their listening seeds already sprouting toward his window. Then Raul learns the worst secret of all. Toxic Flower, the Dark Star's cruelest leader, the poison whose black garden swallowed a concert whole, is Melody, the girlfriend the explosion took from him. The girl on the list of the dead never died at all. Something came through the blast and took her, and for three years it has been teaching her to forget his name.

Now the Autumn Grand Prix is coming, the biggest stage in the world, and Toxic Flower has promised to turn it into a graveyard. Raul has one unfinished song, a melody Melody wrote with him before everything ended, and one impossible plan: take that stage, sing loud enough for the whole world to join in, and reach the girl trapped inside the villain before the Dark Star silences every song on Earth. Superheroes, idols, talking Digimon partners, and a rescue mission four hundred voices strong: in this world, saving the day starts with believing in friendship, and with refusing to let go of the people you love.

The Heroes Unit has come to save the world!