Yami no Matsuei, or Descendents of Darkness, is an anime based on the shojo manga by Matsushita Yoko-sensei. In the YnM world, our hero Tsuzuki Asato (Miki Shin'ichiro) is a hopeless sweets addict working for the Shokan division of JyuOhCho, which is a branch of the government of Meifu dedicated to making sure the dead pass on at the proper time. In other words, Tsuzuki-kun is a shinigami! Weeeeela! Anyway, Tsuzuki is very powerful, able to call 12 shikigami (they're like...gods, sort of...), and has been doing this job pretty much since he died in the 1920's. Their cho answers only to EnmaDaiOh, and are basically very highly ranked within the celestial government. Tsuzuki has a few problems, however, which is one reason he's still there.

Tsuzuki gets a new partner to work on a case where people are dying before their time--their bodies are found "marked" like a vampire was biting them. Not entirely accurate, but close enough. Tsuzuki's partner is a 16-year-old recently-dead boy named Kurosaki Hisoka (Asano Mayumi). Hisoka, however, was not merely dead, btu he was murdered. At age 12 he witnessed a sadistic murder. However, he was also spotted by the murderer, who caught him, raped him (*shudder* - and there are some pretty explicits shots of this, especially in the manga... O_o), and cursed him to an extremely slow and painful death before taking away his memories. It took Hisoka four years to waste away. He also has the dubious felicity of being an empath - able to sense the feelings of others. However, this turns out to be more of a burden than an asset. It made his own parents consider him a monster, and it can incapacitate him when he encounters the strong emotions of another without being prepared first.

In addition to Hisoka, there are other employees of Meifu that Tsuzuki interacts with on a pretty much daily basis. There's his uptight ex-partner and the Shokan division's accountant, Tatsumi Seiichiro (Morikawa Toshiyuki); the genki and very strange Watari Yutaka (Seki Toshihiko); the long-suffering head of the division, Konoe-kancho; the hard-working Wakaba Kannuki (Shiratori Yuri) and her smoking, shikigami-possess ex-cop surly partner, Terazuma (he only appears in the manga); and the GouShouShin brothers, who look rather like chickens. They are the librarians and they manage to keep in touch with each other via the 'net. Up to date chickens, no less.

Yami No Matsuei's major villain, Muraki Kazutaka (Hayami Sho), is creepy and psycho. And yes, he's the man who raped and cursed Hisoka four years before. He also desires Tsuzuki, in more ways than one. He wants Tsuzuki for his body, and because Muraki's grandfather was the one who had Tsuzuki in a mental hospital for something like eight years, wherein Tsuzuki didn't eat or drink and tried to kill himself multiple times, only to fail miserably. Muraki wants to use Tsuzuki's deathless body to resurrect his dead half-brother, Shindo Saki, who killed Muraki's parents, and would have killed Muraki, had a servant not intervened and killed Saki-san instead. Anyway, Muraki's a bit of a psycho, and he has a fake eye. Very strange man.

Several other characters have well-known seiyuu. When we meet Hisoka on the trail of the murders in Tokyo, there's the famous Chinese singer Maria Wong (Imai Yuka) and her evil stepmother (Katsuki Masako). Our second arc has Minase Hijiri, a boy with a possessed eye, could pass for Hisoka's twin (and was actually based on an early concept of Hisoka), and is voiced by Takayama Minami. The man who donated the evil cornea had a daughter, Otonashi Kazusa (Kawakami Tomoko), who brefriends Hijiri. Then there's a medical student named Abiko Tetsuhiro (Kusao Takeshi). Finally, we meet Muraki-sensei's friend, Oriya Mibu (Inoue Kazuhiko).

Hisoka and Hijiri. Twins, ne?

Konoe-kancho and Tsuzuki.

The chicken brothers, aka GuShoShin. Well, one of them, at any rate. They're very...weird. And the younger one (I think....they look alike to me) has an annoying voice.

Tsuzuki in puppy-form! Wai! Isn't he just adorable?

Tatsumi and Watari.

Oriya Mibu, possibly the only man to be friends with Muraki Kazutaka...

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