Kids on the Slope

Kaoru Nishimi is a well-educated, reclusive first-year high school student from an affluent family who regularly moves due to his father's job; as a result, he has never established long-lasting connections. He moves from Yokosuka, Kanagawa to Sasebo, Nagasaki in the summer of 1966 to live with his extended family. He meets Sentar Kawabuchi, a troubled student who his friends fear, on his first day of class. Kaoru is motivated to pursue jazz music by Sentar's enthusiasm for it, and the two boys grow close through jazz jam sessions at a record store run by the friends of Ritsuko Mukae, a classmate. In the three years that Kaoru, Sentar, and Ritsuko spend in high school, the slice-of-life series depicts their interactions with one another.