Karneval Vol 2

Stopping by his hometown of Karasuna, Gareki runs into his old friend Tsubame, who asks him to help uncover the truth behind a string of murders that have recently been plaguing the town. Though the crew assumes that the murders were the doing of their mutant quarry, they catch Tsubame's younger brother, Yotaka, red-handed at the scene of the latest crime. Ordering the bewildered Nai and Gareki to escape, Yogi prepares to do battle with Yotaka, but this is one fight that can only end in heartbreak for Gareki...

When innocent country boy Nai sets foot in the sordid, cutthroat realm of the city, he might as well have painted a target on his own back. Kidnappers, murderers and desperados abound, waiting to take advantage of a boy guileless enough to believe blood is merely 'red water'. Nai is looking for a friend who has disappeared leaving only an I.D bracelet from the organisation named 'Circus', the country's supreme defence agency.

Nai and the crew of the 2nd Ship head for the metropolis of Vantonam, with 1st Ship's Jiki on board under Captain Tsukitachi's orders. The group takes some time off to enjoy the city, but while browsing the Nyanperona Shop, they are called out by a young boy, and...?! Later, Nai receives a secret communication with a dire message from Karoku as Circus begins planning an attack upon the "Smoky Mansion," where Karoku says he is being held. After the fierce battle ends and the dust settles, what truth will await Nai and Gareki...?!

Nai--a young man who travels in search of another by the name of Karoku, a lone bracelet his only lead. Gareki--a willful young man who earns his daily bread by thieving and picking pockets. Thrown together at an eerie mansion, where they are entrapped and framed, Nai and Gareki are soon hunted down as criminals by national security forces. As they are driven into a corner, before them appears the most powerful defense agency in the country, "Circus"--!!

After a successful rescue mission at the Smoky Mansion, Nai has his long-awaited reunion with Karoku and sees to his recovery aboard Circus's 2nd Ship. Meanwhile, Gareki enrolls at the government school Chronomé Academy, where he applies himself to the Circus Program and experiences school life for the very first time. Though apart, both Nai and Gareki set to their individual endeavors, their hearts and minds never far from thoughts of each other. Meanwhile, at Circus, Tsukumo and company undertake a dangerous undercover mission......

Faced with an impossible decision, Nai chooses to follow the other Karoku to the headquarters of the evil organization, Kafka. Upon arrival, the members attempt to extract new secrets about Incuna from the depths of Nai’s memory. Meanwhile, in a frantic attempt to find Nai, Gareki accesses Dr. Akari’s computer to track down confidential information…but get more than he bargained for! Circus’s secrets might finally be revealed…!

This is the second of a two-volume collection of studies on inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion. Their common aim is to argue for the historical relevance of various types of ambiguity and dissonance. While the first volume focused on the central paradoxes in ancient henotheism, the present one discusses the ambiguities in myth and ritual of transition and reversal. After an introduction to the history of the myth and ritual debate (with a focus on New Year festivals and initiation) in the first chapter, the second and third chapters discuss myth and ritual of reversal—Kronos and the Kronia, and Saturnus and the Saturnalia respectively; the fourth treats two women's festivals—that of Bona Dea and the Thesmophoria; the fifth investigates the initiatory aspects of Apollo and Mars. In the background is the basic conviction that the three approaches to religion known as 'substantivistic', functionalist and cultural-symbolic respectively, need not be mutually exclusive.

By reading petitions of papal pardon, the book offers a vivid microhistorical narrative of the culture of violence, religion and learning in the late medieval rural milieu of East Central European commoners.