, also known as NieA under 7, is a doujinshi manga series created by graphic designer Yoshitoshi ABe and later published by Kadokawa Shoten on their monthly Shōnen magazine Monthly Ace Next from October 1999 to January 2001. The manga revolves around a poor, introverted student named Mayuko Chigasaki, who lives above a Japanese bathhouse, and a freeloading, freewheeling outcast alien named NieA, who lives in Mayuko's closet. The manga is adapted into a 13-episode anime series by Triangle Staff and aired on WOWOW from April 16 to July 19, 2000. Much of the anime's staff also worked on Serial Experiments Lain, as producer Yasuyuki Ueda suggested the team work on a lighter anime as relief from the dark, heavily psychological Serial Experiments Lain. The character Chiaki, a ufology fanatic, shares a name with Chiaki J. Konaka, the script writer for Serial Experiments Lain. Plot Set in a retro-future setting, the series revolves around Mayuko Chigasaki, a high school graduate who goes to cram school in preparation for college. However, due to having no place to settle in, she decided to live in a bathhouse in the countryside, which is in a financial crisis due to having no customers. Even worse, she has to live with an alien girl named NieA, who has no antenna and is considered an "under-seven", a class despised by other aliens due to being the lowest of their kind. The series touches lightly upon issues of discrimination, stereotypes, social alienation, cultural assimilation and city life versus countryside living. Mayuko, who attends a cram school, is a young girl living away from her family and expresses a lot of melancholy. NieA, who is apparently placed in an inferior class by her fellow aliens due to being a physical minority among them, immediately accuses anyone who calls her a "stupid no-antenna" or the like, of discrimination. Other aliens adopt various stereotypical cultural styles, such as Chada who dresses in Indian attire and opens a convenience store, or Karna who chooses to associate herself with the Chinese Revolution. This theme of the outsider alien is carried through in the brief comic live-action sequence which ends each episode, "Dalgit's Tidbit of Indian Information." Characters Mayuko "Mayu" Chigasaki is a student at the Ipponmatsu Cram School who lives in a rented room at the Enohana Bathhouse. She is hardworking, polite, honest, and very self-conscious. Mayuko spends all of her time