Ankoku Shinwa

Ankoku Shinwa (Japanese: 暗黒神話, English: The Dark Myth) is a 1977 manga featuring a young man named Takeshi who becomes involved in supernatural occurrences related to ancient Japanese history and mythology.

The Dark Myth
Takeshi feels a connection to Suwa, far away from his home in Tokyo, where he meets an old man named Takeuchi, who mysteriously knows his name without asking. Later, Takeshi is contacted by a man who claims to have known his father, who died when Takeshi was a young child, at the same time that he received a snake shaped scar on his shoulder. Takeshi and the man are quickly joined by Takeuchi, who leads them deep into a cave, where they meet an armless snake monster, which Takeuchi claims is the god Takeminakata. Takeuchi attempts to take them to another place, but their car is whisked into a dark realm and Takeshi disappears, while his father's friend is killed. Takeshi receives a strange vision in which he sees an image of himself on a vast stone, and another god named Ōkuninushi bites his knee.

Takeshi reappears in the normal world, and is found by Kazuhiko, a young man who leads a secret clan claiming to be descended from the aboriginal Jomon. He takes Takeshi to many archaeological sites, attempting to recreate Takeshi's fainting reaction to a tomb painting of a spotted black horse. At one of these, Takeshi enters a trance state and leaves Kazuhiko. He is located hanging from a horse-headed statue with another scar on his ankle. Kazuhiko follows him, but Takeshi escapes to a temple. Kazuhiko investigates the horse statue and discovers it conceals the tomb of the legendary prehistoric queen Himiko, and is the location of her lost kingdom of Yamatai. In the temple, Takeshi awakens immortal ghouls beneath the temple, who are in fact Himiko and her attendants, transformed by a spring in her tomb into immortal but mindlessly hungry monsters. Takeshi enters another trance, taking the monsters with him. Kazuhiko catches up to Takeshi at a large stone statue of a horse head after Takeshi aquires several more scars, but the monsters kill most of Kazuhiko's clan. Takeshi acquires a sword from the statue and again disappears.

Takeuchi guides Takeshi to a shrine by a coast where there are many large stone eggs, which turn out to be capsules for suspended animation, 1600 years old. When opened, they have failed and have only bones and fluid. One opens with a living princess inside, who recognizes Takeshi as her Prince Takeru, but her body falls apart, her suspended animation also having failed. Takeshi calls down lighting, giving himself another scar on the shoulder. Before dying, she gives Takeshi a mirror. Takeshi returns home, but discovers one of Kazuhiko's clan, carrying a string of jewels (the final part of the imperial regalia of Japan). He tells Takeshi that his mother is Kazuhiko's sister, and that Kazuhiko killed Takeshi's father, but that Takeminakata scarred Takeshi rather than Kazuhiko. Takeshi's mother attacks the man, but both are killed by splinters of wood when they fall through a railing. One of the jewels pierces Takeshi's forehead, creating his final scar. Takeshi disguises as a woman like the ancient Takeru did, and kills Kazuhiko, before disappearing.

Takeuchi and the surviving member of the Kikuchi clan watch via a magical viewport the Horsehead Nebula, which Takeuchi speculates is a vast living nebular organism, once worshipped by the Jomon people, which caused periodic disasters when it obscured the sun. More than two thousand years ago, one of Takeshi's previous incarnations caused the nebula to move very from Earth. They see the nebula begin to move toward Earth, and Takeuchi enters suspended animation to awaken 100 years later, doubting that he will ever live to see the return of Takeshi.

After disappearing, Takeshi appears before the Nebula which offers him unimaginable power and the secrets of the universe, but in his confusion Takeshi asks it to return him to Earth. He awakens in a barren wasteland, with the Sun red and gigantic. Nearby, he sees the horse head which gave him the sword, surrounded by the immortal monsters from under the temple. Behind the horse head, the nebula rises, as big as the gigantic sun. Takeshi deduces that he has arrived at the Earth billions of years in the future, and humanity is extinct. The final page suggest he may become Maitreya, a Buddha who appears at the end of the world after Gautama Buddha's teachings have been forgotten.

The Legend of Jofuku
A chinese mystic, Jofuku, is ordered by the first Qin emperor to search for the secrets of immortality. He kidnaps forty six virgin boys and girls, and sails east to the mythical island of immortal, Penglai, in actuality Japan of the prehistoric Jomon period. He plans to marry the boys and girls according to astrological and alchemical principles, to produce forty six children who embody the forty six elements of the human body, and allow him passage to a special sanctuary in Japan, which he believes will allow him to merge himself with the Tao, the guiding principle of all existence. Two of the children fall in love outside his scheme, however, and attempt to escape. Together, they are able to enter the sanctuary and see ghostly flowers flowing from nowhere. Jofuku attempts to recapture them, but they escape them, and the girl, Seiei, falls to her death in her attempt to escape. This breaks the heart of her lover, but also foils the scheme of Jofuku. Jofuku attempts to enter the sanctuary (a cave beneath Mount Fuji), but a volcanic eruption buries him beneath it.

Characters

 * Yamato Takeshi, a 13 year old boy who awakens dark secrets in archaeological ruins across Japan. He turns out to be the rebirth of the legendary hero Yamato Takeru, and the chosen one of the ultimate principle of reality, Brahman or Susanoo, who is depicted as a dangerous horse god. It is also suggested Takeshi may be the Boddhisattva Maitreya
 * Kikuchi Kazuhiko, referred to by his clan members as "Hiko", a young man who heads the supposedly extinct Kikuchi Clan, and claims to be a descendant of the legendary Kumaso people, the enemies of the imperial Yamato clan. Kazuhiko desires the power he believes is destined to him, and wishes to steal it from Takeshi. Kazuhiko went as far as to marry his older sister to Takeshi's father, in order to steal the jewels of the Yamato clan. Kazuhiko and all but one of his clan are killed during the course of the story.
 * Takeuchi, an old man who is extremely knowledgeable about ancient history and mythology. He is later revealed to be the legendary hero Takenouchi no Sukune, who lived more than a thousand years ago and reputedly lived to be 300 years old. In actuality, he took advantage of a lost technique in which a fluid placed his body in suspended animation for hundreds of years at a time, gaining a reputation for immortality. He also claims to have been other legendary figures such as Abe no Seimei over the course of history. At the end of the story, he returns to suspended animation for another hundred years.
 * High Monk Jikuu, an unassuming wandering monk, who turns out to be highly knowledgeable about exorcism and other esoteric matters. He attempted to aid and protect Takeshi.