Episode 1: Alien & Launching UFO Bath

One late afternoon in early summer, teenaged Mayuko Chigasaki waits for the bus to the Enohana Gate. As the bus to the Enohana Gate arrives, Mayuko chooses to miss it to take advantage of a cheap deal from a butcher who lowers his price on some leftover pork.

Back home, Mayuko�s eyes gleam with joy as she gazes down upon a pot of boiling stew. Her reverie is interrupted when her roommate, NieA, whips a pair of chopsticks toward the stew, but Mayuko blocks with her own set. Mayuko proclaims that �an unemployed Under alien only deserves to eat the greens� and NieA angrily accuses Mayuko of anti-alien bigotry and hurting an alien�s delicate pride. Mayuko is unmoved and continues to defend the stew--but then the hot plate's fuel canister runs dry. NieA comes to the rescue with a replacement. canister that she offers in exchange for 1/3rd of the meat. Mayuko agrees to the deal, but when the new canister is activated, it explodes, leaving Mayuko and NieA covered in soot and the meal ruined.

Mayuko�s day ends as it so often does�she works for her rent by cleaning the Enohana baths and later drifts off to sleep while studying. This night, Mayuko dreams about her father, reliving a conversation they had just before she was to start kindergarten. The father�s face remains hidden; the only thing Mayuko seems to remember about his is that he was a large, protective presence, and that he wore the wristwatch that she herself wears now.

It is the alarm on that wristwatch that wakes her from the dream�that, and loud thumps on the roof directly overhead. When she emerges into the early morning rain, Mayuko is greeted by a cheerful NieA, who was doing aerobics on the roof. The young alien states that it�s beautiful morning and demands that Mayuko make breakfast for her. Mayuko responds as she so often does, that she doesn�t have anything to offer a �freeloader.�

By 7 a.m., Mayuko is on her way to one of her part-time jobs, delivering papers. The nearly deserted streets of the economically depressed village of Enohana seem even more desolate in the pre-dawn drizzle. After finishing her paper route, Mayuko lies down for what she intended to be a brief nap, but instead ends up oversleeping when NieA too goes back to sleep and therefore doesn�t wake her as promised. The frustrated Mayuko wakes NieA in a most ungentle fashion.

As Mayuko scrambles to get ready to catch the bus to cram school, NieA discovers a worse crisis than Mayuko oversleeping: There�s no food in the refrigerator! Mayuko�s stomach growls at the thought of food, and she tries to force NieA off the topic by turning to a bizarre, round object leaning against the wall in the corner. �Why did you make another junk UFO?� she demands and gives it a kick.

Before any further conversation can take place, Mayuko glances at her wristwatch, discovering to her horror that she has almost missed the bus.

Mayuko rushes down the stairs, pausing at the exit to say good morning to Enohana Bathhouse�s boiler operator, Mr. Yoshioka, and explain that she is rushing off to register for summer classes. Running across the bathhouse�s walled courtyard garden, Mayuko also greets the elderly Momo Enoshima, but by the time the aged woman looks up from her tea, Mayuko is already gone, with NieA close on her heels. Mayuko hasn�t fed her breakfast yet!

As Mayuko runs for the bus, she cuts through a small junkyard, open fields, and a wooded area, with NieA close behind crying out for food. The trail leads them past the crater made when the Mothership carrying the aliens to Earth crashed. A small group of antenna-sporting children are playing on the slope. They immediately start hurling slurs at NieA when they catch sight of her: �No Antenna NieA� Under Seven�s are unimportant, my mom says so!�

NieA throws some half-hearted insultuls back at them, as she is putting all her energy into catching up with Mayuko. Alas, the bus pulls away from the stop just as the alien is crossing the bridge near it.

After Mayuko registers for her classes, a talkative girl named Chiaki approaches her. The girls hit it off and they decide to get some tea� but then NieA shows up, claiming to be on a junk collecting expedition. Her real motivation is crystal clear, however: she Mayuko first fears NieA will embarrass her, and initially it seems her fear will come true, but Chiaki turns out to be obsessed with aliens and UFOs; she shares her obsession with the world through a web site that she is constantly updating via her satellite-liked laptop computer. Chiaki becomes even more excited when NieA mentions that the giant UFO--�the mothership�--that brought the aliens to Earth is visible from the place where she and Mayuko lives. Before Mayuko knows what is happening, Chiaki has been invited to visit the Enohana Bathhouse.

Upon reaching the bathhouse, NieA charges upstairs to prepares the homemade UFO for Chiaki to see. The two other girls climb the stairs somewhat slower, with Chiaki pausing to comment on some strange horizontal lines that have been carved in one of the rustic structure�s internal support beams. Mayuko says she doesn�t know what made them, even though she spent her early childhood here. Mayuko�s family once owned the Enohana Bathhouse, but her mother had to sell it after her father�s death. The family has been in poverty ever since.

When Mayuko enters her room, she is mortified to find NieA�s UFO in the center of the room. She makes Chiaki wait in the hallway and forces the strange craft into the closet. Chiaki is taken by the simple, traditional Japanese appearance of Mayuko�s apartment, a d�cor that Mayuko just considers a reflection of her poverty.

NieA calls to them from the roof, and the pair climb a rope to join her. To Chiaki�s disappointment, the weather is hazy so the view of the mothership is obscured. NieA once again comes to the rescue by offering to give Chiaki a close look of the mothership through a ride in her homemade UFO.

Within moments, a burst of energy blasts through the roof above Mayuko�s room and the junk UFO floats upward and into view, with a cackling NieA at the controls. Chiaki leaps in, but as the UFO rises into the hazy summer sky, a design flaw emerges with catastrophic results: The UFO is powered by electricity, and the electricity is being drawn from the bathhouse through a cord plugged into an outlet in Mayuko�s room. The UFO reaches the end of the cord�s slack, it is yanked from the socket, and the makeshift craft stalls and crashes back into Mayuko�s room. A massive explosion follows, blasting an even bigger hole in the roof and shattering the room�s window. NieA and Chiaki suffer a few bruises, but are otherwise unhurt.