The Shell Part III: Paradiso

Showa 33 — 1958. A cold January, a funeral being held in gray snow, a portrait of a girl who looks almost embarrassed and a little lonely. The imprisoned painter Shinzo Mamiya died weeks after the crimes of the Blessed Congregation came to light. Detective Reiji Tokisaka, recruited by his old friend Maris Stella to sort through the man's belongings, finds instead an unknown work in Mamiya's studio: a one-winged, armless angel they name Exile Of Paradise. It is as beautiful as it is sinister, bearing a clear resemblance to Mamiya's notorious masterpiece Girl In Shell. Days later, a woman's corpse is discovered, modified in the exact manner depicted in Exile. She had previously worked with a man named Tomoyuki Masaki. The chain of obsession that began with Girl In Shell may have only one person capable of breaking it — and she is very small.