Endou Kenji grew up in late-1960s/early-1970s Japan during the space race and Woodstock era. He was a manga obsessive who'd constantly see apocalyptic stories and think "I'd fight that." As a kid, he and his friends invented an elaborate world-conquest scenario just to play out being heroes.
By 1997, Kenji's running his family's old liquor shop—now converted into a convenience store—and raising his niece Kiriko, whose mother disappeared right after handing her over to him. Life was pretty normal. Then the prophecy he'd made up as a kid started actually happening. Turns out an evil organization called Friend (led by a masked guy with the same name) has been using those old plans to actually try conquering the world. As Friend's grip on the government tightens, Kenji becomes a fugitive, living rough and fighting back however he can—part underground resistance, part protest through a song he wrote called "Bob Lennon."
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
