Sixth-grader Haruo Yaguchi has nothing going for him except a near-godlike grasp of arcade fighting games. That collapses when his classmate Akira Ono, quiet, wealthy and top of the class, turns up at his usual cabinet and beats him at Street Fighter II match after match. Haruo chases a rematch through the arcades of the early 1990s while Akira keeps appearing wherever the next big release lands. Their classmate Koharu Hidaka, whose family liquor store installs a cabinet of its own, gradually works her way into Haruo's orbit.