UFO Baby

is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Mika Kawamura. The manga was serialized by Kodansha in Nakayoshi from February 1998 to March 2002, and the chapters were collected into nine tankōbon volumes. It was adapted into a 78-episode anime television series produced by NHK, animated by J.C.Staff, and directed by Hiroaki Sakurai, which was broadcast between March 2000 and February 2002 on NHK's BS2 broadcast satellite network. The series was one of the top-rated anime series during its initial broadcast. The story follows two junior high school students, Miyu and Kanata, who find and care for an abandoned alien baby without discovering that they are living together without adult supervision. The anime adaptation concluded before the manga was completed, resulting in different endings for each series. Kawamura later wrote a sequel to the manga, . Plot Miyu Kouzuki is an 8th-grade student whose parents left for the United States to work for NASA. They arrange for her to stay with their long-time family friend, Hōsho Saionji, a monk who lives in an old Buddhist temple on a hill overlooking the town of Heiomachi. Hōshō leaves soon after on a year-long pilgrimage to India, leaving Miyu to stay in his house with his son, Kanata. Suddenly, a UFO lands in the honden of the temple. Inside is a humanoid alien baby, Ruu, and his catlike guardian, Wannyā. They arrived on Earth from their home planet, Otto, when they fell into an interplanetary wormhole. They cannot return to their home planet because it is too far from Earth; Wannyā asks Kanata and Miyu to allow them to stay in their house, and they agree. People from Planet Otto look identical to human beings, and that Wannyā can also transform into human beings, animals, and objects.