Dr. Tenma is a Japanese man working in Germany. He has it all, incredible medical skill, a great job, a beautiful fiancee. He becomes disillusioned with the hospital politics though, when one day he's ordered to forgo operating on a critically injured man in favor of someone who was more famous. After this point, he decides he will do what he thinks is right, regardless of politics.

One day, a young boy and his younger sister were brought in. The boy had a bullet in his head, an operation that the doctor knows only he is capable of completing successfully. But soon after a politician was brought to the hospital and the high ups in the hospital want Dr. Tenma to leave the boy to operate on the politician. Dr. Tenma decides that he'll do what's right and save the young boy's life.

The young boy's operation was a success, but the surgeons operating on the politician fail, prompting his life to fall apart. Dr. Tenma is passed over for a promotion and his fiancee becomes cold to him and eventually leaves him.

But soon after, strange murders begin to occur, ones that benefit Dr. Tenma greatly and though he becomes the #1 suspect, they have no evidence against him. But it seems that the boy whose life he saved has a hand in things, and that he is much more than he seems...