Two inseparable friends, Kato Hiroshi and Nakama Toru, navigate the violent and socially rigid world of their Japanese high school. As self-styled delinquents, they are easily identifiable by their trademark punch perms—slicked-back, 1950s-style hairstyles—and their exaggerated, swaggering walks, which are both comical and a defiant declaration of their outsider status. Their lives revolve around a simple, brutal code: loyalty to friends, a hair-trigger readiness for a fight, and a quest for an odd kind of cool.

The storyline follows these two rough-and-tumble best friends as they brawl with rival students from other schools, clash with authority figures, and get entangled in the romantic pursuits and problems of their peers. Their world is filled with an assortment of outlandish characters sporting even wilder fashions and hairstyles, including rival gang leaders from schools like Tachibana Commercial and Joto Industrial. One notable narrative arc involves a challenge between the two friends to avenge a beaten comrade, sending them on a mission to another town and sparking a chaotic chain of comedic and violent misadventures.

Key figures in their orbit include Izumi Kyoko and Miharayama Junko, female characters who hold their own in this male-dominated environment, as well as loyal but timid underclassmen like Kaneko Nobuo. The central conflict is often sparked by the duo's hair-trigger tempers, drawing them into conflicts with antagonists like Maekawa Shingo, the lecherous head of a rival school, or Onijima, a formidable older adversary. The second of the two television specials continues their story, pitting Hiroshi and Toru against a new threat as they work to protect a teacher's daughter from a gang of intimidating college students, forcing them to rally their allies for a final, climactic showdown.