Ayakashi - Japanese Classic Horrror

Lin Yu SG

While spending the night in a traditional inn, the Medicine Seller stumbles upon a strange phenomenon. A pregnant woman who is desperately seeking shelter at the inn is led to a strange room upstairs. There, she is attacked by an assassin, who is then mysteriously and gruesomely killed. A group of Zashiki Warashi are haunting the room the pregnant Shino is sleeping in. They dispose of the assassin when he tries to kill her. Apparently, the inn used to be a brothel.

Back then, the inn's owner routinely aborted her worker's children so the girls could keep working. The unborn were then encased in small hollow dolls and kept in the ceiling, trapping their souls. The unborn are drawn to Shino because of her determination to save her own child and decide they'd like her to be their mother. After saving her, they cause a bunch of weird events which drag the Medicine Seller into the middle of the whole affair.

The Zashiki Warashi want Shino to give birth to them, and she agrees (to the Medicine Seller's dismay). She pulls a sutra off her stomach (after taking a beating from the inn's owner who was trying to abort her baby) and ends up seemingly miscarrying her infant five months into the pregnancy.

At the end of the episode, the Medicine Seller seems to have saved Both Shino and her child since she is seen with a big belly, knocked out on the floor. However, some speculate that the final scene after the ending credits implies that the child she is about to give birth to is in fact the Mononoke, having taken the place of her own miscarried child.

Lin Yu SG

Zashiki-warashi

Episode 1

Episode 2

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Traveling on a merchant's luxurious ship, the Medicine Seller and the ship's other passengers end up stranded in the middle of a sea full of ayakashi. Among the passengers, the Medicine Seller has had a previous encounter with Kayo, a servant girl who helped him during his confrontation with the Bakeneko. Some very strange events occur, including the passengers of the ship being asked what their worst fear is by the ayakashi and having to experience it. In the end, though, the conflict is solved when Genkei comes to terms with his past. His sister was in love with him and to ease his conscience, he thought that he was in love with his sister, but the truth was that he was happy when she decided to sacrifice herself in his place. This is the first arc in which the sword the Medicine Seller is actually unsheathed on screen.

Lin Yu SG

Umibōzu (Japanese: 海坊主 sea bonze) is a spirit in Japanese folklore. The Umibōzu is said to live in the ocean and capsize the ship of anyone who dares speak to it. This spirit's name, which combines the character for "sea" with the character of "Buddhist monk," is possibly related to the fact that the Umibōzu is said to have a large, round head, resembling the shaven heads of Buddhist monks. Alternatively they are enormous Yokai (spectres) that appear to shipwreck victims and fishermen. They are believed to be drowned priests, and exhibit the shaven head and typically appears to be praying. It is usually reported as having a grey, cloud-like torso and serpentine limbs.

According to one story, if angered, they ask that the crews provide a barrel that it proceeds to fill with sea water to drown them. To avoid this disastrous fate, it is necessary to give him a bottomless barrel.

This folktale is likely related to another Japanese tradition, which says that the souls of people who have no one to look after their graves take refuge at sea.

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Lin Yu SG

This is a nice and beautiful story

Lin Yu SG

Mixing noh, flashbacks, and inverted storytelling, this story tells of Ochou (a beautiful, but despairing woman) that has confessed to killing all her husband's family. The Medicine Seller and his attached Mononoke figure heavily-while the story is confusing the first time you watch, a re-watch of the story lets you clearly piece together the true tale of what happened.

Lin Yu SG

The Noppera-bō (のっぺら坊, Noppera-bō^?), or faceless ghost, is a Japanese legendary creature. They are sometimes mistakenly referred to as a mujina, an old Japanese word for a badger or raccoon dog. Although the mujina can assume the form of the other, Noppera-bō are usually humans. Such creatures were thought to sometimes transform themselves into noppera-bō in order to frighten humans. Lafcadio Hearn used the animals' name as the title of his story about faceless monsters, probably resulting in the misused terminology.

Noppera-bō are known primarily for frightening humans, but are usually otherwise harmless. They appear at first as ordinary human beings, sometimes impersonating someone familiar to the victim, before causing their features to disappear, leaving a blank, smooth sheet of skin where their face should be.

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Attending an incense ceremony that will determine the inheritor to the "School of Seeing Scents", the Medicine Seller arrives to find three other men competing to take the hand of the Lady Ruri (the keeper of the School, and the last of the line). Strangely, when Ruri-hime and other residents within the mansion are murdered, the three men continue to fight over the "Todaiji" (a fragranced block of wood, that is rumored to give whoever possesses it great power). With the death of Lady Ruri, the Medicine Seller takes over the preparation and judging of the contest, taking great pleasure in tormenting and mocking the men involved. Indeed, his sadism towards the other characters is very surprising, until we reach the end of the story: thereupon, we learn that everything that we have watched (the 3 suitors, the murders, the contest) all happened a very long time ago, and are merely memories of past actions, brought to life by the Todaiji (the mononoke), in order to make it feel fulfilled and "something other than a block of wood".

Not relating to the story, but all 3 courtiers are shown as being from the three orders of Classical Japanese Theatre: Oosawa Roubo, from the Noh theatre; Muromachi Tomoyoshi, from the Kabuki style theatre; Nakarai Tansui, from the Kyogen theatre

Lin Yu SG

A nue (鵺) is a legendary creature found in Japanese folklore. It is described as having the head of a monkey, the body of a raccoon dog, the legs of a tiger, and a snake as a tail. According to the legend, a nue can transform into a black cloud and fly. Due to its appearance, it is sometimes referred to as a Japanese chimera^{[citation
needed]}. Nue are supposed to be bringers of misfortune and illness.^{[citation
needed]}

According to The Tale of the Heike, Emperor Konoe, the Emperor of Japan, became sick after having terrible nightmares every night, and a dark cloud appeared at two o'clock in the morning on roof of the palace in Kyoto during the summer of 1153. The story says that the samurai Minamoto no Yorimasa staked-out the roof one night and fired an arrow into the cloud, out of which fell a dead nue. Yorimasu then supposedly sank the body in the Sea of Japan.

In a local expansion of the story, the nue's corpse floated into a certain bay, and the locals, fearing a curse, buried it. A mound which exists today is supposed to be this grave.^[1]

Episode 8

Episode 9

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Set in a time period decidedly later than the previous arcs -implied to be in the 1920s - the Medicine Seller boards a train with several characters similar to the first Bakeneko story (who might be possible reincarnations of their former counterparts). When the train crashes into a girl on the tracks, they are all gathered together in one cart which mysteriously moves by itself. Paralleling the Bakeneko arc of Ayakashi, this is the arc where the Medicine Seller is actually seen to get wounded during the battle with the bakeneko, because the bakeneko struck before he could release his weapon.

fairlady_xoxo SG

I love this anime...too bad there's no more stories to it =(

Lin Yu SG

A bakeneko (化け猫, bakeneko^? "monster cat") is, in Japanese folklore, a cat with supernatural abilities akin to those of the fox or raccoon dog. A cat may become a bakeneko in a number of ways: it may reach a certain age, be kept for a certain number of years, grow to a certain size, or be allowed to keep a long tail. In the last case, the tail forks in two and the bakeneko is then called a nekomata (猫又, nekomata^? ,猫叉, or 猫股 "forked cat"). This superstition may have some connection to the breeding of the Japanese Bobtail.

A bakeneko will haunt any household it is kept in, creating ghostly fireballs, menacing sleepers, walking on its hind legs, changing its shape into that of a human, and even devouring its own mistress in order to shapeshift and take her place. When it is finally killed, its body may be as much as five feet in length. It also poses a danger if allowed into a room with a fresh corpse; a cat is believed to be capable of reanimating a body by jumping over it.

SiMiLaiEh* SG

is showing later on animax at 11.30pm..lookin forward to it

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