Anime Hajime Review: Ayakashi - Samurai Horror Tales

***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Ayakashi: Samurai Horror. Reader discretion is advised.***

Series Synopsis

Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales recounts three stories of Japanese horror.

Yotsuya Kaidan

Iemon and Oiwa Temiya (voiced by Hiroaki Hirata and Mami Koyama) have fallen in love. That love drove Iemon to commit horrific acts to ensure it. Unfortunately, the burdens of poverty were overpowering.

To secure a better life for himself, Iemon marries a younger, wealthier woman. To cast off his old life, he plots the murder of Oiwa. In the process, Oiwa becomes scarred and dies with vengeance in her heart.

That vengeance transcended the grave. The spirit of his former wife haunts Iemon. As well as all those responsible for her demise.

Tenshu Monogatari

Shirasagi Castle is a place many dare not go. Those who do meet their end at the hands of beings known as the Forgotten Gods.

Near the castle, Zushonosuke Himekawa (voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa) meets a beautiful woman (voiced by Houko Kuwashima). Though her mannerisms are odd, Zushonosuke falls in love with her.

It turns out the woman is Princess Tomi. She is the head of Shirasagi Castle and a terrifying Forgotten God. Although it is against her nature, the Princess returns Zushonosuke’s feelings.

However, a relationship between a human and a god is forbidden. Nothing but tragedy can come from it.

Bake Neko

Yotsuya Kaidan

A wandering medicine peddler (voiced by Takahiro Sakurai) arrives at the home of an esteemed family. It is a wedding day, a time which should be joyous. But that changes when the bride dies for unknown reasons.

With quick thinking, the peddler forms a spirit barrier around the members of the house. According to him, the bride’s death is the result of a demon.

Although the peddler can perform an exorcism, he must meet certain conditions. He needs to discover the truth behind the history of the home. Yet doing so may reveal a terrifying secret.

Tenshu Monogatari

Series Positives

From the start, I figured this would be a difficult series to review. Like Yamishibai would later go on to do, Ayakashi is an anthology show. Rather than one long narrative, there are three.

Bake Neko

Yamishibai had a shorter length and a consistent creative team. Ayakashi presented a much different scenario. Each tale lasted several episodes. Giving each segment its own distinct feel. This makes sense since all three stories were the creation of separate storytellers

In essence, we got three series for the price of one.

With Yamishibai, there was enough common ground to apply a general feel to a given season. Although the occasional stand out did tend to shine. That didn’t happen here.

The stories of Ayakashi were their own entities. They were so much their own entities, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to review each as a standalone. An idea I toyed with before I started watching. I would’ve gone through with it too had it not been for one thing.

Most of this show wasn’t good. And the things that were wrong stemmed from the same problem. They were boring. I won’t be recommending Ayakashi.

As a whole anyway.

Both Yotsuya Kaidan and Tenshu Monogatari failed to deliver. That wasn’t true for the third story.

Bake Neko

This was good.

I’m not saying that because the first two stories slogged on. Although, since they did, it made Bake Neko stand out even more. No, this one was solid through and through. A distinction when you consider the segment was a series original. Whereas its companion pieces were adaptations of well-established stories.

The biggest thing going for Bake Neko was its ability to capture the show’s very title. This one was the most horror of these samurai horror tales.

For starters, the animation and artwork were unsettling. Unlike Yotsuya Kaidan and Tenshu Monogatari, Bake Neko went for style.

Drawn to look like an Ukiyo-e portrait, Bake Neko captured a sense of unnaturalness. And for those of you like me who don’t what the Ukiyo-e style is, odds are you’ve seen it before. Ukiyo-e is the name for the art you think of whenever you imagine classic Japanese paintings. Though needing to know that isn’t important, other than this direction helped set the tone.

From its opening, everything looked goofy and unthreatening. The first two stories didn’t waste time establishing something was amiss.

Bake Neko was a bit more patient. It went out of its way to showcase a few of its more prominent characters. These moments were silly and lighthearted. Bake Neko was willing to have fun with itself. By doing so, it made the moment when everything broke down all the more unexpected.

Even when the haunting began, everyone and everything never came off as too serious. Characters kept expressions you’d find in a comedy rather than a horror story. For a while, that made the demon more of a nuisance. That changed when the truth started revealing itself.

As we saw why the demon was so aggressive, the situation turned much darker. Characters who wore comedic-like expressions took on a more frightening persona. People who appeared as though they were trying to hold in a fart became people hiding a horrific secret.

The fear and scares weren’t centered on the ghost. Rather, the focus was why the ghost came to be. This was a tragic tale which shifted who the actual monster was.

Also, Bake Neko introduced a lead character who was awesome. The medicine peddler was someone the other two stories lacked. A person disconnected from the events. An onlooker. Someone who didn’t deserve the bad things that were happening. He was someone you wanted to root for.

Plus, he kicked ass.

The peddler carried himself as a professional. From what we could see, he was an experienced exorcist. This allowed him to remain calm. When everything was going on, he managed to hold everything together. The peddler also turned the story into a psychological mystery.

And although the peddler could hold off the spirit, he was powerless against it if he didn’t understand it. To fight the demon, he had to know three things. First, he had to identify what he was dealing with. His expertise made this easy. The other two were more difficult since they were out of his hands.

He needed to learn the truth and reasoning. The truth involved the people involved acknowledging the wrong doings they had committed. The reasoning was why the demon held such deep seated animosity. To do either, the peddler had to expose the secrets a person was carrying.

This made the whole story much more interesting.

The demon was no longer a mindless evil. It wasn’t looking for kicks. The demon was a consequence.

This made the closing tale of this otherwise lackluster series exciting. As well as producing a spin-off. While Ayakashi never continued, the story of the medicine peddler did.

2007 saw the release of Mononoke which followed the peddler’s storyline. I planned to watch that series after this one. Me doing so will now happen much sooner rather than later.

Series Negatives

A quick disclaimer. Ayakashi did reference older Japanese culture and customs a lot. Something a Japanese viewer may have the knowledge to. Yet everyone else might be in for a struggle. I know I missed some things.

For example, in Bake Neko, I didn’t realize how shocking it was for the medicine peddler to carry a sword. Only samurai could do that. Small touches like that went over my head.

That said, most of this series just wasn’t that good. Something which had to do with Yotsuya Kaidan and Tenshu Monogatari failing to do what Bake Neko did so well.

The Horror

I’m not familiar with either of the stories of Ayakashi's first two segments. From my understanding though, both are pillars of Japanese horror. Yotsuya Kaidan in particular.

Written in 1825, Yotsuya Kaidan has been a major influencer in Japanese horror ever since. So, it’s legacy is wide spreading. Except its adaptation here wasn't something to get excited over.

What happened to Oiwa was tragic. Iemon was a definitive bastard. He got what he deserved. In fact, most everyone in the story did. And that was the problem. There wasn’t much tension because no one was likeable.

In Bake Neko, there were people involved who had nothing to do with the demon. Yet they were in as much danger as the ones who had it coming. In Yotsuya Kaidan, what’s there to worry about when you want the ghost to get her revenge? Not to mention there were plot points that led nowhere. There were small details that served no purpose. And there was a narrator who was more distracting than anything.

Tenshu Monogatari was better, but still had problems.

The main character, Zushonosuke was a bit of a prick. He wasn’t blameless in the events that happened. He abandoned the woman he had been with for, I assume, years after seeing a pretty face. Is it hard to imagine why that would make someone mad?

Also, this story was littered with issues. The Forbidden Gods’ powers were inconsistent. There were never any moments of satisfaction. And there were two out of place, bumbling demons who existed only to waste time.

Yotsuya Kaidan and Tenshu Monogatari weren’t awful stories in the end. They just weren’t horror stories.

Yotsuya Kaidan was a ghost tale. That in of itself isn’t horror because, again, there wasn’t tension. This was a much better revenge plot. The true horror comes from the real-life events that have happened since the story’s penning. Past adaptations have seen mysterious events occur during production. This includes a few deaths. That’s why, to this day, it is customary when doing her story for crew members to visit Oiwa’s grave and ask for her blessing. That right there’s a lot scarier than the story we got.

In the case of Tenshu Monogatari, it was a good depiction of forbidden love. It wasn’t a sad outcome. Though the ending was violent, Zushonosuke and Princess Tomi endured. What were we supposed to be scared of?

Since Yotsuya Kaidan and Tenshu Monogatari were retellings, they faced limitations. They didn't adapt all that well to this format. Bake Neko didn’t have that problem and you can see the difference.

Final Thoughts

I said it already. I won’t recommend this series as a whole. Thankfully, you don’t have to watch it as a whole.

If you’re familiar with the Yotsuya Kaidan and Tenshu Monogatari stories you may feel compelled to check them out here. If you’re not, I doubt these are good representations of these classics. Unless they are. Which, in that case, I’m being nice for no reason.

Yet Bake Neko is well worth a look. With great atmosphere, animation, and characters, it’s a strong horror story. I can’t wait to see the medicine peddler again in Mononoke.

Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales is a general miss. But if you pick and choose, there is something good here.

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